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EPA Awards $260,000 in Brownfields Grants to Programs in South Carolina

Release Date: 05/10/2005
Contact Information:

Contact: Laura Niles, (404) 562-8353
niles.laura@epa.gov

( Atlanta - May 10, 2005) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it has awarded $260,000 in Brownfields Grants to help programs in South Carolina revitalize former industrial and commercial sites. The Brownfields Program empowers states, communities, and other stakeholders in economic development to work together to prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse brownfields. Participants in the brownfields program gain access to expertise and other resources from more than 20 federal agencies.

A brownfield site is real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of harmful contaminants. The Brownfields Program promotes redevelopment of America's estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites. Since its inception in 1995, the program has awarded 709 assessment grants totaling more than $190 million, 189 revolving loan fund grants worth more than $165 million, and $26.8 million for 150 cleanup grants.  

In addition to facilitating industrial and commercial redevelopment, brownfields projects have converted industrial waterfronts to river-front parks, landfills to golf courses, rail corridors to recreational trails, and gas station sites to housing. EPA's brownfields assistance has led to more than $7 billion in public and private investment in cleanup and redevelopment, helped create more than 31,000 jobs, and resulted in the assessment of more than 5,100 properties.

The South Carolina Grants announced today include:

ROCK HILL, S.C., Brownfields Cleanup Grant $160,000 for hazardous substances

The city of Rock Hill, S.C., will use their hazardous substances grant funds to clean up the Arcade Textile Mill property at 7 Blackwell Street. Site assessments conducted earlier have shown that the mill property is contaminated with a range of hazardous substances, including asbestos, lead, chromium, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, and perchloroethylene.

SUMTER, S.C., Brownfields Cleanup Grant $50,000 for hazardous substances/$50,000 for petroleum

The city of Sumter, S.C., will use their grant funds for community outreach, planning and site cleanup for both petroleum and hazardous substances contamination at the Old Western Auto site on Main Street, which covers almost an entire city block. The Old Western Auto site will be leased to the local technical college for its Allied Health Program after cleanup, creating both jobs and training opportunities for local residents.

For more information on the grant recipients, go to: https://www.epa.gov/swerosps/bf/archive/pilot_arch.htm

More information on brownfields in general is at https://www.epa.gov/brownfields