ENVIRONMENT
$900,000 grant to boost industrial site cleanups
LOCKPORT — Niagara County has nearly doubled the amount of money it has available for cleaning up former industrial sites with the announcement of a $900,000 federal grant last week.
Senior Planner Amy E. Fisk said Monday that the money will be added to the revolving loan fund controlled by the Niagara Brownfield Development Corp., which was founded last year with a $1 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Fisk, the president of the corporation, said that the latest grant resulted from the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package.
“Back in April, the EPA indicated that there was a possibility of federal stimulus money for a successful brownfields program,” Fisk said.
In May, the County Legislature’s Economic Development Committee green-lighted a $1 million application, and the EPA approved $900,000.
Fisk said Niagara County was the only recipient of an EPA stimulus grant anywhere in the agency’s Region 2, which covers New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico and the U. S. Virgin Islands.
“There are a lot of factors, but the diligence of our Center for Economic Development in responding to the expansion of this program was a key one,” said Legislator Richard E. Updegrove, majority leader and Economic Development Committee chairman.
Although the EPA’s announcement listed four projects that the money was to be spent on, Updegrove said that wasn’t quite accurate.
“It was my understanding those were examples. Those would be the types of things that this funding could be used for,” said Updegrove, R-Lockport.
The “examples” were Harrison Place in Lockport, the former Remington Rand plant in North Tonawanda, the Globe Specialty Metals plant in Niagara Falls and a site on River Road in Wheatfield.
But the actual use of the money depends on applications to the corporation for loans or grants for brownfields projects.
Fisk said one of each already has been approved. In January, the corporation board approved a $250,000 loan to Santarosa Holdings to help it reopen the former Union Carbide plant on College Avenue in Niagara Falls as the new home of its tire recycling business.
In June, the corporation sent the Village of Youngstown a $90,000 grant toward its efforts to clean up and demolish the former Youngstown Cold Storage plant. Senior citizen housing is proposed for the site.
“We’re working on two other projects that are in the early stages,” Fisk said.
Decisions on the grants and loans are made by a three-member board: County Legislature Chairman William
L. Ross, Niagara Falls Mayor Paul A. Dyster and County Economic Development Commissioner Samuel
M. Ferraro.
Updegrove said, “We’re in the process of marketing these funds so [companies and municipalities] understand there’s another tool to clean those sites.”
Fisk said the county has a list of 296 brownfields, of which 67 are so-called petroleum sites, meaning their primary contamination is underground fuel tanks. The county list doesn’t include 69 other sites that are on the state or federal Superfund cleanup roster.
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