The Waterloo Project

The City of Waterloo designed TheNewWaterloo.com website to communicate past significant redevelopment projects or those currently occurring in the city. The city has been very progressive in planning and implementing cultural, recreational, and brownfields redevelopment initiatives over the past decade as a means to make Waterloo “the place to live, work and play.”

Once considered the “Factory City of Iowa,” the economic crisis of the 1980s dramatically altered Waterloo. The subsequent closure and downsizing of several major manufacturing plants hurt the local economy as the city struggled to maintain a shrinking tax base. The city lost many residents after their jobs moved elsewhere. This trend continued into the mid-1990s, which had a direct negative impact on the downtown. Waterloo’s city center experienced extreme disinvestment during this time period as businesses vacated buildings and residents emptied downtown streets. As a consequence, numerous abandoned commercial and industrial properties, some with perceived contamination (a.k.a., brownfields) scattered the downtown and adjoining commercial and industrial areas. City officials soon recognized the dire need for a plan to revive the area. The process began with the creation of the “Waterloo Millennium Plan” in 1999 that set forth the goals, actions and specific implementers required to make the community’s vision a reality. The Cedar Valley Riverfront Renaissance project in 2002 furthered the community involvement by establishing several entertainment venues to enhance the quality of life for by focusing on the Cedar River. Since this time, Waterloo has started to transition itself into the “New Economy” by diversifying local industries and proactively seeking cutting-edge agricultural business models. Simultaneously, the city has also leveraged millions of dollars to expand the cultural opportunities of its residents. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) played an integral role throughout the entire transition process, including partially funding TheNewWaterloo.com website.

The federal government created the EPA to protect the safety and welfare of both humans and the environment. The EPA’s Brownfields Program gives financial assistance to local municipalities for addressing sites with perceived environmental issues. Waterloo’s renewal process of the former Rath area and adjoining downtown began in 2000 with a $200,000 EPA Brownfields Assessment Pilot Grant targeted the Rath neighborhood. This grant allowed the city to assess the level of contamination in its brownfields sites by conducting Phase I and Phase II environmental site assessments. Since 2000, the City of Waterloo has received approximately $1.65 million in funding from the EPA including the following: supplemental assistance grant, hazardous materials assessment grant, petroleum assessment grant, cleanup grant, and a brownfields cleanup revolving loan fund.

Today, the goal of Waterloo is to continually enhance the livability of its downtown and attract re-investment projects. Redevelopment of a city’s urban core is vital to its long-term success as it prevents urban sprawl and keeps additional infrastructure costs down. The City of Waterloo has leveraged nearly $43 million in federal and state grants for the 17 projects highlighted on TheNewWaterloo.com website. This funding helps to attain the city’s objectives aimed at the revitalization of its central business district and the economy. The EPA is a vital partner in realizing these ambitions.

We hope you find the information in this website insightful, informative, and intriguing. We welcome your comments (Contact Page) and look forward to seeing you in the “The New Waterloo.”

Barriers to Brownfield Redevelopment

The foremost barrier to brownfields redevelopment is the fear of the unknown, that is, whether a given site is contaminated and, if so, to what degree. Under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act ("CERCLA" or commonly known as "Superfund"), liability for cleanup of a contaminated site rests not only with past owners and operators of a site who may have caused the contamination, but with current owners as well, regardless of whether the current owner took any actions that led to the site being contaminated. For this reason, businesses are hesitant to purchase, let alone redevelop, brownfield sites because of the fear of contamination and the associated fear of liability.

Goals and Objectives of Brownfield Redevelopment

The focus of the EPA's Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative is to empower states, communities, and other stakeholders in economic redevelopment to work together in a timely manner to prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse brownfields.

The Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields Initiative

By some estimates, there may be as many as 425,000 brownfield sites in the United States. The EPA created its Brownfields Initiative in 1993 in order to facilitate cleanup and redevelopment of these properties. For more information on EPA initiatives, visit their web site at http://www.epa.gov/swerosps/bf/mission.htm.