If you aren't a good boy, you'll find a lump of coal in your stocking Christmas morning. This is an unhappy prospect for most American children. However, we can imagine situations in which a large lump of coal would be a blessing, for example in a city under siege. Coal would be a wonderful gift for people in Sarajevo lacking fuel for cooking and heating. The value of a gift depends upon the circumstances of the recipient.

In the spirit of giving coal to those whose lives it would improve, I propose reform of liabilities and standards on urban Superfund sites called brownfields. Yes, we can help poor people by relaxing some environmental regulations, those with perverse consequences. Superfund is a liability time bomb that strikes fear into the hearts of entrepreneurial developers. It triggers a slew of environmental and social woes.

Like the best solutions to many environmental problems, this gift seems counter-intuitive. Relaxing the environmental protection standards on brownfields would help clean up our inner cities and improve opportunities. Brownfields are lands abandoned because of alleged contamination. They do more than just blemish urban landscapes. They create multiple problems for inner cities, suburbs, and rural areas.

Many brownfields persist due to Superfund's poorly considered regulations and exorbitant litigation costs. Further, they suffer from laws which make illegal today actions which were legal, proper and productive when undertaken. These retroactive joint and several liability arrangements are windfalls for lawyers and bureaucrats but they too often harm our most disadvantaged citizens.

People once believed that such strict regulation and liability were advantageous. They didn't understand how market incentives encourage cleanup of hazardous sites. Thanks to scholars such as Don Coursey at the University of Chicago, we now have better understanding of how bureaucracies and markets operate to deal with these problems.

The derelict lands have been condemned by the EPA due to a mix of real and imagined health risks and bureaucratic errors of classification. As a result, these lands are taboo for would-be developers. Urban areas are stuck with empty brownfields. These lands could be used for parks, factories, and housing. Seattle's Gasworks Park is a stellar example of a blighted site becoming an amenity.

Superfund shunts industrial development from the urban brownfields to the "greenfields" of the suburbs and rural periphery. Farmland and forests are invaded by industry which could move into brownfield sites. Were it not for the extreme and oft silly operation of Superfund, many of these new developments would be in urban areas.

The invasion of greenfields causes a host of other problems. Duplicating the necessary infrastructure is expensive. Economic growth in the suburbs increases urban sprawl and exacerbates traffic problems. Unemployment in inner cities remains high.

Worst of all, the brownfield sites remain contaminated. No one has incentives to clean up the mess. And nobody converts it into valuable real estate. It's a lose-lose situation.

But there is hope for reform. Michigan began an effort to turn brownfields and other Superfund sites into attractive real estate for developers. With covenants-not-to-sue and other legal protections, firms may develop sites without fearing liability for earlier pollution by others.

States have incentives to reform Superfund. Practical politicians and regulators, and even the EPA itself, realize that we don't need industrial plants with dirt clean enough for kids to eat. Justice Steve Breyer's Harvard University Press book, Breaking the Vicious Circle, adds force to this argument.

Businesses see potentially profitable ventures in once-idle brownfields. Local residents benefit as the neighborhood rebounds. With EPA's co-operation, over 450 properties have begun redevelopment under Michigan's initiative.

Business leaders and local authorities band together to remove disincentives to develop brownfields. Few environmental groups object for they are aware of Cleveland's 167 brownfields, Chicago's 2,000, and 450,000 more across America. They see how they hurt our inner cities. Rural environmentalists support reform for they see urban sprawl encroaching on the greenfield buffer zones surrounding metropolitan pollution.

Thus far, 27 states have introduced legislation empowering developers to take advantage of brownfields. By granting assurances that developers wouldn't be held liable for existing contamination, developers are converting the brownfields into productive sites. Entrepreneurship joins environmentalism.

The possibilities for cleaning up brownfields are immense. Relaxing some standards and removing retroactive liability rules will free entrepreneurs to clean and develop contaminated sites in inner cities. While they improve blighted inner-city landscapes, the peripheral greenfields will also benefit.

All of this can be attained with a simple gift: change the regulations and liabilities for brownfields. It would cost little. Inner-city and countryside environments could benefit greatly. And reform would be a gift that keeps on giving.