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E+E Leader: Sustainability Unveiled
Industry Voices: A Conversation with Chris Gdak
The conversation focuses on the dramatic evolution of brownfield funding through recent legislation, highlighting how communities can leverage new resources to revitalize and restore contaminated sites. Chris Gdak shares insights on the successes and challenges within the EPA's brownfield programs, shedding light on future directions for funding initiatives.
• Discussion on the evolution of EPA's Brownfield Grant Program
• Impact of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law on funding levels
• Historical context of brownfield funding across administrations
• Insights on the success of recent projects and funding distribution
• Growing emphasis on environmental justice and community accessibility
• Strategies for communities to prepare for future funding opportunities
• Anticipated challenges and competitiveness post-BIL funding era
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Welcome to a new and special feature of Sustainability Unveiled Industry Voices a conversation with. In this episode, jessica Hunt sits down with Chris Gaddak from Montrose Environmental Group. Sit back and enjoy their conversation about Brownfields funding.
Speaker 2:Go from there. Okay, good morning, afternoon, evening, from wherever you are joining us today. My name is Jessica Hunt and it is a pleasure to welcome you to today's event, today's discussion. Before we begin, if you do have questions for Chris or another member of his team, please feel free to submit those using the Q&A widget at the bottom of your screen or via the survey that will pop up at the end of today's discussion. We will make sure that all of those questions get over to the team at Montrose as soon as possible.
Speaker 2:Joining me today is Chris Jadak, the Brownfields and Community Revitalization Practice Leader at Montrose Environmental Group, and, as always, it is a pleasure to work with any member of the team from Montrose. Chris has over 22 years in environmental consulting and Brownfield redevelopment. He has been instrumental in assisting municipal, tribal and community-based organizations across more than 20 states. His expertise lies in securing and leveraging grants, loans and other incentives to support environmental site assessments, cleanups, restorations and capital improvement projects and to date, his team, with a 100% success rate, has secured over $37 million in client funding and we are so unbelievably pleased to have him here today.
Speaker 2:And the focus in case you have just registered and you don't know too much about today's event is on the evolution of the EPA's Brownfield and Environmental Justice Programs over the past two administrations. So we're going to analyze the impacts of significant legislation such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which have infused substantial funding into these programs, and we're also going to explore potential future directions, because I know a lot of individuals do have questions about the state of Brownfield's fundings, considering the outcomes of our recent federal elections in the United States. So I've talked enough already at this point. So at this point I'm going to have Chris tell us a little bit about yourself that I haven't mentioned already and before we really jump into the meat of the discussion.
Speaker 3:Thank you, jessica, that was a great introduction. As advertised, I've spent the last 20 years of my career as a consulting, helping communities build hopefully successful restoration and revitalization programs, and over the last 18 months that has brought me to being the practice leader at Montrose. I've been lucky enough to, through this work, support clients in a diversity of urban and rural environments, including projects in over 40 states and all 10 of EPA's regions. The focus of the work is helping communities develop plans to restore brownfields and revitalize neighborhoods, and that involves exploring a variety of state and federal grant programs and local incentives to support the restoration and revitalization process. You know there has been a lot of changes recently over the past two administrations with level of funding available through two key programs that help clients navigate, which are the EPA Brownfield Grants and the EPA Environmental Justice Program environmental justice program.
Speaker 3:And so, with the recent federal elections and a second Trump term on the horizon, many folks in our industry are wondering what the next four years are like. So in this State of the Union discussion, I thought we'd examine what's been going on, what the State of the Union is, and kind of get the crystal ball out and see which direction we think things are going to go in the next four years and beyond, and I have to put a disclaimer in here I'm not a lobbyist, lawyer, politician or prophet, but I do have a degree in civil environmental engineering and 24 years of experience, so I've got opinions and perspectives. I also have Google and chat CPT to help me through everything, so I'm happy to be here and excited to get into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, we're extremely excited to have you on with us today, and I know that there are so many different aspects of brownfields that we could cover. And this is a short discussion which hopefully will continue later, into 2025, too. So let's jump in, let's get started, and you mentioned the EPA brownfield grant, so can you give us just a brief overview of what that looks like for those who might not know some of the specifics?
Speaker 3:view of what that looks like for those who might not know. You know some of the specifics, certainly, and I will say we are putting together a blog that we're going to issue in the next 10 days that's going to have some graphs and statistics in that, so you might not have to write too feverishly if you're trying to take notes and trying to absorb a lot of information.
Speaker 2:And before you jump in, I will say for anyone who's attending don't take notes, just listen, because you'll be able to go back and rewatch our conversation.
Speaker 3:So really you know, enjoy the discussion and save your notes for when you rewatch it Right on EPA Brownfield Grant. So let's give a brief overview here. So the EPA Brownfield Grant program has actually been going on since the mid-1990s. It was formally signed into law in 2002 under the George Bush administration. Generally there's this annual competition where grant applications are due in the fall and awards are announced in the spring. The grants generally have like a four to five year implementation period once you're awarded, to use the funds in the community to inventory, assess, get community stakeholder involvement and do reuse plans around brownfield restoration and revitalization. The funding levels have actually historically been very consistent over the past 30 years. Generally, annual appropriations for EPA brownfield grants have ranged in the $50 to $85 million range for competitive grants and that really hasn't changed.
Speaker 3:I look back on a yearly basis and it's usually within that window, so it's migrated up a little bit over a year as things become more expensive and budgets increase, but essentially it's been very consistent over 30 years. There have been two major exceptions to that. In the late 2000s there was the Great Recession and that prompted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA in 2009.
Speaker 3:It actually increased brownfield funding for this annual program by $100 million in just one year. And then, more recently, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bipartisan infrastructure law the BIL, was established in 2021. And that has been the single largest radical change in brownfield funding over the last 30 years. Basically, over a five-year period, the BIL increased annual brownfield grants by 500%, so it's been a very fruitful time for those in the brownfield industry and there's more funding in circulation right now than there ever has been before.
Speaker 2:No, wonderful, and I know that you mentioned obviously that just we're talking about the bipartisan infrastructure law. But how did, if we're going back a couple administrations, how did the Obama administration really shape the direction of the Brownfield grants?
Speaker 3:You know so. In the first Obama term obviously there was the ARA. But you know, in looking back at the second Obama term, funding levels held pretty, pretty firm. You know they were consistent with the annual appropriations. There was no extra programs. You know so annual funding during Obama term one was 60 to 70 million dollars and the funding thresholds for individual grants, you know, stayed consistent. You know you could get up to five hundred thousand dollars for assessment grants and cleanup grants were a lowly two hundred thousand dollars. So not much changed actually during.
Speaker 2:OK, so, moving on from the Obama administration, there was a lot of obviously hesitancy during the Trump you know first administration. So what challenges did the program face, or what were people within this community, in your Brownfields community, really concerned about?
Speaker 3:People were concerned about cuts you know, cuts to programs where they had been working in for 20 years and what that might do. You know cuts to programs where they had been working in for 20 years and what that might do, you know to their existing programs and plans. And I had to reflect back on it, you know, recently, and look at what actually happened, and the truth is that during the first Trump administration, the annual appropriations the base of the program consistently stayed with in the 60 to 70 million dollar range for assessment and cleanup grants, and so I had forgotten this. But Trump actually signed into law the Brownfields Utilization, investment and Local Development, or Build Act in 2018. And it actually included a lot of good things. It expanded the 2002 Brownfields Law that was signed in by George Bush. It increased funding levels, so cleanup grants were actually increased from a minimum of $200,000 to being funded at $500,000, with the capacity to be even increased further based on available funding. The BUILD Act also included tax incentives for new opportunity zones opportunity zones, so for developers in brownfield impacted areas and distressed neighborhoods, there was new tax incentives to build and put private investments into brownfield impacted communities.
Speaker 3:There was a couple more things that expanded eligibility. So it actually created a new rule where if you acquired a property before a certain time in history, the rules relaxed a little bit on its availability for using brownfield grant funding, which was great, in particular for communities. And then it created these new multi-purpose grants which didn't exist before and basically in one grant you can now apply for assessment money and you can apply for cleanup money and redevelopment planning money. So it's multi-purpose and historically before that happened you had to individually apply for these types of phases of brownfield grant development over several years. So this allowed a community to focus in on a site or a neighborhood and get all the funding they needed to walk the properties through the assessment, cleanup and redevelopment process. So that was a really good thing and it was largely focused on development. But you know it filled in some blanks and some obstacles and created new solutions for brownfields, redevelopment and communities.
Speaker 2:Now that's really interesting, especially because when you're looking at a project from the holistic level, obviously you want to have as much funding as possible from the start, so that you know exactly where those funds are going to be allocated, as opposed to having to apply, you know, throughout the year for various grants. So now the outgoing administration. Obviously we've talked about the bipartisan infrastructure, bil funding.
Speaker 3:How has that program from the very beginning, from when it was first passed. How has that really evolved and changed over the past few years? So you know, during the Biden administration last four years, you know there was a radical change. The bipartisan infrastructure law actually included one billion dollars of additional grant funding over five years, and so the annual appropriations stayed the same throughout the last four years. So it was generally in the 60 to now $85 million range for the annual grant competition.
Speaker 3:But in 2022, we saw the first BIL funding infused into the Brownfield grant program and funding levels went from 60 million to 147 million, so they over doubled between 2021 and 2022. In 2023, they reached $260 million of annual grants and most recently last May, $300 million of grants were awarded, and so that's 500% more funding than was available pre-BIL. So right now, the great news is there's more brownfield grant funding in circulation right now than there ever has been in history, and bipartisan infrastructure law funding for brownfields isn't quite done yet. So that's where we want to look at the state of the union and kind of use that to project, you know, what folks and communities can do to continue doing this great work over the next four years and beyond.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great, and it's extremely helpful to have this historical context and background to get us to where we're going to go for the next part of the discussion, which obviously is the State of the Union. So current strengths and challenges facing the EPA Brownfield program in 2024.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so looking forward, you know just slightly to. You know this year and next year. You know the 2025 grant competition. The grant applications were due last month, on November 14th. Funding awards are going to be made generally in May, so May 2025. And there's another great year anticipated. So they have advertised that $282 million of grants are going to be awarded in May of grants are going to be awarded in May and you know the question.
Speaker 3:The thing that's concerning folks who just applied is is the new administration going to come in and try and walk back some of these increases? And so I've been using the internet and keeping my ear to the ground, talking to folks I know within EPA and otherwise, and because this competition already accepted all the grant applications by November 14th, I think I won't say we. I also just focus on myself. I think that there's a good chance that this program will be funded as advertised in May and that'll be good news, for I hear there was over 600 applicants this year from across the country. So a lot of people are interested in this and, as somebody in the industry, I probably buy a hope that it continues as advertised, because it's a really great opportunity for my clients and other clients.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful, and that was going to be one of my questions too is how many applicants did you submit for this fiscal year? So, talking about the programs that you've been involved with and throughout the past couple of years, but specifically during Biden's presidency, are there any really notable success stories from the increased funding levels that you mentioned earlier?
Speaker 3:They're still evolving, so you know it takes a while from the time you apply to the time you get access for funding generally a year actually funding, generally a year, actually.
Speaker 3:So you apply in November, you get awarded in May, but it really doesn't start until October 1st, which is the beginning of the federal fiscal year, you know.
Speaker 3:And so after that you have four to five years, depending on the type of grant, to actually put the money in circulation and effectively leverage it to support brownfield projects.
Speaker 3:It's really cool, you know, this program is that they learned a long time ago that if you made somebody write a grant application and specifically state which sites they were going to work on and you know what their plans were, that they'd end up with a bunch of dusty reports on a shelf and not actual redevelopment.
Speaker 3:So now they've adapted the program where you apply and you're awarded funding based on community need, community support and the ability of the applicant to figure out how to use the money over a four to five year period, and that really allows our clients to react to real world opportunities that might not be known today, tomorrow, next year or the year after that. They can continually evaluate what a good project is for their community, what their current needs are, be it housing or economic development, and then adjust the funding, and so what that means is funding awarded in 2024, 2023, funding that's going to be awarded in 2025, that has four to five years to cycle through communities and do good change. So kind of regardless of whether you know, things are scaled back slightly or there aren't there isn't a second bipartisan infrastructure law on the horizon.
Speaker 3:There is a lot of good money that has been awarded and more programs than ever are participating in this and have access to better resources. So, even though you know, with some of these programs maybe not making a return in the near term, you know there is still a lot of good opportunity to use the money that you have well in. Success breeds success, have well and success breeds success. You know, if you do a good job and create success stories, then that'll help the program continue to gain support all over the country.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, definitely. And you know you mentioned a little bit ago talking about the communities involved. So what are the communities saying about the program's accessibility and ability to meet their needs as of today?
Speaker 3:My clients love this program. They have incredible enthusiasm, you know, for it. Most of our clients are repeat clients. You know this isn't actually a grant program where it's like one and done. You know you can apply for assessment grants many, many, many times. You know all you have to do is use 70% of your existing grant to be able to apply for a second one. And then we have clients that every year are applying for identifying sites that could make good candidates for cleanup grants and then every year you can actually apply for a different site for cleanup in that, and so there's been just a ton of good momentum generated over the last 30 years.
Speaker 3:I've been excited to bring the funding to underserved states and communities that have never had access to it before. That really excites me is going hey, you know Nevada had no awards this year. Let's change that. You know. Same things with Utah, alaska. We love looking at the statistics, finding out communities that would make great applicants and then actually doing the outreach to say, hey, I think you're the best community in Alaska that hasn't applied in recent times. You know why don't we change that? So hopefully that answers your question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's very exciting. And do you think you know, just in your experience, that there's just not a lot of information known about the amount of grant money that is available for projects? And it's when you go to talk to these communities, as you said, nevada or Alaska or Utah, where they've never heard of the Brownfield Redevelopment Program.
Speaker 3:You know, I think actually that there's just so much noise in the funding world that it's not like they haven't heard of it, but they might have heard of it. And you know it actually really is challenging for communities to get involved if they if they haven't been before. And so you know, historically, regardless of the funding level, believe it or not, the score you need to write a successful EPA brownfield grant has been 97 percent. So that means if you last year applied for one of these grants, the applications were generally scored out of one hundred and sixty. You needed one hundred and fifty six out of one hundred and sixty to actually get funded.
Speaker 3:And so if you can think about a grant application taking one hundred hours to put together, like you can do your best as a community member who is not entrenched in brownfields, you know to learn about it, to get excited about it, to put together. You know what, academically, would be like a really good paper. You know an A score of 145 out of 160. And the sad truth is you know you'd be 10 points, 11 points below where you need to be. So it is a challenging program to navigate and there are a lot of other grant programs out there. So I don't think it's so much. As you know, they haven't heard of it. It's just it's hard to get things going and there's a lot of other noise and it's hard to navigate. You know what your priorities should be.
Speaker 2:That's why they come and talk to you, right, Sometimes, yes, so I want to move on. You know past fiscal year, 2025. Obviously, those grant submissions were due back in November and you know, as you were working with your clients and talking to other people in the industry, what are the really emerging types of projects that are being proposed.
Speaker 3:You know the types of projects that are being proposed. You know we've seen a lot of ebb and flow in recent times. Through the pandemic and the shift to the online you know, internet shopping environment, we've seen a lot of interesting shifts away from office space, large commercial space, migration to suburban areas. So the good thing about this program is that, as I mentioned before, they award money to deserving communities based on need and you can really adjust and adapt your program, you know, with these shifts. You know obviously any type of change in commercial or housing you know creates brownfields, you know, or you know, provides a need to redevelop brownfields to meet the new needs of that neighborhood or that community, and so the adaptability of the EPA brownfield grant program has been paramount there is a lot of concern, you know, with this last year BIL funding.
Speaker 3:So 2026 is the last of the five-year cycle that you know increased funding levels by 400%, you know, through bipartisan infrastructure law and so the 2026 grant competition, which is next fall, is the last one anticipated to have the IELTS funding. So you know, whereas I was completely optimistic, you know that the grant program that just passed, the 2025 one with awards in May, you know we'll continue to have that BIL funding. There is a little bit more speculation on whether you know funding will be peeled back to normal annual levels, you know, for 2026. So that's where I don't have a crystal ball, that's where I want to stay optimistic. It has been awarded through BIL, but we really have to continue to monitor what's going on there and adjust our strategies accordingly to this program.
Speaker 2:So with not having a crystal ball, not knowing what's going to come in 2027 to 2029, how should communities prepare? And then, do you think that if funding does return to the pre-BIL levels, is that going to impact the scope and competitiveness of the Brownfields grants?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it will, you know, but it'll take a while. You know things don't become radically more competitive overnight. And so, you know, with more grants awarded in 2023 2024, bigger grants awarded in uh 2024 2025 um in a four year, four to five year implementation period, a lot of what um is now in circulation will continue to be in circulation over the next several years. The good thing about the increase over the last few years is a lot more communities have gotten involved and a lot of communities that historically couldn't, you know, be competitive enough to secure this funding have, and the challenging part will be they're just ramping up. You know, you usually kind of get your first grant to get your feet wet and understand how to really use the money well in your community, and then it's the follow-on grants that you know really help you build and leverage that momentum.
Speaker 3:And I do think you know, when funding levels return to normal and there's all these people that are currently using the funding and going to look for more, it will even get even more competitive. You know, I don't know if that means you know, 158 out of 160 score, but you're getting pretty close to requiring perfection in your grant application to actually get funded and that kind of leaves things in the hands of the reviewer, because you just lose one point. You know, and you know you're below the threshold. So it is. It is a cruel game and I do think, with funding levels peeled back to normal and all these other, all these new communities that have the funding and want more, that it will probably see the most competitive levels we've ever seen and you know, maybe 2027, 2028, 2029.
Speaker 2:One thing that you know you've mentioned. We talked about the last three presidents and the impact that they've had on the EPA's Brownfield funding. Obviously, this funding would not have occurred without bipartisan support. So do you anticipate any policy shifts or new collaborations in order to sustain funding, you know, beyond 2029?
Speaker 3:You know, historically this has been a program that is well supported in urban communities, rural communities, blue states, red states, purple states. You know all communities have brownfields. My smallest community client has been a 30-person tribal village in Alaska and my largest client by population has been the city of Los Angeles. And the truth is there's been brownfields in all of those communities and really a need for this funding. You know there was a focus on environmental justice and it was a major program priority through the Obama administration and through the Biden administration.
Speaker 3:In Trump term one it did shift a little bit to business opportunity zones but it actually filled in some elements that were critical to providing support for developers you know in that are going to invest their own funding in brownfield communities to, you know, focusing again on providing development incentives for folks that are willing to invest their capital in brownfield properties and brownfield impacted areas. Maybe environmental justice does take a little. Cases are one in the same, you know. So if you qualified under environmental justice, you'll probably qualify under the opportunity zones and you know you'll have access to resources on both ends.
Speaker 2:Now, which is great advice and I know we are running out of time for this discussion and I'm excited to see you know over the next few years what's going to happen with the program. But for those communities, those organizations who are really starting to look at you know, obviously we're awaiting the awards for fiscal year 2025, but, in preparation for next year's set of deadlines, what can organizations do now to help prepare them?
Speaker 3:So you know there was unprecedented levels of funding over the last four years and what we found was, you know, everybody wanted a piece of it, but there were a lot of great, you know community based organizations, tribal entities, you know urban and rural communities that would make great candidates for certain grant programs, but they just didn't have the plans in place and the partnerships in place to quickly put together a compelling application, a feasible application, and take advantage of the wave of funding that was coming through. So it doesn't take a lot of money actually to evaluate what your environmental justice and brownfield needs are, to develop stakeholder partnerships, you know, which are critical to actually doing great things in communities. You can't just do it as a municipality, you can't just do it as a nonprofit, you can't just do it as a private developer. You kind of need a collaborative partnership and there are grants for that. But it really doesn't require a lot of money to get folks together to talk about how they can contribute to addressing the issues and develop plans.
Speaker 3:You know feasible plans to address some of the brownfield and environmental justice issues and so my recommendation is there's tools out there to evaluate what your needs are. There's partners within your community and building relationships is going to be huge. And then you know make the investment to create plans to address these issues and really prepare yourself, for you know what opportunities are going to come up in the future and you know really position yourself to do it. And in the meantime there are smaller grants that you can apply for. You know that can help advance the cause and that's what we're doing is we're looking at, you know, foundations and other programs, once again, ones that have annual appropriations and consistent levels of funding and continuing to advance the needle until we see another. You know community change grant program or initiative come through the federal government that can really help move the needle on changing these communities move the needle on changing these communities Wonderful, and I think that's a perfect way to wrap up today's conversation.
Speaker 2:I want to thank you, chris, for all of the insight that you provided on Brownfields grants, and thank you to the team at Montrose for sponsoring today's event. If you have questions for Chris or a member of his team, please feel free to submit them using the Q&A widget or again at the survey that's going to pop up on your screen. Don't worry, chris and team will get every single question and comment that comes in and I know he will be in touch with you as soon as he can. So, chris, as always, it's been a pleasure to spend some time with you today and we appreciate your advice.
Speaker 3:Thank you, thanks everyone.
