The Value of Brownfield Remediation [report]

Kevin Haninger, Lala Ma, Christopher Timmins
2014 unpublished
We gratefully acknowledge the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response Center for Program Analysis, the EPA Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization (OBLR), and EPA Regional Offices for their financial support and for providing access to the data. We especially thank Ryan Smith of the OBLR for his partnership. We would also like to thank seminar participants at Iowa State University and CEnREP Camp Resources for helpful comments. ABSTRACT The
more » ... .S. Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Program awards grants to redevelop contaminated lands known as brownfields. This paper estimates cleanup benefits by combining administrative records for a nationally representative sample of brownfields with high-resolution, high-frequency housing data. We find property value increases accompanying cleanup averaging from 5.0% to 11.5%; for a welfare interpretation that does not rely on the intertemporal stability of the hedonic price function, a double-difference matching estimator finds even larger effects of up to 15.2%. Our various specifications lead to the common conclusion that Brownfields Program cleanups yield positive, statistically significant, but highly-localized effects on housing prices.
doi:10.3386/w20296 fatcat:xkqr3eniyfbrfpjvu7hpr4y7ji