EPA
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United States
Environmental
Protection Agency
Washington, D.C. 20460
Solid Waste
and Emergency
Response (5101)
EPA 500-F-98-xxx
May 1998
Mustard Plants Helping to
Clean Up Site
Outreach and Special Projects Staff (5101)
Brownfields Success Stories
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 220 National and Regional Brownfields Assessment 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.
An obscure plant is taking a lead role in
cleaning up a long-idle, inner city Trenton,
New Jersey industrial site.
Located within 50 feet of a densely populated
residential area and across the street from an
elementary school,
Trenton's Gould
National Battery site
was home to commer-
cial lead-acid battery
manufacturers from
the mid-1930s to the
early 1980s. Through-
out the 1980s, the
property was host to a
manufacturing plant
for Magic Marker
Industries and its famous felt tip pens. In 1989,
Magic Marker filed for bankruptcy and aban-
doned the site, leaving its structures prey to decay
and neglect.
To assist the City in restoring this and other sites
abandoned during the decline of its manufacturing
base, EPA awarded Trenton $200,000 under its
Brownfields Initiative in September, 1995. Gould
Battery is one of four sites the City is targeting as
part of its Brownfields Pilot, chosen because of the
property's continued impact on the community. To
determine the site's level of contamination, the Pilot
conducted a preliminary site assessment and a site
investigation using a
$ 109,408 grant from the
State's Hazardous Dis-
charge Site Remediation
Fund program. It is hoped
that this site investigation
will be completed in 1998.
In the same year as EPA's
brownfields grant,
Phytotech, a research
corporation developing
new methods of site remediation, approached the
City about conducting a demonstration cleanup
project on the Gould site. This innovative company
is experimenting with a new soil cleanup technique
called phvtoremediation, in which plants (or trees)
are used to extract lead and other heavy metals
from the ground. In the case of the Gould site,
Indian Mustard plants are being used.
Community members joined City and
State officials in the first planting of
Indian Mustard seeds on the lead-
contaminated Gould site in April,
1996. Initial tests prove that lead
levels on the property have already
been reduced.

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