WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment held a hearing titled Maximizing Opportunities for Redeveloping Brownfields Sites: Assessing the Potential for New American Innovation.

“The Brownfields Program supports communities impacted by prior industrial activity, offering them a new opportunity to spur growth and innovation. As the program continues to work to clean up areas that have been contaminated, we can leverage these sites to construct, among other things, data centers critical to advancing Artificial Intelligence,” said Chairman Griffith. “Today’s hearing was an important step toward ensuring that the Brownfields Program continues to serve the American people by assessing and cleaning up potential contamination and supporting new and emerging industries.”

Watch the full hearing here.

Below are key excerpts from today’s hearing:

Representative Bob Latta (OH-05): “What do we need to be doing on permitting to move things along and get things moving faster? This a great thing about this Committee, the broad jurisdiction we have. I’ve never heard anybody ever testify before saying that they’re against our regulations. Just give us regulations so we can live with. But what do you see on the permitting side that we ought to be doing right now?” Hon. James L. Connaughton: “You know, what’s interesting is we had all the big infrastructure projects, data centers, semiconductors, by the way, even shipbuilding. They actually don’t have a big outward environmental footprint. There’s a lot of things to comply with, OK, but all the methods of controlling to prevent environmental contamination are well known and in place. And so, if we could simply change the default to yes. With inspection and enforcement of noncompliance, which almost never occurs, that solves the problem. And you do it in site assessment, you do it in permitting, and you do it with interconnection. You have to create an automated system.”

Representative John Joyce (PA-13): “In Pennsylvania, we are proud of our industries. The coal, the steel, and allied industries that were mined and forged in our cities and in our towns. Sadly, many of these legacy industries have fallen on hard times and gone out of business, leaving behind land in need of environmental cleanup and communities with limited resources. to invest in that necessary redevelopment. This is where EPA’s Brownfields Program has been useful to ensure that these are areas that are not left behind, and economic development can occur. Across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, counties like Cambria and Blair have used brownfields to leverage public and private funding to create family sustaining jobs. This program is a great example of how instead of federal government getting in the way with burdensome regulations, it can work with local stakeholders to spur lasting redevelopment.”

Representative August Pfluger (TX-11): “I represent a very rural district but one that has a tremendous amount of energy. One that could benefit very greatly, but we see more of an urge to show some or to do urban projects rather than rural. So maybe talk to me a little bit about some of the barriers that have impacted us in the rural community.” Mr. Duane Miller: “I’m a big believer in our rural areas. We kind of view them as a blank canvas… I really think a concise effort should be put on the recruitment of data centers to rural areas through this brownfield funding.”

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