EPA Announces $300 Million for Cleanup of Former ‘Brownfield’ Industrial Sites

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced $300 million in grants from the Biden administration’s Investing in America agenda to assist Tribal Nations, States, nonprofit organizations and local governments with assessing and cleaning up the country’s former industrial sites, known as brownfields, a press release from the EPA said.

There are an estimated 450,000-plus brownfields in the U.S., according to the EPA.

“Far too many communities across America have suffered the harmful economic and health consequences of living near polluted brownfield sites,” said President Joe Biden in the press release. “I’ve long believed that people who’ve borne the burden of pollution should be the first to see the benefits of new investment.”

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said on Monday that $2 million would be put toward the transformation of the Kingsessing neighborhood in southwest Philadelphia — a former oil station that officials said is contaminated with semi-volatile organic compounds and lead — into office buildings and a waterfront bike trail, reported The Guardian.

For more than 60 years, the oil terminal along Bartram’s Mile in Philadelphia was filled with petroleum storage tanks, the press release said.

“Brownfields have, across the neighborhood, impacted the quality of our water, the quality of our air and the quality of our soil,” said Maitreyi Roy, executive director of public park Bartram’s Garden, as The Guardian reported. “These types of toxins impede a healthy lifestyle.”

The city has been working to turn the brownfield sites in the area into places where residents can bike, hike, garden and fish, the EPA said.

“With this funding, Philadelphia will be able to work with this site and reconnect Kingsessing to the riverfront,” Regan said, as reported by The Guardian.

EPA’s Brownfields Program furthers President Biden’s Jutice40 Initiative, which has a goal of directing 40 percent of the total benefits of particular federal investments toward disadvantaged communities overburdened by pollution and marginalized by underinvestment, the press release said.

Through the EPA’s Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) Grant Programs and Brownfields Multipurpose, Assessment and Cleanup (MAC) Grant Programs, the investments will help turn once-abandoned and polluted properties into assets for overburdened communities while creating jobs and stimulating economic revitalization.

“The Brownfields Program strives to meet this commitment and advance environmental justice and equity considerations in all aspects of its work. Approximately 86% of the MAC and RLF Supplemental program applications selected to receive funding proposed to work in areas that include disadvantaged communities,” the EPA said.

A total of 181 grants of $231 million will be awarded to 178 communities through MAC Grant Programs, along with $68 million in additional funding for 31 “high-performing” Brownfields RLF Grant Programs. Another approximately $3 million in grants will go toward economic and community development nonprofit Grow America.

Another brownfield site that is being reshaped into a community hub is the Bay Mills Indian Community (BMIC) in Chippewa County, Michigan. The soil and groundwater in the area has long been contaminated by lead paint and asbestos. With the help of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding, Tribal Manager Rachel Lyons and BMIC President Whitney Gravelle are working to convert the site into a recreational space with docks for canoeing and kayaking.

Communities of color across the U.S. are disproportionately burdened by brownfields.

Roughly one in 10 people live within a half-mile of a brownfield, with Black Americans about two times more likely than white Americans to be in such close proximity to the hazardous sites, EPA data shows. Hispanic communities are also overburdened by living close to brownfields.

Since 1995, the EPA’s Brownfields Program has provided almost $2.7 billion in grants to clean up contaminated properties for productive reuse. More than 50 percent of funds available during the current grant cycle — roughly $160 million — comes from $1.5 billion provided by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“President Biden sees contaminated sites and blighted areas as an opportunity to invest in healthier, revitalized communities,” Regan said in the press release. “That’s why he secured historic funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, supercharging EPA’s Brownfields program to clean up contaminated properties in overburdened communities and bring them back into productive use.”