Points awarded not commensurate with Credit Intent

Gabriel, I can’t speak for USGBC, but I don’t believe, in most instances, additional credits would offer much in the way of an incentive for Owners or Developers to consider Brownfield sites. Brownfield sites are, generally, selected for a variety of reasons (e.g. location, costs, community incentives, etc.). I’ve never worked a site where a Phase I was not performed, and if contamination was discovered, then a risk/reward analysis would be conducted. Given the potential downsides, Owners or Developers don’t consider Brownfield sites just to pick up credit points. Having investigated and developed several Brownfield sites over the years, the risks can and often do outweigh the rewards by a huge margin, particularly if the EPA is involved. IMO, the EPA is the most arrogant and abusive government agency in existence. There are Brownfield projects where 4 points could not come close to being appropriate considering the investment in both time and money. When you can spend a year and $50k-$75k investigating a Brownfield and working through the bureaucracy of the EPA to obtain clearance just to proceed, you sometimes just take your bruises and give up the battle. Obviously it’s not always the case, but Brownfield sites can be enormously expensive to remediate, not to mention legal entanglements and liability that can be associated with these abandoned sites. When LEED 2009 was implemented, USGBC introduced Credit Weightings where credits are awarded with more points for strategies that have greater positive impacts on ‘energy efficiency and CO2 reductions’. As such, Brownfields are still stuck on 1 credit point. I agree with you, and SSc3 has been one of my pet peeves since I began studying for the LEED v2 AP exam back in 2007. It seems disingenuous for USGBC to try and sell the importance of this credit and then award it a minimum credit value.