6 Organizations to Receive $11 Million in EPA Funding for Brownfield Assistance

September 9, 2021

Back in April, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to allocate $11 million in grants to six different organizations for training and technical assistance under the Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) Program.

The bulk of the technical assistance will benefit underserved and economically disadvantaged areas — at no cost to them. Grant recipients and the EPA Regions they will assist include the following:

  • The University of Connecticut — Region 1
  • The New Jersey Institute of Technology — Region 2
  • The West Virginia University Research Corporation — Region 3
  • The International City/County Management Association — Region 4
  • The Kansas State University — Regions 5-8
  • The Center for Creative Land Recycling — Regions 9-10

About the TAB Program

The EPA’s TAB Program was established to offer technical assistance to communities and stakeholders to assist with their brownfield sites. It seeks to boost their knowledge and involvement in brownfield’s cleanup, revitalization, and reuse.

In addition to providing technical assistance and guidance, recipients of TAB grants — i.e., TAB providers — assist impacted communities in many ways, including:

  • Acquiring, assessing, cleaning up, and redeveloping brownfield properties
  • Educating on health impacts associated with brownfield sites
  • Showing ways science and technology are used to assess sites, as well as offer remediation, redevelopment, and use
  • Offering tips to comply with voluntary cleanup requirements

EPA Brownfields and Land Revitalization Program

Established in 1995, the EPA Brownfields and Land Revitalization Program works to help states, communities, and other stakeholders prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse brownfields — i.e., a site known to have or that potentially contains a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.

At present, an estimated more than 450,000 brownfield sites are present in the U.S. Cleaning up these areas offers many benefits, including boosting job growth, protecting the environment, and helping preserve undeveloped, open land. Additionally, successful brownfield cleanup initiatives can help increase residential property values near these sites by 5%-15.2%, according to the EPA.

Since its inception, the EPA Brownfields Program has assessed 33,645 properties, as of April 1, 2021. Of these properties, 2,215 have been cleaned up and 8,975 have been made ready for reuse. Additionally, more than 176,880 jobs have been created as a result of the cleanups.

Beyond that, the EPA’s state and tribal partners also monitor accomplishments that stem from Brownfields state programs. Since 2006, states and tribes have enrolled an average of more than 35,470 properties per year, completed more than 190,050 cleanups, and made more than 2 million acres of land ready for reuse.

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