IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/report/rp-20-11.html

Environmental Remediation and Infrastructure Policies Supporting Workers and Communities in Transition

Author

Listed:
  • Raimi, Daniel

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract

Environmental remediation and infrastructure spending have a significant potential role in reducing pollution and supporting workers and communities affected by a transition to clean energy. This review examines major federal policies related to these two areas, highlighting the existing evidence on program effectiveness across multiple metrics.Environmental remediation programs can provide near-term job opportunities and restore sites to economic use in regions with a history of pollution, including pollution from energy extraction and consumption. The evidence is strong that remediation increases nearby property values and provides job opportunities during cleanup. Depending on their design and implementation, increased efforts in this area could benefit energy communities and communities affected by the legacy of environmental injustice.Recent research suggests that some of these programs, including remediating abandoned oil and gas wells, can provide direct jobs at relatively low cost, but evidence on the cost-effectiveness of job creation for the Superfund and Brownfields programs is mixed. Important questions regarding employment effects of remediation are whether they persist over time, and which workers and communities benefit most from these job opportunities.Infrastructure programs for highways, public transport, and clean water also have the potential to support employment and economic growth in communities heavily dependent on fossil energy. Although economists have debated whether transportation infrastructure investment increases overall economic activity or merely redistributes it, the latter outcome may be valuable in the context of an energy transition, particularly if new infrastructure serves communities negatively affected by a shift away from fossil energy.Some infrastructure projects, particularly those providing clean water, can address the legacy of surface and groundwater pollution in some fossil energy producing and consuming communities. In addition, infrastructure investment—depending on its design and implementation—has the potential to reduce a legacy of environmental injustice.

Suggested Citation

  • Raimi, Daniel, 2020. "Environmental Remediation and Infrastructure Policies Supporting Workers and Communities in Transition," RFF Reports 20-11, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:report:rp-20-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rff.org/documents/2627/RFF_Report_20-11_Fairness_for_Workers.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Shanti Gamper-Rabindran & Christopher Timmins, 2011. "Hazardous Waste Cleanup, Neighborhood Gentrification, and Environmental Justice: Evidence from Restricted Access Census Block Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 620-624, May.
    2. Kent Messer & William Schulze & Katherine Hackett & Trudy Cameron & Gary McClelland, 2006. "Can Stigma Explain Large Property Value Losses? The Psychology and Economics of Superfund," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 33(3), pages 299-324, March.
    3. Garin, Andrew, 2019. "Putting America to work, where? Evidence on the effectiveness of infrastructure construction as a locally targeted employment policy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 108-131.
    4. Peter M. Schwarz & Gwendolyn L. Gill & Alex Hanning & Caleb A. Cox, 2017. "Estimating The Effects Of Brownfields And Brownfield Remediation On Property Values In A New South City," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(1), pages 143-164, January.
    5. Gilles Duranton & Matthew A. Turner, 2011. "The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2616-2652, October.
    6. Evan J. Ringquist, 2005. "Assessing evidence of environmental inequities: A meta-analysis," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 223-247.
    7. George Galster & Christopher Walker & Christopher Hayes & Patrick Boxall & Jennifer Johnson, 2004. "Measuring the impact of community development block grant spending on urban neighborhoods," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(4), pages 903-934.
    8. William M. Rohe & George C. Galster, 2014. "The Community Development Block Grant Program Turns 40: Proposals for Program Expansion and Reform," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(1), pages 3-13, January.
    9. Marie Howland, 2007. "Employment Effects of Brownfield Redevelopment What Do We Know from the Literature?," NCEE Working Paper Series 200701, National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, revised Jan 2007.
    10. Kevin Haninger & Lala Ma & Christopher Timmins, 2017. "The Value of Brownfield Remediation," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(1), pages 197-241.
    11. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas, 1994. "Public-Sector Capital and the Productivity Puzzle," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 76(1), pages 12-21, February.
    12. Dennis Guignet, 2013. "What Do Property Values Really Tell Us? A Hedonic Study of Underground Storage Tanks," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 89(2), pages 211-226.
    13. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Schwartz, Amy Ellen, 1995. "Infrastructure in a structural model of economic growth," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 131-151, April.
    14. Howland, Marie, 2007. "Employment Effects of Brownfield Redevelopment: What Do We Know From the Literature?," National Center for Environmental Economics-NCEE Working Papers 280851, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
    15. Kiel, Katherine A. & Williams, Michael, 2007. "The impact of Superfund sites on local property values: Are all sites the same?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 170-192, January.
    16. Karen A. Sullivan, 2017. "Brownfields Remediation: Impact on Local Residential Property Tax Revenue," Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (JEAPM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(03), pages 1-20, September.
    17. David M. Konisky & Tyler S. Schario, 2010. "Examining Environmental Justice in Facility‐Level Regulatory Enforcement," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 91(3), pages 835-855, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 2011. "Handbook on the Benefits, Costs, and Impacts of Land Cleanup and Reuse," Environmental Economics Guidance Documents 348897, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
    2. Walsh, Patrick & Mui, Preston, 2017. "Contaminated sites and information in hedonic models: An analysis of a NJ property disclosure law," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 1-14.
    3. Guignet, Dennis & Jenkins, Robin R. & Nolte, Christoph & Belke, James, 2023. "The External Costs of Industrial Chemical Accidents: A Nationwide Property Value Study," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    4. Guignet, Dennis & Jenkins, Robin & Ranson, Matthew & Walsh, Patrick J., 2018. "Contamination and incomplete information: Bounding implicit prices using high-profile leaks," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 259-282.
    5. Klemick, Heather & Mason, Henry & Sullivan, Karen, 2020. "Superfund cleanups and children’s lead exposure," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    6. Gamper-Rabindran, Shanti & Timmins, Christopher, 2013. "Does cleanup of hazardous waste sites raise housing values? Evidence of spatially localized benefits," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 345-360.
    7. Taisuke Sadayuki, 2020. "The externality of a mortality incident within an apartment building: cases of homicide, suicide and fire deaths," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 22(1), pages 21-38, January.
    8. Kahn, Matthew E. & Walsh, Randall, 2015. "Cities and the Environment," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 405-465, Elsevier.
    9. van Tuijl, Martin A. & de Groof, Robert J. & Kolnaar, Ad H. J., 1997. "Fiscal policy and public capital in interdependent economics," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 279-300, April.
    10. Steve Gibbons & Stephan Heblich & Esther Lho & Christopher Timmins, 2016. "Fear of Fracking? The Impact of the Shale Gas Exploration on House Prices in Britain," SERC Discussion Papers 0207, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    11. Zhaohua Zhang & Derrick Robinson & Diane Hite, 2018. "Racial Residential Segregation: Measuring Location Choice Attributes of Environmental Quality and Self-Segregation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-20, April.
    12. Cheng, Nieyan & Li, Minghao & Liu, Pengfei & Luo, Qianfeng & Tang, Chuan & Zhang, Wendong, 2024. "Pipeline incidents and property values," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    13. Dennis Guignet & Matthew T. Heberling & Michael Papenfus & Olivia Griot, 2022. "Property Values, Water Quality, and Benefit Transfer: A Nationwide Meta-analysis," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 98(2), pages 191-218.
    14. Angel De la Fuente, 2010. "Infrastructures and productivity: an updated survey," Working Papers 1018, BBVA Bank, Economic Research Department.
    15. Marjorie Tendero & Cécile Bazart, 2018. "Empty lands ? Social representations of contaminated brownfields in France," Working Papers halshs-01709548, HAL.
    16. Phaneuf, Daniel J. & Liu, Xiangping, 2016. "Disentangling property value impacts of environmental contamination from locally undesirable land uses: Implications for measuring post-cleanup stigmaAuthor-Name: Taylor, Laura O," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 85-98.
    17. Pedro R.D. Bom & Jenny E. Ligthart, 2009. "How Productive is Public Capital? A Meta-Regression Analysis," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper0912, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    18. Jon Nelson & Peter Kennedy, 2009. "The Use (and Abuse) of Meta-Analysis in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics: An Assessment," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 42(3), pages 345-377, March.
    19. Edward L. Glaeser & James M. Poterba, 2020. "Introduction to "Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment"," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Analysis and Infrastructure Investment, pages 1-38, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Justin Contat & Carrie Hopkins & Luis Mejia & Matthew Suandi, 2024. "When climate meets real estate: A survey of the literature," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 52(3), pages 618-659, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:report:rp-20-11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.