Southern Windsor County Regional Planning Commission receives $300,000 brownfields grant

By Jordan J. Phelan
[email protected]
SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — The Southern Windsor County Regional Planning Commission (SWCRPC) was selected as one of two organizations in Vermont to receive a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for environmental assessment work.

The $300,000 brownfields community-wide assessment grant will be used to complete 12 total environmental site assessments and develop five cleanup plans and support community outreach activities. Of the dozen assessments, eight are phase one, meaning officials conduct a historic overview of the property to identify past uses and any potential hazardous substances, and four are phase two, meaning officials test for the recognized contaminants. Assessment activities will focus on: the town of Springfield, which contains two qualified opportunity zones; the town of Windsor’s historic downtown area; and prioritize sites including the Parks and Woolson property, a vacant industrial complex, and the former Vermont Machine Tool Company.

“One of the problems over the years has been acquiring assessment funds,” said SWCRPC Executive Director Thomas Kennedy. “This grant is a huge help for our program in trying to remediate these buildings.”

In collaboration with the Black River Innovation Campus, the commission plans to work at administering additional phase one and two testing within the Park Street School in Springfield for harmful exposure materials including asbestos and lead paint.

The commission also plans to provide phase one and two environmental site assessments at the Woolson Block, the site of a renovation endeavor located on Main Street in downtown Springfield, as well as a former dry cleaning building in Windsor and a number of other blighted buildings in the community that may contain asbestos and lead paint.

“[We are in the process of] rehabbing another dilapidated building to make downtown look better and to bring some more high quality affordable housing to the town, especially for the working poor — the people that make $10-11 an hour — and can’t really afford decent apartments in town. So these will be nice affordable apartments,” said Bill Morlock, executive director of the Springfield Housing Authority, in an interview with the Eagle Times in February. “I think that by bringing the youth-in-transition program in we hope to help young adults between 18-24 years to get on the right path. This is going to be a program where we give them wrap around services for two years and housing. So hopefully we can turn a few lives around.”

In the East Central Vermont Economic Development Zone, the Green Mountain Economic Development Corporation will receive $500,000 to clean up contaminated sites, specifically the Valley Motor Sales site at 207 Pleasant St. in Bethel. The cleanup site was originally developed in 1929 as a Mobil Gas Station. In 1933, the property was sold and operated by two different owners as an automobile dealership until 2018. The site is contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and PCBs co-mingled with petroleum.

Grant funds also will be used to conduct community outreach activities.

Brownfields are land and buildings whose expansion, redevelopment, or reuse may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.

Grants awarded by EPA’s Brownfield Program provide communities across the country with an opportunity to transform contaminated sites into community assets that attract jobs and achieve broader economic development outcomes while taking advantage of existing infrastructure.

“Today’s investment of EPA Brownfields assessment and cleanup funding provides a much-needed boost for economic development and job creation in many of New England’s hardest hit and underserved communities,” said EPA 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.”