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U.S. EPA Awards Brownfield Grants in California: Includes Los Angeles and Long Beach

Release Date: 9/17/2002
Contact Information: Mark Merchant, 415-947-4297

     SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today the selection of four supplemental grants in California totaling $275,000 under the Brownfields Job Training and Development Demonstration Pilots.

     The grants for Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland and San Francisco, are among the 13 announced  nationwide in the second round of supplemental Brownfields job training pilot grants to be awarded. The first round was in May.  

     "This funding will allow these communities impacted by Brownfields to use the supplemental funding to continue their efforts to train residents in procedures for the handling and removal of hazardous substances," said Wayne Nastri, the EPA’s regional administrator for the Pacific Southwest.

     Los Angeles will use its $75,000 supplemental grant to train 20 residents in two13-week training cycles. The pilot project conducted one training cycle with a 65 percent job placement rate and after eight months of tracking, all graduates are still employed. All trainees are either residents of low-moderate income communities, or residents of the federal Empowerment Zone or displaced workers or ex-felons.

     Long Beach will use its $75,000 supplemental grant to conduct additional training cycles and continue to offer training in hazardous materials, refinery safety operations and innovative technology. Long Beach conducted five training cycles and trained 145 individuals and placed 102 under the first grant project.
 
     The goals of the pilots are to facilitate cleanup of Brownfields sites contaminated with hazardous substances and prepare trainees for future employment in the environmental field. Brownfields are abandoned, idled or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination.
 
     Since 1993, the EPA Brownfields program has provided over $200 million in assessment, revolving loan fund cleanup and job training grants, resulting in over $3.2 billion in public and private investments leveraged and over 14,000 cleanup and redevelopment jobs generated.

More information on these grants is available at: www.epa.gov/swerosps/bf/html-doc/jt0802.htm


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