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EPA Funds Environmental Job Training in Boston and New Bedford

Release Date: 09/12/2002
Contact Information: Alice Kaufman, EPA Press Office, 617-918-1064

Boston - EPA has awarded $100,000 in supplemental funding under the Brownfields Job Training and Development Demonstration Pilots program. Receiving $50,000 grants are Jobs for Youth in Boston, MA, and New Directions in New Bedford, MA. These grants will be used to train residents in procedures for the handling and removal of hazardous substances. The agency made grants totaling $750,000 across the country.

"Brownfields can spur the economy," said Robert W. Varney, EPA New England regional administrator. "These grants will go a long way to ensuring that there is a trained work force ready to take on the work of cleaning up these sites and getting them back into productive use."

This is the second round of supplemental Brownfields job training pilot grants to be awarded (the first round was in May). 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.