Chicopee receives funds for brownfield cleanup
Date: 6/13/2012
June 13, 2012By Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.comCHICOPEE — On June 5 at a ceremony attended by Mayor Michael Bissonnette, Congressman Richard Neal and Curtis Spalding, EPA Regional Administrator for Region I, the city received a total of $800,000 in Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants.
The grant, which was one of the largest awards in the state, will be used for brownfield cleanup at the Uniroyal site and the West End neighborhood.
At that same ceremony, Holyoke received $200,000 in EPA grant money, the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission received $400,000 and Westmass Area Development Corporation received $200,000.
Lee Pouliot, Community Development planner and administrator, said some of the grant money would be targeted for hazardous materials cleanup in buildings 7, 33 and 43, and potentially building 14 "if the funds can be stretched far enough" at the Uniroyal site.
Another portion of the grant would be used to continue the brownfield assessments in the West End neighborhood.
"This is our fourth community assessment grant [for that neighborhood]," Pouliot said, adding the city was just wrapping up another brownfields assessment that studied 16 properties in that neighborhood.
"The next step is to assess some of the properties where we don't have much information on the potential pollution," he said.
The recent grant, which will be awarded under the fiscal year 2013 budget in July, should be available Oct. 1, according to Pouliot.
The money would be used to assess six of the 16 properties. Pouliot said no decision has been made so far regarding which properties would be chosen for assessment.
