The Atlanta Beltline, The Georgia Brownfield Program & The Cleanup of Atlanta's Urban Core

It is no secret that the Atlanta Beltline continues to be one of the most successful public projects in the country. Anyone who visits the Beltline can see first-hand the project’s success in the forms of large crowds walking, biking, and scootering along the trail and cranes, scaffolding, and new buildings dotting nearby skies. In fact, the Beltline has been so successful that the chief complaints about the project are that it is too crowded and it has spurred too much economic development too quickly – complaints that public officials only wished they heard on all public projects.

While the connectivity, recreational, and economic development benefits resulting from the Beltline are well-documented, one of the project’s most overlooked but no less significant benefits is its role in cleaning up Atlanta’s urban core. Long before the current Beltline trail, many heavy industries operated on or near the former rail corridor. These industries, many of which operated before modern environmental regulations, often resulted in significant spills and leaks of contaminants to the soil and groundwater. After operations shut down, these contaminated “Brownfield” properties often sat idle for years, leaving behind contamination in communities that for decades created public health risks and other issues, such as poor stormwater management and associated flooding. Numerous studies have shown that these risks were particularly concentrated in Atlanta’s lowest-income and/or minority neighborhoods.

Fortunately, the rise of developments along the Atlanta Beltline, coupled with sensible regulatory initiatives like the Georgia Brownfield Program, have begun to address many of these prior “environmental wrongs.” The Georgia Brownfield Program offers potential developers more flexible remediation approaches, tax incentives, and certain liability protections in exchange for voluntarily cleaning up sites. These benefits allow projects to move forward that would not otherwise be feasible or financeable and include cleanup activities without significant burdens on taxpayers. The result is that dozens of sites along and near the Atlanta Beltline have already been cleaned up privately under the Georgia Brownfield Program (including parts of the actual Beltline Trail) and dozens more are underway. These Georgia Brownfield Program sites have included, among others, old gas stations and dry cleaners, former unpermitted landfills, and derelict industrial sites and their redevelopment has led to thousands of tons of contaminated soils being removed from Atlanta’s neighborhoods and placed in appropriate landfills.

So the next time you're on the Atlanta Beltline gazing at new developments, worrying about being run over by a scooter or thinking about where to stop to eat next, take a second to appreciate the significant environmental benefits resulting from the Beltline project and supporting government programs like the Georgia Brownfield Program.