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It is estimated that there are more than 450,000 brownfields across the U.S., and that up to half of those sites are thought to be impacted by underground storage tanks or some type of petroleum contamination, mostly from abandoned gas station sites.  These sites can have a negative impact on the environmental and economic health of the communities where they are located.  However, revitalization of petroleum brownfields can have an immensely positive impact on communities.  The revitalization process improves and protects the local environment, by ensuring remediation of sites to clean up standards, and takes development pressures off of undeveloped open land by utilizing existing infrastructure for prospective site use.  Community development is further strengthened as clean up and reuse of old gas station sites increases local tax bases and facilitates job growth. 

In 2002, the Brownfields program was expanded to include relatively low-risk petroleum sites as eligible sites for Brownfields assessment and cleanup grant funding.  By law, EPA must now make available 25 percent of the total Brownfields grant funds each year for the assessment and/or cleanup of relatively low-risk petroleum-contaminated sites.  These brownfield funds can also be combined with state-based UST cleanup funds to further promote the revitalization of blighted sites that are commonly located on desirable properties such as high traffic streets and corner lots.

For a site to be eligible for Brownfields Grants, the state,or, if necessary, EPA, must make the determination that a petroleum contaminated site:

Since 2003, EPA has awarded a total of over $89.8 million for the assessment and cleanup of petroleum brownfield sites. 

With so many UST sites requiring remediation, EPA is promoting faster, more effective, and less costly alternatives to established cleanup methods.  An innovative tool, the “Ready for Reuse” determination developed by EPA Region 6, encourages timely cleanups that will support redevelopment opportunities protective of human health and the environment. The Ready for Reuse Program is a certification process that recognizes when contamination has been evaluated and, if necessary, cleaned up to the extent that a property is safe for its current use or planned future use. The primary purpose of the Ready for Reuse determination is to document, in a straightforward manner, specific information about the current environmental conditions on a property, the work performed at the site to address risks, and to identify that the entire facility – or portions of the facility – are ready for reuse.