Research Brief. She Made the Promise of Brownfields Real

• Author: Elissa Parker
• Position: Vice President Research and Policy
• Pages: 59-59

MARCH/APRIL 2009 ❧ Page 59

Copyright © 2009, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Match/April 2009

ELI Report

by brownf‌ields redevelop-

ment.

Residents of low income

communities asked for her

help. She responded with

enthusiasm, brought to-

gether lawyers, community-

based organizations, devel-

opers, community health

advocates and providers,

investors, academics, and

government of‌f‌icials. She

taught them how to leverage

brownf‌ields funding and

technical assistance and oth-

er redevelopment resources.

Suzi of‌fered more than

lectures: she brought to each

community a strategic orga-

nizing model. She listened

and paid attention, bringing

her combined public health

and legal expertise to bear

on the complex sources of

individual and community

distress.

And she created a trust-

ing environment in which

a diverse set of people —

often with very dif‌ferent

and occasionally conf‌licting

interests — came together

to listen. Visit a typical

meeting and you might

have listened to the testi-

mony of three teenagers

who had “aged out” of foster

care giving a presentation

on living in terror and squa-

lor in unsafe housing. You

might have heard an elderly

African American nurse

talk about the people who

die at the bus stop trying

to get to the hospital while

suf‌fering a heart attack, or

a father describe the drug-

related drive-by shootings

in the neighborhood. Or

you would have witnessed a

developer or city representa-

tive or banker talk about the

need to develop the vacant

lot around the corner and

the economic benef‌its that

would accrue to the com-

munity if the idle factory

next to the low-income

housing were to be cleaned

up and reused.

In the audience, wait-

ing for his or her own turn

to participate, you might

have seen a representative

of the Geraldine R. Dodge

Foundation, the Bank of

America, or the Florida

Brownf‌ields Association.

And you surely would have

seen a room full of people

clamoring to take action

to transform common

health, environmental, and

economic challenges into

opportunities that restore

vitality to the community.

Suzi’s initiative lead to

the construction of new

community clinics on

petroleum-contaminated

brownf‌ields in Clearwater

and St. Petersburg, Florida.

It brought about the con-

struction of a 48-unit green

housing project designed to

serve former foster youth

and other disadvantaged

persons in Jacksonville.

In Paterson, New Jersey,

it helped leverage a grant

of $1.7 million to demol-

ish and remediate an

abandoned factory located

adjacent to low-income mi-

nority housing. And yet an-

other project in New Bed-

ford, Massachusetts, helped

secure a $500,000 federal

Community Development

Block Grant that enabled

the city to expand the local

federally qualif‌ied health

center serving low-income

and minority populations.

Her work is also respon-

sible for the creation and

passage of a state tax credit

in Florida designed to en-

courage the construction of

new health care facilities on

brownf‌ields sites in order to

serve the public health and

medical needs of local com-

munities. Based on ELI’s

model draft law, the legisla-

tion — the f‌irst of its kind

in the nation — advances

the concept that redevelop-

ment, when properly con-

ceived and implemented,

can improve public health

and the environment, in-

crease investment, and cre-

ate long-term improvements

in housing, jobs, recre-

ational opportunities, open

space, and public facilities.

e Florida model promises

to lead the way toward the

adoption and passage of

similar state-level legislation

across the nation.

We can only imagine

what Suzi’s leadership and

skill will bring to the new

government. We are conf‌i-

dent that she will continue

to build an extraordinary

legacy.

Sigh. We have just lost

to government ser-

vice one of our most

amazing staf‌fers. Senior

Attorney Suzi Ruhl has

been recruited by EPA’s

Of‌f‌ice of Environmental

Justice, where she will

serve as Senior Attorney

and Policy Advisor and

build upon the commu-

nity justice, health, and

sustainable development

programs she pioneered

at ELI.

Beginning f‌ive years ago,

in partnership with the

Of‌f‌ice of Environmental

Justice and the Southwest

Network for Economic and

Environmental Justice, Suzi

developed a wildly success-

ful regionally tailored series

of training programs (and

even a wonderful video) for

local activists and state and

federal of‌f‌icials on how to

use federal environmental

laws and alternative dispute

resolution mechanisms to

ef‌fect and enhance environ-

mental justice.

She went on to create an

innovative brownf‌ields and

public health program. e

program is designed to put

into the hands of poor, un-

derrepresented communities

the information, tools, skills,

and conf‌idence needed to

take advantage of the eco-

nomic opportunity of‌fered

Research Brief

She Made the Promise of

Brownf‌ields Real

Elissa Parker

Vice President

Research and Policy