Brownfields 2011 conference attendees do some practical cleanup work

Maryann Helferty of West Mount Airy is a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency. But Sunday she was off the clock, working as a volunteer gardener at Awbury Arboretum in East Germantown.

"When I walk among trees, there's a connection," said Helferty, 50, shovel in hand. "I feel a part of something bigger than myself."

And she was.

The arboretum spruce-up came on the opening day of a Convention Center brownfields conference that is said to be the largest conclave in the nation focused on the cleaning and redevelopment of abandoned, underused, and potentially contaminated properties.

Sponsored by the EPA and the International City/County Management Association, Brownfields 2011 is expected to attract more than 6,000 registrants, including municipal leaders and planners from around the country.

The 14th annual conference's speakers include EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson and Mayor Nutter. But attendees are also offered opportunities to see words put to action.

One was a walking tour Sunday of the city's Northern Liberties section, where brownfields funding helped turn an underused industrial neighborhood into a hipster haven.

Since the federal brownfields program was started in the mid-1990s, $1.5 billion has gone to states, communities, and tribes, according to the EPA. Nationally, 578 sites have been cleaned up and more than 69,000 acres made available for reuse.

Awbury Arboretum is a far cry from a brownfield. But it was a fine place for the environmentally enlightened to gather on a sunny weekend day, and the extra hands were welcome.

"All I can say is thank you for giving up your Sunday to clean up the arboretum," director Karen Anderson told about 60 volunteers.

They were divided into eight groups for chores that included pruning, digging up plants to be moved elsewhere, seeding, and picking up trash.

They had come for different reasons. Some were not even connected to the conference.

Donning gardening gloves, Temple University graduate student Meghan O'Grady, 29, was fulfilling a volunteering requirement for an online environmental biology course. Fiance Blake Macomber, 27, an accountant, came in support.

"I thought this sounded interesting, and it was a nice way to get out," O'Grady said.

Nearby, the Leonard sisters, Emily, 17, and Kylie, 15, of Merchantville, were fishing beer cans and cigarette butts out of a pond. They also cleared tippler-deposited refuse that had been stowed in a cavity of an otherwise graceful tree.

"It was pretty gross," Kylie said.

They heard about the cleanup from their father, who works for the EPA.

Connie Franklin, 43, of Germantown, heard about it through her job at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She brought her sons, Tyre, 11, and Dante, 12.

"I'm finding out what grows around the lake and the ponds and the streams," Tyre said.

Meanwhile, a crew with an impressive collection of resumes was working on what will be an ongoing project to spiff up the arboretum's entrance on Chew Avenue.

Claudia Levy, 52, of West Mount Airy, a landscape architect, was overseeing that effort as a volunteer. Her husband, Peter DiCarlo, 50, an architect attending the brownfields conference, was doing well until his shovel broke.

"That's his specialty," Levy quipped.

Louise Thompson, 66, of Chestnut Hill, an environmental lawyer retired from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection after 30 years, was providing muscle as well.

So was Najjia Mahmoud, 43, a surgeon who on Sunday was snipping at rose plants with a huge set of clippers. The arboretum is her neighbor, her husband is on the board, and while she frequently enjoys the community green space, she had never before done volunteer work there.

"I thought it's about time I did," she said.