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EPA and Partners to Host First Redevelopment Forum for Jacksonville Residents

Release Date: 06/14/2007
Contact Information: Davina Marraccini, (404) 562-8293/ marraccini.davina@epa.gov

(ATLANTA – JUNE 14, 2007) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will host a first of its kind Community-Initiated Redevelopment Forum in Jacksonville, Fl., as part of its annual Community Involvement Conference (CIC) next week. For months leading up to the CIC, EPA staff worked with residents, other federal, state and local agencies, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions to select a focus issue and bring together the right stakeholders to address it.

Jacksonville residents are particularly concerned about cleaning up and redeveloping contaminated sites throughout the city in order to bring them back into productive uses. Most notably, over the next two years, the three Jacksonville Ash sites, which together encompass 20 acres of Jacksonville’s Urban Core, will be cleaned up. These sites along with Brownfields, vacant and abandoned lots or other properties where
contamination is suspected present a major opportunity for residents in the vicinity to collaborate with developers and revitalize their neighborhoods.

At the facilitated public collaborative problem-solving Forum on Monday night, residents will explore what they would like to see on sites in their neighborhoods when they are cleaned up and how they can influence the redevelopment process to meet community needs.

DATE: Monday, June 18th, 2007

TIME: 5:30 – 8:30 pm

LOCATION: Jacksonville Main Public Library

303 N. Laura St.
Jacksonville, FL. 32202

Cynthia Peurifoy, Environmental Justice Program Manager, Region 4, U.S. EPA
Suzi Ruhl, Co-Director of the Brownfields Center at the Environmental Law Institute, Washington, D.C.