Brownfields 1998 Assessment Pilot Fact Sheet
Calumet City, IL
EPA Brownfields Initiative
EPA's Brownfields Program empowers states.
communities, and other stakeholders to work together to
prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse
brownfields. A brownfield 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 the Brownfields 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.
Background
EPA selected Calumet City for a Brownfields Pilot.
Calumet City (population 40,220) is adjacent to the south
side of Chicago. It shares the heavy-industry history of
the surrounding region as well as the economic blight
resulting from the loss of this industrial base. One
hundred acres of this depressed area has been designated
by the city as a Redevelopment Project Area (RPA). The
city established the RPA to assist in the redevelopment of
this blighted area and to promote higher and better land
use through such tools as tax increment financing.
Unemployment in the RPA is 18 percent, compared with
a citywide average of 8 percent, and the percentage of
households in the RPA living in poverty is 70 percent,
compared with the citywide average of 9.8 percent.
Within the RPA, suspected but undefined environmental
contamination has hindered redevelopment attempts at
several former industrial properties.
The Pilot will focus on a four-acre site within the RPA
that has been proposed as the home of the fire station
training center. The four-acre site is currently vacant,
with dense vegetation. The property is located in a
predominately mixed light industrial/heavy residential
setting. A dry retention pond is immediately adjacent
east of the subject site. A truck storage area is present
west of the property. The area recently underwent a
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Pilot Snapshot
Date of Announcement: 09/01/1998
Amount: $200,000
Profile: The Pilot targets a four-acre site in the city's
Redevelopment Project Area.
Contacts
For further information, including specific grant
contacts, additional grant information, brownfields
news and events, and publications and links, visit the
EPA Brownfields Web site
(http ://www .epa.gov/brownfields).
EPA Region 5 Brownfields Team
(312)886-7576
EPA Region 5 Brownfields Web site
(http://www.epa.gov/R5Brownfields)
Grant Recipient: City of Calumet City,IL
(708)891-8140
Objectives
Calumet City's long-range objective is to foster cleanup
and redevelopment within the RPA. The Pilot plans to
support this objective by conducting environmental
assessments of targeted sites within the RPA and
integrating the assessment results with redevelopment
data to augment the existing RPA redevelopment plan.
If the city can address health and safety concerns and
regulatory constraints, it will consider step-wise
development of specific brownfields-that is, immediate
development of uncontaminated portions to create
income that can be applied to cleanup and development
of the remaining, contaminated portions.
Activities
The Pilot is:
• Planning environmental baseline screening
assessments on targeted sites within the RPA;
• Planning to perform Phase II investigations on
the four-acre site and other brownfields as
deemed necessary; and
United States
Environmental
Protection Agency
Washington, DC 20450
Solid Waste
and Emergency
Response (5105T)
EPA500-F-01-036
Jun 01
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., . , , , ., . • Encouraging community involvement and
that some dumping may nave occurred on the property. . , • • , • „., ...
rr, n, T . , , environmental mstice planning in Pilot activities
The Phase I assessment report recommended a , , ,,. . , . -
, r- • .. .. • , ,• -ij j through public meetings and information
subsurface investigation including soil and groundwater .f f &
,. , , . . ,, ., , distnbution.
sampling and analysis to confirm the presence or absence „ . ., , _, , _,. _.., , ,
r. • . 1 • .• rr, n, . .,, , • Experience with the Calumet City Pilot has been
of any environmental contamination. The Pilot will also , - , , ... .,,. ,
r. ., • •. 1 c 1 j •., • ., nn* a catalyst tor related activities, including the
focus on other priority browntields within the RPA. . °
following:
• Cook County has provided the Pilot with a
$20,000 grant for a feasibility study for the
targeted site.
The information presented in this fact sheet comes from
the grant proposal; EPA cannot attest to the accuracy of
this information. The cooperative agreement for the
grant has not yet been negotiated. Therefore, activities
described in this fact sheet are subject to change.
United States Q ., . ,A/__t,.
E-ironmental andE-Jency EPA 500-F-0,1 **
Protection Agency ResDonse(51oVn Jun 01
Washington, DC 20450 Kesponse (bl Ob I)
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