Nancy Rich, Environmental and Workplace Safety partner, was quoted in a Bloomberg BNA article on the EPA's recent report that claims that cleaning up and removing sites from the National Priorities List (NPL) of hazardous waste sites prioritized for remediation increased local property values by 19 percent to 25 percent. "The stigma on an NPL-listed site tends to evaporate once the site has been cleaned up," explained Nancy. "If you're coming into the neighborhood as a buyer...you have no concern because the problem's been addressed." With regards to the EPA's January 5th announcement that it would give 19 communities $3.8 million to help plan the cleanup and re-use of brownfields sites, Nancy remarked that those communities need agency grants because the costs of studying and remediating brownfields sites in depressed economies are prohibitively high. "Those sites are the more challenging ones because of the fact that you're not going to have a developer who says, 'Gosh, this is a hot area,'" she said. Nancy expects the new administration and new EPA head to take a hard look at the agency's Brownfields Program grants. "The administration, I believe, will be interested in promoting development and business, so it will be an interesting confluence of values that they'll have to evaluate," she said. ("EPA Touts Superfund’s Impact on Property Values," January 6, 2017)