The crowd roars after a home run at a ballpark that replaced an abandoned ash dump. Carpenters swing their hammers at a wood recycling plant that replaced a graveyard for industrial storage tanks. Tomatoes ripen on the vine at a hydroponic farm that replaced a junked steel plant.

Do these changes sound too good to be true? They're not. Hundreds of communities across the nation are transforming abandoned, sometimes contaminated, industrial sites and waste areas into parks, businesses, and farms. Credit for these achievements goes to the successful collaboration and partnership between state and local governments and a number of Federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Together, they're changing local "brownfields" (idle, abandoned, or underused property with uncertain levels of contamination) into redeveloped fields of dreams.

New Look for Old Places

Whether arriving by boat or train, or just driving through in the I-95 overpass, visitors to Bridgeport, Connecticut now have a positive first impression of the city. And, Bridgeport's residents are enjoying new economic stability, new jobs, and the much-needed restoration of the city's derelict industrial areas. Why? Because a number of unused industrial sites within Bridgeport have been transformed thanks to a grant from EPA's Brownfields Redevelopment Pilot Initiative that began in 1994.