Bridgeport, Conn. Receives $250,000 from EPA Brownfields Grants

Bridgeport, CT. has been awarded a supplemental $250,000 EPA Brownfields grant to help revitalize former industrial and commercial sites, turning them from problem properties to productive community use.

Bridgeport is one of nine state or local governments selected to receive a supplemental Brownfields grant from EPA to help return abandoned, blighted or lightly contaminated properties to productive use. Approximately $2.2 million is being awarded to brownfields revolving loan funds grantees. Brownfields are sites where expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.

Earlier this year, EPA targeted more than $4 million in Brownfields grants to 16 other Connecticut communities, as part of a national grant allocation totaling $70.7 million.

EPA’s Brownfields’ program promotes redevelopment of America’s estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites. Since 1994, EPA has provided over $150 million in grants and other funding for site evaluations, job training and cleanup loan programs to dozens of communities and agencies in New England, including nearly $33 million in Connecticut. EPA estimates that every acre of reclaimed Brownfields saves 4.5 acres of greenspace and every greenspace created, on average, has doubled the value of surrounding properties.

Brownfields’ funds help communities assess contamination at abandoned and vacant sites and estimate the costs of cleaning up sites for redevelopment. Municipalities and select organizations can also receive funding for cleanup grants and to establish revolving loan programs that provide low interest loans for cleanups.

In addition to industrial and commercial redevelopment, Brownfields projects have converted industrial waterfronts to riverfront parks, rail corridors to recreational trails, and gas station sites to housing. EPA’s Brownfields assistance has led to more than $9.6 billion in private investment in cleanup and redevelopment, helped create more than 43,000 jobs and resulted in the assessment of more than 10,500 properties.