United States
Environmental
Protection Agency
Washington, D.C. 20460
Solid Waste
and Emergency
Response (5105)
EPA 500-F-01-292
April 2001
www.epa.gov/brownfields/
<&EPA Brownfields Supplemental
Assistance
Bridgeport, CT
Outreach and Special Projects Staff (5105)
Quick Reference Fact Sheet
EPA's Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative is designed to empower states, communities, and other stakeholders
in economic redevelopment to worktogether in atimelymannerto prevent, assess, and safely clean up brownfieldsto promote
their sustainable reuse. Brownfields are abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where expansion
or redevelopment is complicated by real orperceivedenvironmentalcontamination.EPAisfunding: assessment demonstration
pilot programs (each funded up to $200,000 over two years, with additional funding provided for greenspace), to test
assessment models and facilitate coordinated assessment and cleanup efforts at the federal, state, tribal, and local levels;
and job training pilot programs (each funded up to $200,000 over two years), to provide training for residents of communities
affected by brownfieldsto facilitate cleanup of brownfields sites and preparetraineesforfuture employment intheenvironmental
field; and, a cleanup revolving loan fund program (each funded up to $1,000,000 over five years) to provide financial assistance
for the environmental cleanup of brownfields. These pilot programs 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 Bridgeport to receive
supplemental assistance for its Brownfields
AssessmentDemonstrationPilotandadditional funding
for assessments at Brownfields properties to be used
for greenspace purposes. Bridgeport is the largest
and most economically, fiscally, and demographically
distressed city in Connecticut. Industrial employment
has dropped steadily in each of the last three decades.
Unemployment in impacted industrial corridors is
significantly higher than the citywide rate of 8.6
percent. Approximately 50 percent of the area's
manufacturing base has been lost in the past decade.
The city's poverty rate is 17 percent, and per capita
income is 60 percent of the state average. Many
businesses have left Bridgeport for the suburbs,
resulting in several hundred acres of abandoned,
potentially contaminated land.
Assistance from EPA has enabled Bridgeport to
dispel the stigma of brownfields suchthatthe cleanup
and redevelopment of brownfield properties has
become a significant part of the city's revitalization
plans. The Pilot will use the supplemental grant from
EPA to continue its efforts by focusing on the Lower
East End neighborhood of the city, which is blighted
with more than a dozen brownfield sites located in the
PILOT SNAPSHOT
Bridgeport, Connecticut
Date of Award: April 2001
Amount: $150,000
Greenspace: $50,000
Profile: The Pilot will target
four sites in the Lower East
End neighborhood of
Bridgeportforenvironmental
assessment and cleanupand
another site for greenspace
reuse.
Contacts:
City of Bridgeport, Officeof Planning
and Economic Development
(203)576-7760
Regional Brownfields Team
U.S. EPA - Region 1
(617)918-1394
Visit the EPA Region 1 Brownfields web site at:
http://www.epa.gov/region01/remed/brnfld/
For further information, 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/
-------
residential neighborhood. The city is in need of
affordable housing and therefore has established a
goal to cleanup the brownfields in the Lower East End
neighborhood to create amore attractive environment
for housing development. Additional funding will be
used to create greenspace to act as a buffer between
the industrial and residential areas of the neighborhood.
OBJECTIVES AND PLANNED ACTIVITIES
The Pilot will use EPA's supplemental assistance
grantto target four brownfield sites in the Lower East
End neighborhood for assessment, cleanup, and
redevelopment. The four sites are an abandoned auto
body shop and scrap yard, an abandoned auto paints
shop, a specialty plating company, and another auto
body shop. All are located among residential areas
which the city hopes will be revitalized by the cleanup
of these blighted properties. The city's goal is to
create amore livable environment in which affordable
housing can be built, along with retail stores, to serve
community needs.
The Pilothas also been selectedto receive funding for
greenspace development. The Pilot targets a
brownfield known as the Chrome Engineering site for
partial greenspace to act as a buffer between the
industrial and residential areas and to prepare the area
for a future water walkway along Johnson's Creek,
providing access to the Long Island Sound.
The Pilot plans to:
• Conduct Phase I and Phase II environmental site
assessments on four sites targeted for cleanup and
redevelopment and the one site targeted for
greenspace; and
• Utilize a citywide partnership called the Park City
Brownfields Redevelopment Partnership to continue
the success implemented with previous funds which
established a "stakeholder-driven" process of
leveraging public/private funding and developing a
community-based consensus reuse plan.
The cooperative agreement for this Pilot has not yet been negotiated;
therefore, activities described in this fact sheet are subject to change.
Brownfields Supplemental Assistance
April2001
Bridgeport, Connecticut
EPA 500-F-01-292
------- |