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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.
Pilot Snapshot
Date of Announcement: Sep 1998
Amount: $200,000
Profile: The Pilot targets a four-acre site in the city's Redevelopment Project Area.
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 Phase I environmental site assessment, which indicated that some dumping may have occurred on the property. The Phase I assessment report recommended a subsurface investigation including soil and groundwater sampling and analysis to confirm the presence or absence of any environmental contamination. The Pilot will also focus on other priority brownfields within the RPA.
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
- Encouraging community involvement and environmental justice planning in Pilot activities through public meetings and information distribution.
- Experience with the Calumet City Pilot has been a catalyst for related activities, including the following:
- Cook County has provided the Pilot with a $20,000 grant for a feasibility study for the targeted site.
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
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.