WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States will provide grants of $200,000 to $850,000 to 218 communities to scrub contaminated sites and develop them into sites for recreation and other public uses, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy has announced.
"It’s all about providing that initial funding, and sparking that first conversation to set stalled sites on a path toward smart, safe redevelopment that directly benefits communities," McCarthy said on Friday while unveiling the latest instalment of a program named Brownfields.
A brownfield is a property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant, according to the EPA.
Since the inception of the EPA’s Brownfields Program in 1995, cumulative investments have leveraged more than $20 billion from a variety of public and private sources for clean-up and redevelopment activities, the release explained.
