BOSTON -- Growing up in New Bedford, Henry Wainer remembers driving past the old Alden Corrugated Container Company on trips out of the city. Then one day, the single-story cardboard box factory burned. The city bulldozed what remained and -- in the lingo of urban planning -- added one more "brownfield" to its landscape, an abandoned, likely polluted empty lot with dim prospects of being redeveloped any time soon.
New Bedford wasn't alone. As industries left, older cities and mill towns across the state were increasingly dotted with thousands of brownfields -- some the size of house lots, others as large as red-brick factories.
Then, in the mid-1990s, the state began a push to speed the redevelopment of the sites, culminating with the 1998 Brownfields Act. As Massachusetts celebrates the 10th anniversary of the law, much has changed.
Polluted lots are being cleaned. Blighted areas are being revitalized. Parks and housing developments are sprouting up on land once thought unrecoverable.
And in New Bedford, the site of the former cardboard box factory now boasts sprawling greenhouses courtesy of Wainer, who expanded his family's specialty produce company, Sid Wainer and Son, onto the land. The move came after the city received about $80,000 in brownfields funds to remove several 20,000 gallon storage tanks buried on the lot.
"It was a chance to do something creative for the city," Wainer said. "It's worked for us. It's worked for New Bedford. And it's also worked for future generations."
It wasn't always so easy.
Back in the early 1990s, the state was faced with a backlog of up to 9,000 brownfields lost in a morass of regulatory red tape. Developers eager to salvage the sites had few assurances about what chemicals lurked in the soil, and even fewer legal protections.
The roadblocks pushed many developers onto "greenfields" -- undeveloped parcels with none of the headaches of the urban lots. Old farmlands were gobbled up, adding to suburban sprawl.