Dan remembers going to a lecture on Man and His Environment that started at 7:00 in the morning while he was a honors geography student at FBC. He said he hated the hours but would not miss that class for anything because the visiting professor from the US that taught the class made the material and the issues so real. It was that class that piqued his interest in the environment and little did he know that he would someday work and write a book in that field.

Like others before him, Dr. Daniel Baifeth Koroma (Dan Koroma), has again made our nation proud by writing an excellent book on the environment titled "Impact of Environmentally Contaminated Brownfields Sites". What are brownfields you might ask? Brownfields are generally defined as vacant, idle, abandoned, underused agricultural land, industrial, commercial facilities, old mines and old ports, where environmental, economic and social obstacles hinder use and development. The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines brownfields as "real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant".

Dr. Daniel Baifeth Koroma (Dan Koroma),

The book is based on cutting edge research that he previously conducted for his doctoral dissertation where he examined the nexus between environmental science and economics. He developed sophisticated, yet easy-to-use models to analyze the impact of contaminated sites on one of society’s dominant assets – single family house property values. Further, Dr. Koroma proposes practical strategies to redevelop and reuse these sites. Redeveloping such sites, he argues, will have significant positive economic benefits by creating new employment opportunities, reducing health risks, providing services, increasing the municipal tax base and improving quality of life and general livability of affected areas. The redevelopment strategies can be applied to mine-scarred lands such as we have in the diamond fields of Kono and Tongo, the old iron ore mines in Marampa, Sierra Rutile and bauxite mines, port fields such as old Government wharf and even the dilapidated Wellington industrial estate complex.

The book would be of tremendous use to economic development practitioners, the environmental community, planners, and policy makers dealing with land use issues, realtors, tax assessors, land owners, real estate developers, mortgage lenders and environmental justice advocates. The book is published by LAP Lambert Academic Publishers and is available world- wide (you can also get it from Amazon.com by typing Koroma, under book/author).

Upon graduation from FBC, Dan had a three-year stint with the FAO/UNDP Land Resources Survey Project and the Land and Water Development Division of the then Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry as a land resources and soil conservation officer, before proceeding abroad for further studies. Dr. Koroma is a product of the Albert Academy and he holds a Bachelors Degree with honors in Geography from FBC-USL, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Ag. Economics from the University of Reading in the UK, a Master of Science in Economics, Community and Regional Planning from the University of Nebraska, a diploma in Environmental Management from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences form Washington State University. He has over 20 years of experience with Washington State’s principal environmental protection agency, the Department of Ecology as an environmental planner, grants administrator, and environmental manager for policy and technical assistance. He is currently the coordinator of the brownfields program between the Department of Ecology’s Toxics Cleanup Program, the State’s Department of Commerce and the US Environmental Protection Agency in Seattle WA. He can be reached via e-mail at: dkor461@ecy.wa.gov and danielk@CTED.wa.gov