Perspectives from the Regional Administrator

EPA awards New Orleans $1 million for community cleanup projects

EPA has awarded $1 million in brownfields funding to the City of New Orleans to help revitalize three abandoned wharfs along Market, Celeste and Orange Streets.  City leaders plan to use the brownfields grant to redevelop the wharfs as part of the proposed Riverfront Park project. 

“The brownfields program is the bedrock of EPA efforts to cleanup and reuse the nation’s contaminated properties,” said EPA Regional Administrator Richard E. Greene. “With these brownfields grants, Louisiana is helping pave the way toward cleaner communities and better lives.”

Brownfields are vacant, abandoned, or under-used properties where redevelopment may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of environmental contamination.  

In addition to the New Orleans grant, EPA also awarded a $200,000 brownfields cleanup grant to the Progressive Church in Marrero.  The church is completing cleanup of a 20-acre site that it plans to redevelop into a Family Life Center, school, day care facility, and affordable housing center for seniors. 
Earlier this year, EPA also awarded another $200,000 brownfields petroleum assessment grant to the City of Lake Charles to revitalize portions of downtown, the Charpentier District and the North Lake Charles area. 

Since the beginning of the program in 1995, EPA Region 6 has provided more than $11 million for Louisiana brownfields projects.

EPA’s brownfields program encourages redevelopment of America's estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites.  Nationally, brownfields assistance has leveraged more than $9.8 billion in cleanup and redevelopment, helped create more than 43,900 jobs and resulted in the assessment of more than 11,500 properties and the cleanup of 180 properties.

More on the brownfields

From Brownfields to a green future

This year’s Earth Day celebration at Victory Park in Dallas was a special one for EPA and its state, local, and private sector partners in this award-winning redevelopment effort.
  
“It is one of our most outstanding achievements in brownfields redevelopment and the largest EPA Brownfields project in the country,” Regional Administrator Richard E. Greene said.  Read more …>

Heifer Ready for Reuse

Officials gathered January 27, 2005, in Little Rock, Arkansas, to celebrate Heifer Project International's accomplishment in becoming the first non-profit to have property recognized as Ready for Reuse. The multinational organization was recognized for cleaning contaminated property along the Arkansas River and restoring the polluted eyesore to beneficial use.

U.S. EPA Regional Administrator Richard E. Greene and Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Director Marcus C. Devine presented the Ready for Reuse certification to Heifer President and Chief Executive Officer Jo Luck.

"Restoring contaminated and underused properties to productive, valued parts of their communities is at the heart of EPA's land revitalization programs," Greene said. "Arkansas is an enthusiastic leader in redevelopment programs."

The certificate is also the first issued to a facility involved in a Brownfield program for cleanup of commercial, industrial or agricultural property contaminated with hazardous substances.

The 28-acre tract includes land formerly owned by a railroad and two trucking companies. Heifer, with the help of contractors and Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, completed a cleanup of hazardous waste contamination at the rail yard and trucking terminal.

Arkansas and EPA agree that Heifer Project has successfully completed cleanup of the property. The ready for reuse determination verifies that environmental conditions on this site are protective of human health and the environment based on its current use and anticipated future use as Heifer's headquarters and global village education complex.

Greene said, "Renewing this property as the headquarters of such a prestigious world humanitarian organization is the perfect conclusion to the cleanup process."

Initial agreement reached on sale of the cleaned-up Tex Tin Superfund Site

An initial agreement has been reached between the Tex Tin Site Custodial Trustee and a California-based real estate developer group for the sale of the cleaned-up Tex Tin Superfund Site. The approximately 130-acre property, located at the intersection of Highways 146 and 519 in Texas City, has been the scene of a major U.S. Superfund remediation, and is one of only two such sites in the nation to be granted a full "Ready for Re-Use" certification by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The other certified site is a smaller tract, originally part of the Tex Tin site, that was cleaned up earlier by BP Amoco.

The buyers are Kristofer Wachter and Bret Braden, managing partners of Phoenix International Terminal, LLC, the company that will be developing the property. Tex Tin Site Custodial Trustee John Bredthauer, in announcing the signing of the memorandum of understanding, commented that the property-initially the site of a strategically vital World War II tin smelter-now is considered an ideal location for facilities that will support the advanced Texas City deep-water terminal at Shoal Point, now under construction. The new port facility is estimated to cost more than $600 million, and employ more than 1000 longshoremen and other terminal personnel. Bredthauer added that the EPA has conditionally approved the sale to Wachter and Braden. The two have more than 35 years of combined experience in the conversion of formerly contaminated sites into mixed-use developments.

The developers' plans for the property include warehouse distribution, freight forwarding, container repacking and storage facilities, and a full-service truck stop.

Funding for the Tex Tin clean-up has been provided by both the United States government and private companies. Bredthauer points out that many people and entities have played vital roles in successfully bringing the Tex Tin project to this point. "The prevalent attitude", Bredthauer said, "has been one of cooperation and support, at local, state and national levels. Officials of the City of Texas City-especially former Mayors Carlos Garza and Chuck Doyle; the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality (TCEQ); the EPA and the private companies all have worked diligently together to get the Tex Tin clean-up safely done ahead of schedule and under budget. Current Texas City Mayor Matt Doyle has also fully supported the project.

Dallas-based EPA Regional Administrator Richard E. Greene, in expressing his agency's enthusiasm for the Tex Tin outcome, commented "This is what the EPA's 'Ready for Re-use program is all about-bringing an underused waste site back into productive use. I am delighted that buyers have come forward to develop the Tex Tin property, closing the loop on years of effort by people at every level of government. I look forward to visiting this site in the future, when it is a vital and productive part of the Texas City economy."

John Bredthauer pointed out that the city's redevelopment committee-funded by an EPA grant to Texas City and guided by Doug Hoover, the city's director of management services-has played a vital role in structuring the potential future of the Tex Tin property. "The result now", Bredthauer said, "is that, unlike numerous fenced-in environmental Superfund sites, we have a property that can once again contribute to the economy of the area, providing jobs and adding tax revenues to local government."

The property transaction is expected to close within four months, and upon closing the buyers will begin infrastructure and building designs and tenant negotiations, with the build-out to coincide with the needs of the new terminal container port, which is planned for a late 2006 start-up.

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