A dilapidated factory, shuttered and abandoned by a long-bankrupt company, disfigures the surrounding landscape like a towering black mark.
But the people at Brightfields, Inc., see it as a golden opportunity.
The 5-year-old Wilmington firm helps companies clean up and reclaim abandoned industrial sites so they can be developed.
Many companies are wary to redevelop industrial sites, fearing they may uncover toxic chemicals and be slapped with a multi-million dollar cleanup fee, said Brightfields co-founder Marian Young.
She and her husband, Mark Lannan, founded Brightfields to minimize that risk by scouring properties for dozens of chemicals, determining what lies beneath the soil and how harmful it is to humans.
“It’s a lot like environmental crime scene investigation,” she said.
Brightfields’ environmental sleuthing involves science and history -- combining hi-tech software and scanning equipment with century-old records and photographs, said Lannan.
Many of the sites the company works on have been abandoned for decades, he said, and Brightfields must use historical records to determine what chemicals could have been spilled and where they would have traveled.
Then the company uses science to study soil samples and create computerized maps tracking the spread of pollution, Lannan said.
Most polluted properties have minor contamination, he said, with junked cars and underground petroleum tanks much more common than glowing barrels of radioactive waste.
“Most of the Love Canals in the United States have been uncovered,” he said.
But the fear created by environmental contamination is real, Young said, and it is often counterproductive to redevelopment. Some people think there is a conspiracy theory surrounding polluted sites and mistrust the companies trying to redevelop them, Lannan said.
Perhaps the most difficult part of Brightfields’ job is helping businesses and community members understand the risks of pollution without being afraid of them, said Young.
They emphasize that polluted sites can be cleaned up and made into productive properties.
Brightfields uses many different methods, including pumping and treating groundwater and digging out or capping contaminated soil, she said.
“When we started, the only solution we had was pump and treat, which is a very brute force method,” Lannan said.
New methods are being invented all the time, Young said, like bioremediation, which involves increasing the oxygen in groundwater so bacteria eat harmful chemicals.
Cleanup typically takes between four months and a year, Lannan said, but it could take decades to decontaminate a large property. The reclamation of Wilmington’s Riverfront has taken 11 years and there is still work for Brightfields to do, he said.
They built their own office in 2005 on a reclaimed city landfill overlooking the Brandywine Creek; Young remembered towing away junked cars and hauling in truckloads of infill soil before the office could be built.
The company has worked on thousands of sites, including the Claymont Renaissance and Habitat for Humanity properties in North Wilmington.
Business has been brisk, Young said, and the company has grown from 14 employees to 38 employees over the past five years, recently expanding its office by 4,500 square feet.
Young and Lannan were recently named the Delaware Small Business Persons of the Year for their company’s growth.
The company’s steady business is the result of better state and federal incentives to redevelop land and a growing awareness of our need to preserve green space, Young said. Redeveloping industrial land saves fields and forests from bulldozers, she added.
Preserving greenspace is rewarding, Lannan said, even though chemical decontamination is something developers rarely discuss with smiles on their faces.
“We’re taking property that has been discarded and reusing it,” he said. “It’s the ultimate recycling.”
