&EPA United States Environmental Protection Agency Washington, D.C. 20460 Solid Waste and Emergency Response (5101) EPA 500-F-98-225 July 1998 Assessment Demonstration Pilot Omaha, NE Outreach and Special Projects Staff (5101) Quick Reference Fact Sheet EPA's Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative is designed to empower States, communities, and other stakeholders in economic redevelopment to work together in a timely manner to prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse brownfields. A brownfield is a site, or portion thereof, that has actual or perceived contamination and an active potential for redevelopment or reuse. Since 1995, EPA has funded more than 200 Brownfields Assessment Demonstration Pilots, at up to $200,000 each, to support creative two-year explorations and demonstrations of brownfields solutions. The Pilots are intended to provide EPA, States, Tribes, municipalities, and communities with useful information and strategies as they continue to seek new methods to promote a unified approach to site assessment, environmental cleanup, and redevelopment. BACKGROUND EPA has selected the City of Omaha for a Brownfields Pilot. The downtown riverfront has been the location of heavy industrial activity for more than 100 years. As these industrial facilities have closed or reduced the scope of their operations, much of the land along the riverfront has become underused or abandoned. Although many of these industries once used the Missouri River for shipment of raw materials or products, these commonly contaminated properties now effectively cut off the City and citizens of Omaha from making productive use of this resource. In addition, overall population shifts, coupled with the high level of business relocation out of the inner city to the western suburbs, have created corridors of distressed neighborhoods, boarded-up industrial facilities, and vacant sites of demolished structures. The Pilot is targeting the North 11th Street Industrial Redevelopment Area which lies within the boundaries of established Federal and State Enterprise Zones and along the Missouri River. These Enterprise Zones encompass Omaha's greatest concentrations of abandoned housing; 23.4% of the residents live in poverty and 56.6% are unemployed. To date, plans to revitalize and redevelop these areas have been somewhat fractured due to a lack of coordination among various municipal and State agencies, private interests, and affected neighborhood associations. PILOT SNAPSHOT Omaha, Nebraska Date of Announcement: July 1998 Amount: $200,000 Profile: The City of Omaha is targeting the North 11th Street Industrial Redevelopment Area along the Missouri River, which lies within the boundaries of established Federal and State Enterprise Zones. Contacts: City of Omaha (402) 444-5000 Regional Brownfields Team U.S. EPA-Region 7 (913)551-7786 Visit the EPA Region 7 Brownfields web site at: http://www.epa.gov/region7/specinit/brown/brownfields.htm Forfurtherinformation, including specific Pilot contacts, additional Pilot information, brownfields news and events, and publications and links, visit the EPA Brownfields web site at: http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/ ------- OBJECTIVES The City's primary objective isto assess and re vitalize underused and abandoned properties along the Missouri River in the North 11th Street Industrial Redevelopment Area. With the assistance of a local non-profit the City plans to bring together municipal and State agencies, local neighborhood associations, business groups, financial institutions, environmentalists, and other interested parties to provide ideas into the plans for environmental management and reuse of these properties. The City expects to revitalize these properties by integrating green space, recreational, commercial and industrial uses in a way that supports the Community's "Back to the River" vision of a green corridor of public parks along the riverfront. ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND ACTIVITIES Activities planned as part of this Pilot include: • Performing detailed Phase I and Phase II assessments, as appropriate, on the publically-owned City Dock Board property and on at least one or two additional brownfields in the North 11th Street Area; • Developing community outreach and engagement activities focused on forming partnerships to address the cleanup, redevelopment and reuse ofbrownfields; • Identifying potential future land uses, appropriate environmental actions to support those uses, and potential barriers to redevelopment; • Exploring potential solutions to the redevelopment barriers, such as identifying possible sources of funding for cleanup and redevelopment. The cooperative agreement for this Pilot has not yet been negotiated; therefore, activities described in this fact sheet are subject to change. Brownfields Assessment Demonstration Pilot Omaha, Nebraska July 1998 EPA500-F-98-225 ------- |