The city of Denver was able to take advantage of the pool of insurance money available to several generators of hazardous waste whose wastes were disposed of in the Lowry Landfill, one of the largest landfills in the country. Instead of brownfields being a drain on the resources of cities, a new key to cover the cost of cleaning-up these substantial liabilities can be found in the insurance policies of the polluting corporations.
Cities face sizeable costs to remedy or develop environmentally-impaired properties.
Cities cited increased local tax revenues and job creation as the most important public benefit of brownfield redevelopment, followed by neighborhood revitalization, a ranking that supports the view that abandoned properties can negatively affect entire neighborhoods. Even more significant are the tremendous social, public health and welfare costs of polluted sites scattered throughout populated communities. Otherwise unproductive real estate can be transformed into productive tax-generating revenue sources. While the costs of effective remediation appear beyond the already overextended means of cities, the costs of doing nothing are even more catastrophic. Cities have means to finance brownfields remediation Cities can obtain millions of dollars to clean-up polluted sites or brownfields, however, from the insurance policies of the parties who caused the environmental damage.