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.
