City of Owensboro Recently Awarded Additional Grant Funding

By Kristen Long
Thursday, April 22, 2010

Summary: The City of Owensboro was recently awarded an additional $400,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency to assess hazardous and petroleum brownfield properties across the City. This award was highlighted in an article written by Steve Veid in the Messenger-Inquirer newspaper.

City given $400,000 to assess brownfields

By Steve Vied, Messenger-Inquirer Published: Wednesday, April 21, 2010 12:05 AM CDT

The city of Owensboro has been selected to receive $400,000 in grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to identify and assess places in the community that might be contaminated with petroleum or hazardous substances.

The city expects to receive the "brownfields" grants as early as mid-July, said Abby Shelton, the city's community representative.

When the money arrives, the next step for the city will be to hire an environmental company to prepare an inventory of sites that may qualify as brownfields. Based on preliminary work already done, part of which was looking at old maps, the city has estimated that it will spend $200,000 to perform five Phase I and four Phase II site assessments for hazardous substance contamination, and $200,000 to perform seven Phase I and four Phase II assessments for petroleum contamination.

A Phase I assessment only involves gathering information about a site. Phase II assessments involves actual boring and testing.

None of the money is for cleanup, and no sites will be assessed without the permission of the property owner, Shelton said Tuesday. Some of the money will be used for cleanup planning and community outreach activities.

Shelton said it is impossible to know how many sites in Owensboro may be contaminated, or where they are located. "Obviously, it's for public health; we want to protect our citizens," Shelton said. "There's federal dollars available for cleanup. This helps us get ahead of the game for that."

Cleaning up brownfields also allows those properties to be more easily developed and returned to productive use, Shelton said.

The EPA grants awarded to Owensboro are part of $78.9 million in brownfields grants awarded to communities in 40 states, four tribes and one U.S. territory. The EPA says the money will be used for the assessment, cleanup and redevelopment of brownfield properties, including abandoned gas stations, old textile mills, closed smelters and other abandoned industrial and commercial properties. There are an estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites in the country, the EPA said.

Of the $78.9 million in brownfields grants announced Monday, $42.56 million will be devoted to assessment and cleanup planning as part of communitywide efforts.

Meanwhile, a brownfield cleanup of an environmentally contaminated area at Ninth and Allen streets where a combined 911 center was proposed is expected to begin shortly, paid for with a $600,000 brownfields grant obtained by the city more than two years ago.

Soil tests done in the area of a former dry cleaners site discovered perchlorethylene (PCE), a chemical used in dry cleaning that the Environmental Protection Agency considers a possible carcinogen.

PCE is the same chemical that has been discovered at the state office building site at Second and Frederica streets that the city is trying to purchase. The city has hired an environmental consultant, Concurrent Technologies Corp., to handle all aspects of the cleanup of the Ninth and Allen properties. That is the same company that helped the city at no charge write the applications for the brownfields assessment grants.

The brownfields grants announced Monday for Owensboro cannot be used for assessment or cleanup at the state office building, Shelton said.