Arthur Bogen grew up in Derby, part of a once thriving industrial valley that rusted out in the 1950s and ‘60s. Left behind were abandoned plants that became huge eyesores and no longer provided taxes to the municipalities or jobs for the residents.

Abandoned real property that is polluted or contaminated with a hazardous substance is called a brownfield, and it needs to be cleaned up so that it can be repurposed or developed.

Bogen, an Essex resident and expert on brownfield cleanups, reports on them in the winter issue of Estuary magazine, the Old Lyme-based quarterly devoted to the Connecticut River, its past, present and future.

One of Bogen’s mentors, Frank Alexander from Emory University, established a Brownfields Land Bank, a neutral entity which could deal with the municipalities and the developers. It held the abandoned properties to resolve the clean-up issues and “normalize” the land which could then be offered for re-use or development which would contribute to the municipality’s tax base, jobs, and quality of life.

Bogen liked the idea of “land banking,” aggregating parcels of land for future sale or development. It involves establishing a quasi-governmental county or municipal authority to manage and repurpose an inventory of land. Landbanks are often empowered to take under-used, abandoned or foreclosed parcels of land and repurpose them in ways that governments often are not allowed to do.

“In the fifties and sixties there was tremendous anger at the corporations who abandoned contaminated sites and did nothing. Municipalities were stuck with the land and the liabilities,” Bogen said.

“Landbanks would find people to ‘homestead.’ They’d ask a church if it would like to have the land next door for a garden. The church liked it, and the land bank succeeded in getting locals interested in caring for the land in their cities. Getting residents involved and aware of the possibilities was important.”

Earlier in his career, Bogen worked with The Regional Valley of Governments, a group of four communities and two affiliates, that was looking at regionalizing community services. This also allowed them to seek funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, which was charged with ameliorating the land and finding redevelopment for it.

“The EPA led the way with an array of programs to address these needs,” said Bogen. “I got help from the EPA on how to draft arguments for funding, and I learned a lot about the connections among our communities, economics, science, and the environment.

“Funding is critical. You need jobs and taxes and ‘feel goods’ — the quality of living improvements, not seeing eyesores, pollution, abandonment. There are cycles of desperation, blighted views, and people’s aspirations. We asked ourselves how we could improve the situation.”

Bogen learned his pragmatic approach to problem-solving at the Wessex Institute of Technology in England. It was a different way from the American all-or-nothing attack. An example he cited was a German refinery that was allowed to be cleaned up in sections (not all at once). A park was created in one spot and then another in a different area of the blighted land, and those parks bought public affection and buy-in for cleaning up the whole tract. Arthur Bogen is President Emeritus of the Connecticut Brownfield Land Bank, Inc., a nonprofit whose primary purpose is the education of government officials, community leaders, economic development agencies and non-profit organizations on the best practices of redeveloping brownfield sites to benefit a community.

He majored in political science and fine arts, but his uncle, who taught at MIT, discussed with him political strategies for European unification and the developing economies.

That’s where Bogen learned how to graph a problem: write down the desired result and think backwards to figure out the solution. He had learned about funding from the EPA, and the Wessex experience taught him the importance of getting everyone involved — talking and thinking — before they would commit to anything, and the land bank knowledge taught him the importance of having an agency that is neutral, without an equity position.

In 1997 Bogen founded Down to Earth, LLC, an environmental strategy consulting company which he sold to Timothy Carr in 2017. Down to Earth succeeded in arranging about $20,000,000 of grant funding, strategic consultation on over $22,000,000 of environmental cleanup projects, and facilitation for more than 150 brownfields assessment and county relations and educational outreach projects.

Tina Birkic is the Director of Public Affairs for Estuary magazine.