Home » Lake Cumberland Area Development District receives $300,000 U.S. EPA Brownfields Grant

Lake Cumberland Area Development District receives $300,000 U.S. EPA Brownfields Grant

FRANKFORT, Ky. (April 26, 2018) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today it has selected the Lake Cumberland Area Development District to receive a $300,000 community-wide Brownfield Assessment Grant.

The EPA selects recipients every year to receive funding for brownfield site revitalization. This helps local governments identify and redevelop vacant and unused properties, transforming communities and local economies.

Funds from the Lake Cumberland Area Development District’s community-wide hazardous substances and petroleum grant will be used to assess brownfield sites in McCreary and Wayne counties, two of the 10 south-central counties served by the district. Grant funds also will be used to update a brownfields inventory and support community outreach activities.

“EPA brownfield grants provide a critical boost to help communities move these abandoned properties into safe and productive reuse,” said Amanda LeFevre, director of the state’s Division for Compliance Assistance.

Brownfields are properties that have been abandoned or underutilized due to real or perceived environmental contamination. They can include old factories, abandoned hospitals, old schools, former service stations and mine-scarred lands. There are an estimated 8,000 brownfields across the commonwealth.

“Brownfields offer an opportunity for communities to reimagine properties that have been left behind as times and economies have changed,” LeFevre said.  “These grants help remove some of the initial barriers to redevelopment and aid in leveraging private and public resources to move projects ahead.”

For more information about these sites, visit https://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/

Over the past 11 years, with the help of the Kentucky Brownfield Redevelopment Program, the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection has helped communities get more than $13.3 million in EPA brownfields’ grants to assess and remediate brownfields across the commonwealth.

The Kentucky Brownfields Redevelopment Program offers assessment and grant review services, technical assistance and brownfields grant writing education to those communities and organizations that wish to revitalize properties with an environmental past.

If you are interested in brownfields revitalization and brownfields grants, contact the Kentucky Brownfields Redevelopment Program at 502-564-0323 or [email protected].

To read more about Kentucky’s brownfield success stories, go to http://dca.ky.gov/Pages/ResourceDocuments.aspx under DCA Spotlight Stories: Brownfields