Some of the most celebrated places in Oklahoma City, including Scissortail Park and the First National Center, were once contaminated by old car batteries, dry cleaning chemicals and remnants of oil production. Thanks to a series of grants to identify and clean up these so-called brownfields, those properties were transformed.
Brownfields are underused or abandoned places where industrial activity took place. Often located in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods, brownfields require assessment and cleanup in order to be used safely again. Some sit fallow as tangible examples of institutional racism — the fallout from decades of dumping dangerous materials on private properties in communities of color.
“Brownfields sites are areas that are either contaminated or perceived to be contaminated,” said Amanda Alewine, the senior brownfields planner for the City of OKC. “The program was created by the EPA to help get some of those properties back into active use. The city has had a program for close to 20 years now. These sites can create challenges for developers because they are contaminated, which requires some kind of extra effort to make them usable again.”
Earlier this year, the City of OKC received a $500,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to help identify brownfields. The grant will be used for environmental site assessments, cleanup strategies, reuse planning and community engagements in northeast OKC, according to a press release from the city.
While Scissortail Park has become a prominent place to gather in OKC, parts of the sprawling park were once less than suitable for that purpose. Once home to a slew of car repair shops, the area contained buried car batteries and other contaminants that had to be remediated, a process facilitated by a brownfields grant.
Remediation at these sites is expensive, complicated and a roll of the dice for developers. Once contaminants are identified and remediation begins, crews rarely know just how far down they may have to dig to complete the process. Grants like the one OKC just received can help mitigate risks and make tracts of land useful again.
The EPA’s Brownfields Program began in 1995 and has provided nearly $3 billion in grants to assess and restore properties. That investment has leveraged about $42 billion for cleanup and redevelopment, while creating more than 220,000 jobs. The EPA currently offers grants for assessment — such as the one OKC recently received — and abatement, as well as loan programs to help with redevelopment.
“We analyze what is found at the site and what will eventually go there,” Alewine said. “Some sites require mitigation, and for others it’s remediation. An example of mitigation might be that if there were an issue with groundwater on a site, we would put a deed restriction on it because that’s not a great place to be drilling a well. That would mean it should be on city water. And a lot of time it’s something that simple, just filing a deed restriction.”
After a $250 million renovation, the historic First National Center in downtown Oklahoma City now features housing units, a hotel and restaurants. But before all of that could happen, the property required extensive environmental assessment, remediation and mitigation. Known as one of the largest asbestos abatement projects in the United States, it benefited from about $10 million in brownfields grant funding.
“There were two different sections that were done in the 1960s or 1970s that had quite a bit of asbestos,” Alewine said. “It was great for fireproofing back in the day, and everybody used it, but unfortunately, it was found out later that it does cause cancer. (…) We worked with the developer to, one, look at how those areas were going to be used, and also to do asbestos abatement where it was necessary.”
Some projects are more intensive than others, with the need for remediation or mitigation varying, depending on what a redevelopment plan envisions.
“With remediation, someone is going in and removing actual contamination,” Alewine said. “The goal is to make sure that whatever the site is being used for, human health is protected, and so we work through that with developers. What makes the most financial sense? Because if you’re just using a site for a parking lot, that’s going to be different than if you’re using it for housing or a restaurant.”
NEOKC brownfields projects offer environmental justice, economic opportunity
OKC’s latest EPA brownfields assessment grant will be allocated for three portions of the city:
- the Northeast 23rd Street and Martin Luther King corridor,
- an area south of Northeast 8th Street; and
- the Core to Shore area surrounding the southern portion of Scissortail Park.
The two sites in northeast OKC highlight issues that the predominantly Black area of the city has faced in recent years when it comes to environmental justice. Earlier this year, residents of the JFK Neighborhood expressed grave concerns over the proposed expansion of a major salvage yard on Reno Avenue.
Camal Pennington won the election to Ward 7 on the OKC City Council in April. He said northeast OKC has long had to contend with environmental obstacles.
“We want to build strong, healthy communities in northeast Oklahoma City, and it starts with cleaning up some of the environmental damage that’s been done over the years,” Pennington said. “I think we’ve had a lot of success over the last few years in helping to mitigate some of those brownfields challenges that have been in our community. Work has been done around the Clara Luper Civil Rights Center, and there have been others. But we want to see our community grow in ways that are environmentally sustainable.”
Alewine said much of northeast and south Oklahoma City saw extensive oil production decades ago and, to a lesser extent, in the present day.
“A lot of the northeast side was built on what were historically oil fields,” Alewine said. “If you go back to even before the city was settled, there were oil derricks, and that’s why a lot of people came. And so, that happened to be on the northeast side and the south side. One of the things our Capitol is known for is having an active pump jack right out in front. And in the northeast community, you might see a house near a pump jack. A lot of that is remnants of historical activity, but some of it is still going on today. And so with bigger projects, and even with single-family homes, we want to go in and say, ‘Has there ever been drilling on this site? Do we need to test around this site? What could be going on?’ And we run into that a lot in those areas of the city.”
Pennington said brownfields sites that remain unaddressed, as well as industrial activity in the area, can have an impact on the health of residents.
“If you look at northeast Oklahoma City, we have some of the greatest health disparities in the state,” Pennington said. “The 73111 ZIP code is one of the most unhealthy in the state. So, you have a lower life expectancy. You have higher rates of chronic illness, and that can be directly tied to not only a lack of access to health care but also to the environment. There are neighborhoods not far from me where there are active pump jacks. The smell makes it hard to be in those neighborhoods. When I was running for city council, I knocked on a lot of doors, and I heard those concerns expressed from residents frequently.”
Restoration of brownfields sites can also help promote economic development in marginalized communities. Much of northeast OKC is considered to be a food desert because of the lack of full-service grocery stores in the area.
A Smart Saver store on the northeast corner of Northeast 23rd Street and Martin Luther King Avenue closed under dubious circumstances in 2019. The owners, who also operate the Buy for Less chain of grocery stores, had announced plans to build a large new store on that site, but the project never came to fruition. Eventually, the Binkowski family sold 11.4 acres to the city’s Urban Renewal Authority for $4.95 million. With rumors that soil remediation fears helped derail the family’s proposal to build an Uptown Grocery on the property, the frontage at that corner is part of OKC’s latest brownfield assessment.
“My understanding is that it being a brownfields site was a factor, but I don’t know for sure if that’s why the project never happened,” Pennington said.
Alewine said the Binkowskis still own land to the north and were aware of the environmental concerns.
“We assisted with the assessments so that as they were acquiring the land, they were aware of the environmental concerns,” she said.
Alewine said the area around MLK Avenue and Northeast 23rd Street had been home to businesses that contributed to the need for a brownfields assessment, mitigation and remediation.
“There were dry cleaners that were there and some gas stations,” she said. “So, unfortunately, there is a process for how to dispose of dry cleaning chemicals, but not everyone followed them. We’ve also seen areas in that part of the city where gas stations existed in the 1970s and 1980s, where the tanks are still in the ground and have leaked. So those are some examples of the kinds of things we might see when we do these initial assessments.”
While it’s unclear when and how another grocery store or another project could move forward on the important northeast OKC corner, Pennington said cleaning up brownfields sites is critical for future economic and civic development.
“What I’d like to see is for us to bring in the kind of high-quality retail and job opportunities that could provide an anchor in northeast OKC,” Pennington said. “When you think about the economic opportunity that exists at 23rd and MLK specifically, imagine bringing a major employer who could be helpful in employing people in the area, that could also bring some new housing into the area. All of those outcomes become more possible when we remove brownfields.
“We know that we have a housing shortage in our community and the rest of Oklahoma City. We have vacant land in northeast OKC. So the more we can make sure that land is available, the better chance we have of turning renters in our community into homeowners while contributing to high-quality housing stock. It’s a good thing.”
Alongside EPA opportunities, DEQ provides extra assistance
Whether it’s in urban areas like northeast OKC or more rural communities, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality also plays a role in both assessment and remediation of contaminated brownfields. Most frequently, those efforts center around remnants of oil production that once dotted much of the state’s landscape, according to Aron Samwel, a DEQ Brownfields Program manager.
“Our role is as a voluntary program, and participants self-identity for DEQ assistance,” Samwel said. “Our program offers free environmental assessments to government entities and nonprofits. We also offer cleanup loans to private entities. And one of the unique features of our Certificate Program is the liability release. Successful participants receive a certificate that resolves liability to the state and bars the EPA from pursuing enforcement actions at the site.”
Samwel said those certificates sometimes can be necessary for private entities to secure funding for developing a site that had been a brownfield.
“When they finish our program, the certificate will say if there are any restrictions for developing on that site,” Samwel said. “Some of our sites have no restrictions, and they can be used for both residential and commercial, but some have restrictions on not using groundwater. So it serves as sort of a guide to what kind of redevelopment can go forward.”
The DEQ has performed more than 200 assessments and cleaned up nearly 2,700 acres of land that has helped create 7,000 jobs and $500 million in redevelopment, Samwel said. The agency currently has four active cleanup sites in Oklahoma, and 71 participants have completed the department’s certificate program.
The agency’s more notable cleanup sites include the Wheeler District in Oklahoma City — developed on the land of a former airpark serving downtown — and the Keystone Corridor near Sand Springs.
“We’ve done economic impact analysis reports in 2015, 2022, and 2023, and the Keystone Corridor was one of the most redeveloped sites. I think it has created about $40 million in tax revenue from just that one site alone,” Samwel said. “If you develop a brownfields site, we can see that it spurs economic redevelopment in adjacent properties, which is one of the benefits of tackling that hard site in a community. If you have a property that hasn’t been developed and you don’t have as much going on around it, and you clean it up and put in a Target or something else, then you get all of the other businesses that can pop up around an anchor like Target. It creates a boom of things around it, and that’s sort of what has happened in Sand Springs.”
Alewine said one of the challenges with assessment and redevelopment of brownfields sites is making sure people who might be interested in redeveloping a parcel of land know that assistance is available.
“We do have funding available for loans for cleanup, and I think one of the struggles is getting that information out there into the community,” she said. “Whether it’s a small redevelopment or a larger-scale project, there are ways of getting assistance. I think that’s one thing that I would like for people to know about these programs is that they are available.”
