Brownfields and Urban Agriculture – Assessing The Challenges (Part 1)

Interview with Mr. Clark Henry, an urban planner who serves in the City of Portland Brownfield Program

The Well Run Dry Blog
January 16, 2010

Excerpt:

This post is a continuation of a theme I first began exploring in two previous posts, “The Chicken That Laid Leaden Eggs, and Other Horror Stories,” and “Brownfield Remediation For Urban Homesteaders.” What I discussed in those earlier posts was the problem of soil pollution in urban environments, and the impact of that pollution on efforts to practice safe and sustainable urban farming and urban food gardening.

As noted in those earlier posts, there are many individuals, volunteer groups, nonprofit organizations, research bodies and governments who are tackling the problem of remediation of urban environments in order to foster safe urban food production. Their efforts are vital in helping localities build local food systems so that they can stop relying on industrial factory farming and long, fossil fuel-dependent supply lines stretching from centralized farms to local supermarkets. This last week I had the privilege and opportunity to speak with a member of our own city government, who is involved in the issue of brownfield reclamation. Mr. Clark Henry is an urban planner who serves in the City of Portland Brownfield Program, and he agreed to be interviewed for this blog.

See the rest of this interesting blog post here.

Part Two of the post here.

Portland Brownfield Program here.