Aug 19, 2007
Small Cities Block Grant for Redding:
Town to apply for remediation funding
|
by MAGGIE CALDWELL
mcaldwell@thereddingpilot.com
The public agreed at last Thursday’s meeting that the former dumping site for industrial waste from the former Gilbert & Bennett wire mill needs to be remediated. Now it is in the hands of the Board of Selectmen to apply for a grant to help fund the project.
The industrial lagoon is near the new sewage treatment plant. When the factory was open, the area had been filled with metal-rich sludge.
The lagoon site is owned by Georgetown Redevelopment Corp., a nonprofit corporation. GRC and Georgetown Land Development Company are co-developers of the 55-acre former mill site. The former mill site is being redeveloped into a pedestrian-friendly village. A mix of uses, including residential and commercial, is planned at the site.
GLDC owns all of the land at the site north of Route 107; GRC owns the lagoon site.
The grant money from the federal Small Cities Block Grant program would help Georgetown Land Development Company pay for soil remediation and for the installation of a cap over the impacted area with appropriate monitoring and institutional controls. The estimated cost of the project is $1.5 million. The grant would cover approximately half that cost.
GRC has a $200,000 federal Environmental Protection Agency grant through its Brownfields Cleanup Grant Program, in addition to a $100,000 Targeted Brownfields Assessment Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. The corporation also has cash it received when it took title to the property.
The remainder of the cost to remediate the site would be paid for by the redeveloper.
At a public hearing on Aug. 9, Larry Wagner of Wagner Associates, a company that works with municipalities in the state to access public funds for projects, gave a brief presentation about the Small Cities program.
The grant, which is administered through the state Department of Economic Development, is only available for communities with a population under 50,000. Approximately $12 million is available through the program, but many towns compete for the funding, said Mr. Wagner.
“I don’t know what competition is going to be like until Sept. 15, when the application is due, but in the past, it wasn’t unknown for them to have two and three times the requests as the funding that is available,” he said.
Redding has been the recipient of a Small Cities grant in the past for the demolition of some of the buildings at the wire mill site.
This week, the Department of Environmental Protection is holding a technical meeting to discuss the lagoon remediation regarding the kinds of soil involved and how big the cap will be. This is a prerequisite to see if it is an absolute need for the community, said Mr. Wagner.
He indicated that he thinks the town has a good shot at receiving the grant money due to the priority the state has put on the Georgetown redevelopment project.
“It does help... that they are getting all kinds of awards for the good things they’ve done at this site,” Mr. Wagner said of GLDC and GRC.
Since there was no opposition to the grant application at the hearing, the selectmen will pass a resolution at their Aug. 27 meeting to authorize First Selectman Natalie Ketcham to proceed with the application process.
At a meeting last month, the selectmen approved a fair housing resolution and a fair housing statement as required by the grant process.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
|
