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Kansas City and St. Louis, Mo., and State of Missouri to Receive Shares of EPA Brownfields Funds for Environmental Cleanups

 

Release Date: 09/23/2015 Contact Information: Chris Whitley, 816-518-2794 (cell), 913-551-7394 (desk), whitley.christopher@epa.gov

Environmental News

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Lenexa, Kan., Sept. 23, 2015) - The cities of Kansas City and St. Louis, Mo., and the State of Missouri, will receive a total of $1,375,000 in EPA supplemental funding to help carry out environmental cleanups and aid in the redevelopment of brownfields properties, EPA officials announced today.

The City of Kansas City, Mo., will receive $475,000, the St. Louis Development Corporation will receive $400,000, and the State of Missouri’s Environmental Improvement & Energy Resources Authority (EIERA) will receive $500,000, all part of a $13.2 million package of supplemental Revolving Loan Funding (RLF) from EPA’s Brownfields program announced today by Mathy Stanislaus, Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.

Kansas City, St. Louis and the State of Missouri will use the supplemental funding to provide loans and sub-grants to continue brownfields redevelopment projects in the two metropolitan areas and elsewhere around the state. When the loans are repaid, the loan amount is then returned to the fund and re-loaned to other borrowers, providing an ongoing sustainable source of capital for communities to use.

“These funds – granted to communities who have already achieved success in their work to clean up and redevelop brownfields – will help boost local economies, create local jobs and protect people from harmful pollution by expediting brownfield projects,” Stanislaus said today in Kansas City, Mo., as he stood on the site of the former Horace Mann Elementary School, a brownfields property whose redevelopment into the Ivanhoe Gateway at 39th Project is being spurred by previous EPA brownfields funding.

Brownfields RLF grantees provide a level of funding for cleanups that isn’t available through traditional financing or through other brownfield grants, serving as the critical gap financing needed to jump-start the redevelopment process. RLF funding is often the last key piece of funding needed to make the cleanup and reuse of properties happen.

There are an estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated sites in the United States. EPA’s Brownfields Program targets these sites to encourage redevelopment, and to help provide the opportunity for productive community use of contaminated properties. Since the inception of EPA’s Brownfields Program in 1995, cumulative brownfield program investments have leveraged more than $23.3 billion from a variety of public and private sources for cleanup and redevelopment. This equates to an average of $17.79 leveraged per EPA brownfield dollar expended, and the investments nationwide have resulted in approximately 109,787 jobs.