• When are you eligible to treat environmental cleanup expenses as a deduction?
• If a property is to be cleaned up in conjunction with a sale, who receives the tax benefit of the cleanup?
• Can you enjoy a one- to two-year reduction in the annual property tax assessment of a property?
• If share price is a concern, is it cost effective to clean up a property, and remove an environmental liability, thus bettering the bottom line for shareholders to see?
• Reference: The points listed above are but a few of the informative issues discussed in the article below written by Bruce Keys (of Foley and Lardner law firm, www.Foley.com) and published by Society of Real Estate Counselors).
• Comment: I thought the discussion was interesting about the idea that it might benefit a corporation to sell an environmentally distressed property because it could potentially remove a large liability from their balance sheet, which hopefully could counterbalance some of the same corporation’s fears about selling the property. Another point I found interesting was that it’s often easier for new, innocent buyers of brownfield properties to obtain funding (grants, tax credits, TIF, etc.) than it would be for the current owner of the property.
• Call for Discussion: Have any of our readers used any of these “tricks of the trade”, or any others?

BEDI is associated with Community Planning and Development of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

It appears BEDI grant funds are primarily targeted for use with a particular emphasis upon the redevelopment of brownfields sites in economic development projects and the increase of economic opportunities for low-and moderate-income persons as part of the creation or retention of businesses, jobs and increases in the local tax base.

The attached publication from 10/02 was by Kristen Yount - BIO (Northern Kentucky University) and Peter Meyer - BIO (University of Louisville).

While written in very understandable format, the subject is very complex and the work that has gone into this must have been tremendous.

I imagine government folks and those in the insurance industry will be most interested, but the nature of the subject requires the publication to provide some of the best explanations of environmental insurance that you can find.

One major theme appears to be finding ways to combine one policy over a number of properties or owners, that otherwise would not be valuable enough to justify an environmental insurance policy on an individual basis.

Keep this document to review the next time you forget the details about a particular type of policy.

The attached article mentions all the problems we’re painfully aware of, with respect to brownfield sites, but it also goes on to mention on pages 3 and 4 some, “Federal Policy Options and opportunities for brownfields and vacant properties.”

I have to think this will be interesting to developers and landowners for future projects, since it lists quite a few ideas for the federal government, including the following:

-EPA grants/Federal subsidies/Multi-purpose grants.
-Brownfield Economic Devp Initiative (BEDI) and Section 108 loan guarantees.
-Section 198 brownfield tax expensing.
-Federal browfield tax credits.
-Eminent domain.
-Enforcing Sarbanes-Oxley
The document is written by Matt Kane, Charles Bartsch and Barbara Wells of the Spring 2006 Northeast Midwest Economic Review. www.nemw.org.

Link to Document Here and Open the pdf file called  Northeast-Midwest Economic Review: Spring 2006