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As is true of redevelopment areas, brownfields also may be found in many different types of communities, not just in older urban centers. Suburban towns and rural villages have their share of brownfield sites.
While typically applied to commercial and industrial properties, the term "brownfield" defines a wide range of property types. For most people, the word conjures images of heavy industry, such as former chemical plants and oil refineries. But a gasoline station with a leaking underground storage tank is considered a brownfield, as is a defunct municipal landfill. In fact, an environmentally contaminated residential property could potentially be considered a brownfield, as can an old abandoned shopping center, a former train station, and other types of properties.
Brownfields may be contaminated by a variety of hazardous substances that were stored or disposed of on the site. These substances may range from asbestos in building insulation or buried in the ground, to machine oil that leaked onto the factory floor, to buried rubble contaminated with toxic materials, to chemicals stored in drums or poured into leaching pits or lagoons, or to leaking storage tanks. The extent of the contamination may be localized or spread over a wide portion of the site. The contamination may be confined to the site or may have leached into the groundwater or polluted nearby rivers and streams. A brownfield may be contaminated with one hazardous material or many. The cleanup and redevelopment of a brownfield will depend significantly on the extent and nature of its contamination.