New York's environmental agency let polluted sites linger for years in its brownfield cleanup program with no rule for when to step in
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What happened
A June 2025 New York State Comptroller audit (Report 2022-S-26) found that 86 of 518 active Brownfield Cleanup Program sites (17%) had been in the program more than 10 years, and that of 25 sites in it for 17 to 19.5 years, the Department of Environmental Conservation itself said four posed a significant threat to public health or the environment and had significant delays. DEC lacks specific policies setting criteria or time frames for when to act on a lack of progress, including when to terminate an agreement or move a site to the state Superfund program; at one Brooklyn dry-cleaner site, contamination identified as a significant threat had gone unremediated for more than nine years. Developers claimed $1.8 billion in brownfield tax credits from 2019 to 2022. DEC disagreed with some aspects of the report but generally agreed with the recommendations and proposed regulatory changes to address them.
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