Kalamazoo County will receive a $400,000 federal grant to help clean up its brownfield sites. Brownfields are former industrial or commercial lands often contaminated by hazardous waste - everything from old gas stations to former paper mills.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its annual Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund and Cleanup Grants or ARC grants on Friday. Kalamazoo County is one of only four Michigan communities to get one this year.
Joe Agostinelli is the chair of the Kalamazoo County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority. He says the money will help assess the contamination at brownfield sites - a process that usually takes decades.
“It’s challenging to convince a company or developer whose considering those sites to write a check out of their own pocket just to figure out what’s there and then come to find out it’s a lot dirtier than they thought or it’s got issues they’re not willing to take on and then they’ve wasted the money," he says.
Agostinelli says the county wants to focus on brownfields in Kalamazoo’s Northside neighborhood. According to the EPA, cleaning up brownfield sites raises property values and generates more tax revenue for local governments.
“In an ideal world we’d see the site cleaned up with a project on it that’s going to create jobs in the community. That’s the ultimate goal,” says Agostinelli.
The EPA awarded 131 ARC grants nationwide, totaling more than $55 million.