The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced $2.7 million in Brownfields grants to advance clean-up and redevelopment of former industrial sites in six cities and towns across the state — from onetime junk yards in Chicopee to defunct tanneries in Peabody.
Virtual press conferences unfolded across the country to present recipients of the highly-competitive grant money designed to decontaminate and revive parcels that were once homes to the lifeblood of local economies, but abandoned as owners retired, industries waned or migrated overseas.
In Massachusetts, the recipients were Chicopee, Great Barrington, Lawrence, Lowell, Peabody and New Bedford. All received grants ranging from $300,000 to $800,000 for targeted sites or community-wide clean-up, according to the EPA. More than $7 million in Brownfields grants were awarded across New England and nearly $66 million was distributed to communities nationally, a spokesman for the agency said.
“These grants will fund much-needed clean-up to unlock development potential,” said New England Regional Administrator Dennis Deziel. “Brownfields projects are always an economic catalyst, and this funding has never been more important to our local partners.”
The federal grant program launched in the 1990s and is designed to mitigate the nastier elements of industry including ground and water contaminants that stymie redevelopment of former industrial sites because clean-up is so costly. Merely assessing negative environmental vestiges at a particular site comes at great cost to municipalities and developers.
For instance, in the small, idyllic town of Great Barrington in the Berkshires, the former Ried Dry Cleaners site on Main Street has drawn many a suitor for redevelopment since closing in 2006. But, all passed due to the toxins the family-owned business left behind, according to Great Barrington Assistant Town Manager Christopher Rembold.
“Interested developers have just walked away,” Rembold said during the teleconference this morning. “This particular site is a site that has been holding back the investment in and redevelopment of the north side of Main Street.”
Great Barrington received $500,000 toward a clean-up at the site, estimated at $1 million.
In Lowell, the nation’s first planned industrial city, the mills that launched its incorporation in the 19th-century and fueled its economy have become economic albatrosses, city officials there said.
“The mills left a lot of things behind that make it a challenge for redevelopment,” said Lowell Town Manager Eileen Donoghue. “Brownfields grants are so important to cities like Lowell.”
That city’s $300,000 grant will be targeted for the The Ayer’s City Industrial Park in the Tanner Street corridor, which runs along the train tracks, Donoghue said.
Roughly 30 miles southeast of Lowell, the town of Peabody will use its $300,000 grant to advance its river walk project, a 20-year-old venture that gained renewed speed when the city purchased a parcel on Caller Street in 2017.
“Peabody served as basically the leather capital of the world in the early part of the 20th century,” said Mayor Edward Bettencourt, Jr.
“Then, companies left for overseas," he added, billing the revival of the project focusing on a two-block area off Main Street at “full throttle” right now.
New Bedford received the largest grant at $800,000, and has earmarked that money to bolster a revolving to stretch individual developer’s grant funds even further, according to Mayor John Mitchell. Lawrence received a $500,000 grant to continue clean-up at a former auto salvage yard that dumped lead, cadmium and PCBs into the soil and groundwater.
In Western Massachusetts, Chicopee Mayor John L. Vieau said that city, which also has a history heavily steeped in mills, will devote its $300,000 grant to projects in its Willimansett section. In particular, Vieau said the city has its eye on cleaning up old junk yards and parcels of the former Spalding golf manufacturing site.
An enormous factory was partially razed and in the process of redevelopment, while Callaway Golf Ball Operations Inc. still makes Chrome Soft balls at a portion of the remaining location.
“Some of these projects had been stagnant for many, many years,” Vieau said. “This is a neighborhood I believe may have felt a little neglected in the past and we’re excited to start redevelopment.”
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EPA awards $2.7M in Brownfields grants to six Massachusetts communities facing blight, contamination - MassLive.com
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