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  Brownfields  2008

  Grant  Fact  Sheet

   Oklahoma City,  OK


EPA Brownfields Program

EPA's Brownfields Program empowers states, commu-
nities, and other stakeholders to work together to
prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse
brownfields. Abrownfield site is real property, the
expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be
complicated by the presence or potential presence of a
hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant. On
January 11, 2002, President George W. Bush signed
into law the Small Business Liability Relief and
Brownfields Revitalization Act. Under this law, EPA
provides financial assistance to eligible applicants
through four competitive grant programs: assessment
grants, revolving loan fund grants, cleanup grants, and
job training grants. Additionally, funding support is
provided to state  and tribal response programs through
a separate mechanism.

Community Description

The City of Oklahoma City was selected to  receive a
brownfields assessment grant and a brownfields
revolving loan fund grant. Located in central Okla-
homa, Oklahoma City (population 537,734) is a feder-
ally designated Empowerment Zone and Enterprise
Community. The city's brownfields efforts will be
targeted on the 19-square-mile Empowerment Zone,
which includes more than 100 of the city's 1,500
possible brownfields. Within the Empowerment Zone,
three neighborhoods have been a focus of the city's
brownfields program: the Eastside Reinvestment Area,
the Core to Shore Planning Area, and an eight-mile
stretch of the Oklahoma River. The history of the
target communities includes oil and gas exploration,
scrap metal facilities, and chemical companies. Con-
tamination from these activities has made much of the
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Assessment Grant
$200,000 for hazardous substances

EPA has selected the City of Oklahoma City for a
brownfields assessment grant. Hazardous sub-
stances grant funds will be used to conduct about
nine Phase I and five Phase II environmental site
assessments in the city's Empowerment Zone.
Grant funds also will be used to support community
outreach activities.
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groundwater unusable. In the target area, 40 percent of
residents live in poverty, 61.2 percent are minorities,
and 12 percent are unemployed. Assessment of
brownfields is expected to create incentives for
redevelopment and leverage additional investment in
the city's Empowerment Zone. When brownfields in
the Empowerment Zone are  cleaned up through the
RLF grant, the city plans to focus on residential,
commercial, and mixed-use redevelopment in the urban
core. Other plans include a park, downtown boulevard,
and greenweb of open space in the Core to Shore
area.
agreement for the grant has not yet been negotiated.
Therefore, activities described in this fact sheet are
subject to change.
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