The Five Pillars of Success
Mission Statement
Helping communities affected by Superfund sites reclaim and return land to safe and beneficial use.
About the Superfund Redevelopment Program
This EPA program works nationwide, helping people realize the redevelopment potential of Superfund sites, transforming formerly contaminated lands into valuable community resources. Today, Superfund sites across the country are home to industrial and commercial parks, retail centers, government offices, recreational assets, renewable energy facilities, and neighborhoods. Many sites continue to host industrial operations such as large-scale manufacturing facilities. Other sites support natural areas, parks and recreation facilities. Superfund redevelopment can revitalize local economies with jobs, new businesses, tax revenues and local spending.
Pillar #1 - Protecting Human Health and the Environment
Understanding and supporting the current and future use of Superfund sites informs all phases of the cleanup process, from risk assessment and remedy selection through long-term stewardship and protectiveness. The Superfund Redevelopment Program helps parties consider reuse and cleanup considerations alongside each other, highlighting opportunities to optimize project outcomes. The Program emphasizes the connections between cleanup, protection of human health and environment, and reuse across a wide range of innovative materials and tools including promoting the use of sustainable development techniques to mitigate the future impacts of climate change.
Pillar #2 - Partnerships
The Superfund Redevelopment Program relies on close working relationships with EPA programs and regional offices, and strong partnerships with other federal agencies, states, tribes, communities and other stakeholders, to maximize available resources and help parties transform their reuse visions into reality. Every day, the Superfund Redevelopment Program works with our partners, bringing expertise, experience and resources to improve the health of American families and protect the environment. The Program strives to understand issues and challenges communities face, fairly and equitably answer questions, and provide support that enables sites to return to appropriate, beneficial use for the affected local community. Collaborations focus on liability protections, economic development and other priorities.
Pillar #3 - Promoting Strategies
The Superfund Redevelopment Program shares perspectives, lessons learned and best practices to pave the way for more reuse and celebrate reuse successes. The Superfund Redevelopment Program’s wide-ranging materials take people inside some of the nation’s leading reuse projects, exploring the challenges that stakeholders faced and the solutions they found to make reuse happen. The materials provide vital guidance for communities, tribes, localities, organizations, developers and other parties interested in pursuing their own Superfund Redevelopment projects. Materials range from brief project overviews to in-depth analyses with stakeholder interviews, and have compelling visuals - engaging maps, images and graphics.
Pillar #4 - Policy
The Superfund Redevelopment Program maintains and updates the infrastructure, guidance and policies needed to implement Superfund Redevelopment across all 10 EPA Regions.
This work includes assisting EPA in creating new policy and updating existing policies and guidance that link reuse with protecting human health and the environment. It also includes training EPA staff to work effectively with communities on local redevelopment goals and expanding a national network of professionals that guides the Program's implementation. The Superfund Redevelopment Program also explores and develops tools and resources to overcome reuse barriers and enable successful project outcomes.
Pillar #5 - Performance
The social, economic and environmental outcomes associated with Superfund Redevelopment are remarkable. The Superfund Redevelopment Program tracks this information, showing how linking reuse and the protection of human health and the environment through effective policies, partnerships and outreach meaningfully impacts communities and provides opportunities for future redevelopment. The Superfund Redevelopment Program collects, tracks and shares information about the number of Superfund sites in reuse and the uses supported on those sites, recreational and ecological uses at sites, renewable energy generation at sites, the economic benefits of returning sites to beneficial use, and the number of cleaned-up Superfund sites that can be returned to beneficial use.