(May 7, 2020 6:24 AM) The Environmental Protection Agency announced the selection of Jackson County for a Brownfields grant of $300,000, along with grants for 3 other Michigan communities. Jackson County will receive a Brownfields Assessment Grant to help Ward 5 of the City of Jackson, which includes two Qualified Opportunity Zones.
“Grants awarded by EPA’s Brownfield Program provide communities and tribes across the country with an opportunity to transform contaminated sites into community assets,” said EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler. “Under President Trump’s leadership, EPA has delivered approximately $287 million in Brownfield grants directly to communities and nonprofits for cleanup and redevelopment, job creation, and economic development through the award of over 948 grants.”
“These communities are ready to move forward with redevelopment; they just lack the funding to take that next step ,” said EPA Regional Administrator Kurt Thiede. “EPA’s Brownfields grants help jump-start the process by providing support for assessments and cleanups.
Nationwide, the agency is announcing the selection of 155 grants for communities and tribes totaling over $65.6 million in EPA brownfields funding through the agency’s Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund, and Cleanup Grant Programs. These funds will aid under-served and economically disadvantaged communities, including neighborhoods located in Opportunity Zones, in assessing and cleaning up abandoned industrial and commercial properties. An Opportunity Zone is an economically-distressed community where new investment, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment. Of the communities selected this year, 118 can potentially assess or clean up brownfield sites in census tracts designated in these zones.
The target area included in Jackson’s grant application includes the downtown business district, from the Grand River running through the City’s center, older industrial lands along the river, and a neighborhood that once was the working-class housing for the former industrial properties. The community is working to ensure that the downtown area is a vibrant, attractive center of business and culture. There is new investment in the core downtown business district, but investment in the remainder of Jackson County will also be a focus of the $300,000 Assessment Grant. The overall focus of these grant funds will be to support those complex projects within Jackson County, providing better information to remove uncertainty about site conditions, developing re-use plans that provide direction, detail and budgets for redeveloping and using these sites safely, and aligning resources that carry redevelopment beyond the assessment and planning stage.
Jackson County, through the Jackson County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority (JCBRA) has previously implemented six EPA brownfield grants including assessment grants in FY 1999, FY 2004, FY 2008, and FY 2015, as well as Revolving Loan Fund grants in FY 2001 (Pilot) and FY 2009. The FY 2015 Assessment Grant allowed the community to investigate 19 different properties, spurred $14.25 million in investment, created 111 new jobs, and retained an additional 154 jobs. As a result of the grant-funded projects, developers completed cleanup activities at several sites, three previously-unknown underground storage tanks were identified and removed, and one leaking underground storage tank site was able to achieve regulatory “closure.”
“The Brownfields Program is a proven tool for restoring former industrial sites and converting them into economic assets that benefit the community,” said U.S. Congressman Tim Walberg (MI-07). “I am pleased to see the EPA make targeted investments in Michigan that will make a difference for our environment and encourage local job growth. These federal funds could not come at a better time.”
“The Jackson Brownfield Redevelopment Authority is pleased that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a $300,000 Brownfield Assessment Grant to Jackson County,” said Tim Rogers, President and CEO of the Enterprise Group of Jackson. “Jackson County, working with The Enterprise Group of Jackson and Envirologic, have an outstanding track record working with business to redevelop brownfield properties. We look forward to working with the EPA to create jobs and grow the tax base by bringing new vitality to underutilized sites in Jackson County.”
A brownfield is a property for which the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. There are estimated to be more than 450,000 brownfields in the United States. EPA’s Brownfields Program began in 1995 and has provided nearly $1.6 billion in brownfield grants to assess and clean up contaminated properties and return blighted properties to productive reuse. To date, brownfields investments have leveraged more than $31 billion in cleanup and redevelopment. Over the years, the relatively small investment of federal funding, from both public and private sources, leveraged more than 160,000 jobs.
