by Prateek Tare, Co-Founder & Executive Vice President, Distributed Energy Infrastructure 

The business case for brownfield solar redevelopment is well-established: idle contaminated land, ITC benefits, and, in several Northeast states, a state policy environment that actively incentivises putting solar on sites nobody else wants. 

What gets discussed less is what it actually takes to navigate the regulatory gauntlet between a viable site and a permitted, constructed project. Having recently completed a 4.9 MW AC solar and battery storage installation on a former W.R. Grace Superfund site in Acton, Massachusetts, I want to offer a frank account of what that process looked like, and what we learned from it.

Six Regulators, One Project

A standard distributed solar project already requires a long, multilevel permitting process. On brownfield sites, that complexity is squared. For a Superfund site like Acton, the process involved half a dozen distinct regulatory stakeholders:

●      The E.P.A.

●      The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection 

●      The Acton Planning Board & Building Department

●      The Board of Health

●      The Conservation Commission

●      W.R. Grace, the landowner, which operates an adjacent active facility

None of these stakeholders, or their demands, are unreasonable. Each has a legitimate interest in ensuring that solar construction on a capped contamination site doesn't disturb what was carefully contained. 

But half a dozen approval processes from different federal, state, local, and private agencies did mean that their requirements didn’t always align, their review cycles didn't coordinate, and my EPC team was the one entity responsible for synthesizing all of them into a single coherent plan.

The result of that synthesis was a project-specific site health, safety, and quality management plan that addressed all agencies' requirements in a single document. Getting that document approved — before any construction activity could begin — took roughly twice as long as pre-construction permitting on a comparable greenfield project. We recommend that any developer or financier evaluating a brownfield (especially a Superfund) site factor that extended timeline into their schedule from day one.

Regulatory Inertia: When Managing Asbestos Is Faster than Documenting It

One of the more frustrating realities of multi-agency brownfield permitting is that the pace of review is largely outside anyone's control. Each agency manages many obligations with limited bandwidth, and may end up reviewing a particular submission once a week. A question comes back; you answer it; you wait another week. Multiply that across six agencies, and even a well-prepared response to an unexpected finding can consume months.

We encountered this during Acton’s construction, when the team found asbestos approximately two inches below the surface in one area of the site. The affected zone was small, roughly a 10-by-30-foot rectangle. Developing and securing approval for the remediation plan took 8 months, from discovery in November 2024 to approval in May 2025.

The actual remediation work, once approved, took 2.5 days. 

That ratio isn’t an anomaly on Superfund sites; it’s just the nature of building on formerly hazardous land. Understanding this from the beginning, rather than treating it as a problem to be solved, enables a project team to plan around longer review times effectively.

Contingency Planning as Regulatory Strategy

The way to manage regulatory inertia is not to try to speed it up; it’s to anticipate it. On Acton, we’d already developed contingency protocols before breaking ground for a range of scenarios, including: 

●      Encountering contaminated soil

●      Finding asbestos

●      Monitored air quality exceeding safety thresholds

These plans were pre-submitted and pre-approved. So when the asbestos was found, we weren’t starting a regulatory process from scratch; we were activating a plan that already existed in the agencies' files.

Our preplanned approach also allowed construction in other areas of the site to continue safely in parallel, while the asbestos remediation plan worked through the approval process. So we didn’t have to wait eight months to make progress on the site; the delay was contained to a single zone rather than stopping the project entirely. 

The same logic applies to the day-to-day construction activity on a capped site. Environmental scientists were on site continuously during any soil disturbance work, with authority to stop activity immediately if monitoring thresholds were triggered. Having that protocol embedded in the approved health and safety plan — rather than improvised in the field — is what kept the project in good standing with every agency throughout construction.

When the EPC Gets Involved: the Earlier, the Better

On Acton, my EPC team came in when the developer, Syncarpha Capital, had completed about 80% of the site's permitting. That was the right moment to add EPC-specific construction expertise to the remaining approvals, as we were able to shape several conditions to make construction more efficient. 

On a standard project, design flexibility late in development is a minor inconvenience. On a Superfund site, it can be a significant cost driver. Road routing, equipment placement, foundation system selection, and electrical infrastructure pathways all have environmental implications that agencies will scrutinize, and changes to approved plans require the same multi-agency review cycle as the original submission. 

Getting EPC input earlier in the development process, before permitting locks in specific construction approaches, produces better projects and fewer costly mid-course corrections.

Engineering Decisions Are Regulatory Decisions

One thing that becomes clear quickly on contaminated sites is that engineering and regulatory strategy are inseparable. Every design choice has a regulatory implication, and the agencies are paying attention to the details. 

On Acton, our decision to use helical screw foundations (rather than traditional driven piles) allowed us to explain to regulators how each foundation penetration would minimize dust exposure, limit disturbance to the immediate zone, and leave no open bore. The decision to route all electrical infrastructure above grade was also a regulatory argument as much as an engineering one: no trenching, no soil exposure, no unknown material encountered.

Presenting these choices clearly and proactively, rather than waiting for agencies to ask questions, significantly accelerated review. Regulators are more confident in approving plans that show the developer has already thought through their concerns, than plans that require back-and-forth to address those issues.

A Replicable Model and Growing Opportunity

The Acton project interconnected with Eversource in summer 2025, in budget and on schedule. The town of Acton now collects property tax revenue from a parcel that was previously a net liability. W.R. Grace receives lease income. The project is being featured in an EPA newsletter as a replicable model for Superfund solar development — which, practically speaking, means this regulatory approach is one EPA considers worth repeating.

There’s no shortage of similar sites across the Northeast. While the regulatory complexity is real, it’s also navigable. The projects that succeed aren’t the ones that find ways around the process — they’re the ones that treat regulatory engagement as a core competency, plan for what they cannot predict, and get the right expertise involved before decisions get locked in.

The Author:

Prateek Tare is Co-Founder of Distributed Energy Infrastructure LLC (DEI), an EPC firm specializing in utility-scale solar, battery storage, agrivoltaics, and brownfield redevelopment. DEI's founders have collectively completed 50+ brownfield solar projects across the U.S.