EPA Awards Funds to Cleanup and Revitalize Connecticut and Massachusetts Neighborhoods

EPA has provided $600,000 for Somerville to cleanup the former Kiley Barrel Property site and 1.9 million in Brownfields grants to help Connecticut communities to assess, cleanup, and redevelop abandoned or contaminated properties. The funding is part of more than $76 million in EPA brownfields investments across the country announced this week by EPA. This funding is designed to protect health and the environment, create jobs, and promote economic re-development in American communities.

EPA Brownfields grant money assists work to reclaim sites including old textile mills, sites containing hazardous substances and petroleum products and other abandoned industrial and commercial properties.  EPA’s Brownfields program is designed to encourage redevelopment of America’s estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites.

In Somerville, the $600,000 will fund three separate cleanup projects at the Former Kiley Barrel Property site.

In Connecticut, EPA is providing Brownfields grants to the following municipalities and groups:
• New Opportunities Economic Development Corp., Waterbury, $600,000 (3 cleanup grants, Cherry Street parcels);
• Police Activity League of Waterbury, Inc., Waterbury, $400,000 (2 cleanup grants, Division Street parcels);
• City of Stratford, $400,000 (community-wide assessment grant); and
• Valley Council of Governments, $500,000 (community-wide revolving loan fund supplemental funding).

As of June 2011, EPA’s brownfields assistance has leveraged more than $16.3 billion in cleanup and redevelopment funding, and helped create more than 70,000 jobs in cleanup, construction and redevelopment. These investments and jobs target local, under-served and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Since the beginning of the Brownfields Program, in New England alone EPA has awarded 268 assessment grants totaling $67.1 million, 61 revolving loan fund grants and supplemental funding totaling $65 million and 174 cleanup grants totaling $39.3 million. 

Some of the money announced in this announcement falls under EPA’s brownfields revolving loan funding.  Since 1995, EPA RLF recipients have provided 53 loans and 63 grants in New England totaling more than $29 million for brownfields cleanup. The loan funds have paved the way for more than $189 million in public and private cleanup and redevelopment investment.

In 2002, the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act was passed. The Brownfields law expanded the definition of what is considered a brownfield, so communities may now focus on mine-scarred lands, sites contaminated by petroleum, or sites contaminated as a result of manufacturing and distribution of illegal drugs (e.g. meth labs).