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EPA Selects Puerto Rico Infrastructure Financing Authority for $100,000 National Brownfields Pilot Project Grant

Release Date: 04/20/2001
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(#01045) New York, New York -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today selected the Puerto Rico Infrastructure Financing Authority for a $100,000 grant to target three industrial facilities in the Route 127 industrial corridor for assessment and eventual development to support a new deep-draft international port. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman made the announcement of the Brownfields Assessment Demonstration Pilot grant at the White House today. The money will be awarded after EPA and the recipient work out the terms of the grant agreement, a process that should be completed in a few months. These grants are part of a national program administrated by EPA. The goal of EPA’s national Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative is to restore industrial and commercial properties where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination. The Brownfields program represents an opportunity to return these properties to productivity and helps make these sites clean, job-creating, profit-producing assets once more. By re-using brownfields, communities can help preserve their greenfields -- open areas that have never been developed. In 1997, EPA awarded the Puerto Rico Industrial Development Company a $200,000 Brownfields Assessment Demonstration Pilot grant and selected the Puerto Rico Ports Authority for a $200,000 demonstration pilot grant in 1998.