News Releases from Region 09

U.S. EPA Announces $300,000 in Brownfields Grants to the City of Pittsburg to Revitalize its Northern Industrial Waterfront

Nearly $1.3 million to be awarded to the Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO – Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Acting Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest, Alexis Strauss, was joined by state and local leaders at the Pittsburg Northern Waterfront to announce that the City of Pittsburg will receive a total of $300,000 in federal grant funds for brownfield site revitalization efforts. In addition, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) will receive $600,000 and the City of San Francisco will be awarded nearly $350,000. These grants are part of the $56.8 million awarded nationally to 172 recipients to assess and clean up historically contaminated properties, also known as brownfields, to help local governments redevelop vacant and unused properties, transforming communities and local economies.

“EPA is committed to working with communities to redevelop Brownfields sites which have plagued their neighborhoods. EPA’s Assessment and Cleanup grants target communities that are economically disadvantaged and include places where environmental cleanup and new jobs are most needed," said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. "These grants leverage considerable infrastructure and other investments, improving local economies and creating an environment where jobs can grow. I am very pleased the President’s budget recognizes the importance of these grants by providing continued funding for this important program.”

The City of Pittsburg will use EPA’s $300,000 grant to focus revitalization efforts on downtown and industrial waterfront properties. With a history of active waterfront use, there are many underutilized properties with the potential to generate jobs. Pittsburg is part of the Northern Waterfront Economic Development Initiative, an economic development strategy of communities along the Carquinez Strait to create 18,000 new jobs by 2035. EPA’s Brownfields funding to the City of Pittsburg will fill the financial gap to jump-start redevelopment on environmentally complicated sites and will support the Northern Waterfront’s economic development goals. The City of Pittsburg currently has an EPA Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training grant to train low-income adults in redevelopment careers, which also contributes to meeting the city’s economic goals.

Other Bay Area recipients include:

The Association of Bay Area Governments will receive $600,000 to support brownfield assessments in the cities of Richmond, El Cerrito and unincorporated Contra Costa County. EPA funding will directly support the goals of the East Bay Corridors Initiative by focusing on a network of transit corridors, greenways and adjacent industrial areas identified as Priority Development Areas —places planned for reinvestment and new homes and jobs. The long-term results of this project are brownfield properties redeveloped into housing and commercial spaces along existing transportation corridors. 

The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department will receive $348,204 to directly support the cleanup of a key city-owned property that will eventually become part of the India Basin Waterfront Parks & Trails in Bayview Hunters Point. Formerly a ship-building and repair site, EPA funds will clean up soil contamination, as well as hazardous materials in the historic Shipwright’s Cottage. This funding award builds on over $1.7 million of previous EPA Brownfields funding related specifically to this project, as well as the broader Bayview Hunters Point community.

Overview of the funds being announced today:

• $25 million to communities who are receiving assessment and cleanup funding for the first time
• $17.5 million of the assessment and cleanup funding will benefit small and rural communities with populations less than 10,000
• Recipients will each receive approximately $200,000 - $600,000 in funding to work on individual sites or several sites within their community
• These funds will provide communities with resources necessary to determine the extent of site contamination, remove environmental uncertainties and clean up contaminated properties where needed.

Studies have shown that residential property values near brownfields sites that are cleaned up increased between 5 and 15.2% within a 1.24-mile radius of that site. A study analyzing data near 48 brownfield sites shows that an estimated $29 to $97 million in additional tax revenue was generated for local governments in a single year after cleanup. This is two to seven times more than the $12.4 million EPA contributed to those brownfields.

As of May 2017, more than 124,759 jobs and $24 billion of public and private funding has been leveraged as a result of assessment grants and other EPA Brownfields grants. On average, $16.11 was leveraged for each EPA Brownfields dollar and 8.5 jobs leveraged per $100,000 of EPA Brownfields funds expended on assessment, cleanup, and revolving loan fund cooperative agreements.

View the list of the FY 2017 applicants selected for funding here: https://www.epa.gov/brownfields/brownfields-list-fy17-grants-selected-funding

More on EPA’s Brownfields program:  https://epa.gov/brownfields

More on successful Brownfields stories: https://www.epa.gov/brownfields/brownfields-success-stories

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