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Northampton to Receive $200,000 for Brownfields Project; Part of Grants for 80 Communities Nationwide

Release Date: 05/20/2002
Contact Information: Mark Merchant, EPA Press Office (617) 918-1013

BOSTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today it will spend $2.25 million to help assess, clean and redevelop abandoned, contaminated sites throughout New England, including $200,000 for a brownfields project in Northampton.

"Reclaiming America's brownfields properties is an effective way to help revitalize and reinvigorate our nation's blighted neighborhoods while at the same time preventing urban sprawl," said EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.

In all, five brownfields projects in Massachusetts – in the cities of Marlborough, Somerville, Holyoke, Northampton, as well as one in Franklin County – received grants today totaling $950,000. They were part of more than $14 million in brownfields grants to assess the contamination of abandoned properties that were given to 80 communities around the nation today.

"These grants will bring much needed momentum to community brownfields programs in Northampton, in Massachusetts, and all across New England," said Robert W. Varney, regional administrator for EPA's New England office. "Dozens of contaminated sites in the region have already been successfully restored through this program. The money we offer to the communities in our region today ensures even more successes down the road."

EPA selected the city of Northampton for a $200,000 Brownfields Assessment Pilot grant to target five sites in the Historic Mill River Corridor, a strip of land that passes through downtown. Target sites include a former felt manufacturing plant with above-ground hazardous substances storage tanks, a former factory facility that may have been a machine shop and is now a residential property and a former coal gasification plant.

"With EPA's brownfields grant, Northampton will conduct an environmental site analysis and related planning for the former Mill River channel. Eventually, we are going to restore this sometimes putrid water channel into a river through the heart of our downtown," said Northampton Mayor Mary Clair Higgins. "Running alongside our planned downtown bikepath, the river will help spark further park, neighborhood and economic revitalization. Although the restoration of the river is years away, the EPA grant – and the Massachusetts Attorney General's grant that we received last year – will allow us to begin with the most challenging parts of our industrial legacy."

Earlier this year, President Bush signed bipartisan legislation that will encourage the cleanup and redevelopment of old industrial properties – cleaning up our environment, creating jobs and protecting small businesses from frivolous lawsuits. In addition, the President's fiscal year 2003 budget request doubled the funds available through the EPA in FY 02 – from $98 million to $200 million – to help states and communities around the country clean up and revitalize brownfields sites.

Under the EPA's Brownfields Assessment Program, communities receive funding to assess contamination at abandoned and vacant sites, and to estimate the costs of cleaning up sites for redevelopment. Communities can also receive funding to establish revolving loan programs allowing them to provide low interest loans to clean up these sites. Once assessed and cleaned, these sites can be put back into productive use by the community.

"Brownfields reclamation is one of the great environmental success stories of the past decade," Whitman said. "But the story is hardly over. EPA and its partners in every state of the union are ready to write the next chapter in the brownfields story. Given the commitment of this Administration, I can guarantee you that story will have a very happy ending."

These grants bring the total amount that EPA has spend on brownfields projects in Massachusetts to date to approximately $25 million.

For more information, visit the following EPA Web sites:

Smart Growth

Brownfields

New England Success Stories