[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 6] [Extensions of Remarks] [Page 8000] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]INTRODUCTION OF THE BROWNFIELDS CLEAN-UP ACT ______ HON. WILLIAM J. COYNE of pennsylvania in the house of representatives Thursday, April 29, 1999 Mr. COYNE. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing legislation which would make the existing tax incentive for cleaning up brownfields permanent. Brownfields are vacant industrial or commercial sites. There are more than 400,000 such sites across the country. Brownfields cause economic blight by crowding out new businesses, preventing the creation of new jobs, and reducing municipal property tax revenues. They reduce the value of surrounding property and they can be public health problems. Brownfields sites often require environmental remediation before they can be redeveloped and returned to productive use. At the very least, the prospect of significant remediation costs often discourages the redevelopment of such sites. The 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act established a provision for expensing brownfield clean-up costs in certain targeted areas--empowerment zones, enterprise communities, EPA brownfields pilot project sites, and census tracts with high poverty rates. This provision can be an important tool for encouraging the clean-up and redevelopment of unproductive brownfield sites. Unfortunately, however, the existing provision only allows expensing for expenditures or costs incurred between August 6, 1997, and December 31, 2000. That is too short a period of time for many potential users to take advantage of it. Consequently, I believe that this provision should be made permanent. The Administration shares that view and proposed making the provision permanent in the budget request that it submitted to Congress in February. Today Congressman Rangel and I are introducing legislation that would make the brownfields expensing provision permanent. Enactment of this legislation would provide much-needed help to many of the economically distressed communities across the country that are currently burdened with one or more brownfields sites. I urge my colleagues to cosponsor this important legislation. ____________________