Brownfields can cause areas to lose tax revenue, real estate value, and living quality.
In the sweltering summer heat of 2013, a class of Ball State University students gathered at a former junkyard on Muncie’s Burlington Drive. There, cased in their Hazmat battle armor, they plotted out which area of land to attack first. Armed with their weapons—a collection of contaminant-fighting plants—the students set to work hauling off scraps and siphoning out metals that were threatening the fragile ecosystem lying just below the surface.
With each passing semester over the span of two and a half years, more students joined the cause, bringing butterfly boxes and birdhouses to replace the rusted metal waste.
In early 2016, the final group planned a hiking trail to guide Muncie residents through the newly renovated field. The project manager, student Faye Lichtsinn, planned the trail to cross over a hill she thought would add natural beauty to the labored-over land. But the hill wasn’t natural at all.
It was a mound of tires.
The students were working on an immersive learning project to remediate the site formerly used as a Car Doctors junkyard. The land had been labeled a brownfield, which the Environmental ProtectionAgency (EPA) defines as a property that might contain a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant that complicates its redevelopment or reuse. Brownfields usually exist on sites where commercial or industrial businesses have been closed down or abandoned. They can be contaminated, but oftentimes, they’re not. The Car Doctors site was only slightly contaminated, allowing students to work on it safely.
John Pichtel, the Ball State natural resources professor who led the Car Doctors immersive class, estimates that Muncie is home to nearly 60 brownfields. These properties reduce tax revenue, lower real estate values, and threaten overall safety in the community.
Most of these sites were left behind by the factories that opened in the area after the 1880 Indiana gas boom, Pichtel says. These included companies like the Ball Corporation, Borg Warner, Indiana Steel and Wire, and General Motors. But beginning in 1970, more than a dozen factories shut down, leaving behind jobless workers and empty properties.
Pichtel says the inadvertent release of hazardous materials from these industries while still in operation, possibly leaking from pipelines or underground storage tanks, could have contaminated some areas. Other businesses might have released chemicals only after the sites were abandoned. Either way, such contamination can eventually affect the environmental and economic status of surrounding Muncie neighborhoods.
Brad Bookout, director of municipal and economic affairs for the East Central Indiana Regional Planning District, says the brownfield problem expands beyond Delaware County to other communities across the Midwest.
“That’s not unique to Muncie” Bookout says. “That’s just unique to middle America.”
Once a city labels a site a brownfield, several steps need to be taken before it can be reused, says Kyle Hendrix, the redevelopment coordinator for the Indiana Brownfield Program. An environmental site assessment considers the land’s history and takes a soil sample to determine what contaminants might be there.
Various funds from national and state government agencies are available to help cities clean up these brownfield areas, Hendrix says. The Car Doctors immersive, however, received $50,000 from the Ball Brothers foundation, a family philanthropy in Muncie.
Bookout says there are three possible outcomes when assessing a brownfield. Some sites are determined to be safe and immediately ready for reuse.
Brownfields that contain slight contamination receive deed restrictions, making the sites eligible only for limited use. For example, this would keep developers from building residential housing, day cares, nursing homes, or wells in the area. The Car Doctors site fell into this category.
The third kind of site poses an “imminent human health concern,” meaning the contaminants must be removed immediately.
Pichtel says this type of remediation could cost tens of thousands, or sometimes millions of dollars to clean up, depending on the extent of the contamination. If contaminants are found, the owner of the property is responsible.
In Muncie, however, many of the brownfields were abandoned, leaving the city with costly cleanup efforts, Pichtel says.
In an effort to alleviate some of these expenses, Pichtel began the immersive learning project to rehabilitate the Car Doctors site, which had closed around a decade ago.
“Even though the state had arranged for the removal of the junked cars, there [were] 5.5 acres of junk all over the place,” he says. “People had dumped refrigerators and couches and other debris there.”
Working off graduate student Amanda Howe’s masters thesis on phytoremediation—a process of decontaminating soil or water by using plants and trees to absorb or break down pollutants—the students first performed a site assessment and checked the company’s records to see what contamination there might be. After finding some, the team, occasionally collaborating with inmates from the Muncie Correctional Facility, set to work removing fence, poison ivy, and debris.
The group then split the 5-acre space into fifths, tackling it one piece at a time. They planted perennial ryegrass, sunflowers, and red clover to pull up the cadmium, copper, chromium, nickel, lead, and zinc they had found in the soil.
This process, Howe believes, is better than the traditional remediation methods of using oil-fueled machinery to dig up soil and transport it to hazardous waste dumps, or washing the soil with different detergents, both of which disturb the natural soil aggregates.
If chemicals are used, Howe says, the soil basically dies. Instead, plants allow for a natural decontamination that can be seen after one or two growing seasons.
After a nearly three-year battle, performing case studies and manual labor, the groups removed all hazardous materials. They laid down clay and topsoil, taking a final step to ensure the contamination had been bested for good. They planted turf and prairie, transforming the once-ravaged land into a community green space complete with hiking trails, birdhouses, and butterfly boxes.
“Wildlife has actually come back, deer have come in, and this is essentially downtown Muncie,” Pichtel says. “Aesthetically, it’s ready to go. It’s lovely, and it’s up to the city how they want to pursue it.”
