![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
Brownfields
1996 Assessment
Pilot
Fact Sheet
East St. Louis, 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 1996
Amount: $200,000
Profile: The Pilot targets the 220-acre former Alcoa Aluminum site that is located in a predominantly minority community in the metro area.
Background
EPA Region 5 selected the Metro-East St. Louis community governments for a Regional Brownfields Pilot. The communities include Alorton, Centreville, and East St. Louis, with a combined population of over 50,000. The region was an industrial and transportation center that began to decline starting in the 1930's due to a number of factors, including high crime, low productivity, flood plain constraints, poor public image, deterioration of industrial facilities, and changes in waste disposal regulation. Intercommunity competition, deterioration of the existing industrial infrastructure, and a long-term pattern of neglect has constrained development in the area.
Objectives
East St. Louis has initiated reindustrialization of a former Alcoa Aluminum site on 220 acres in a predominantly minority community in the metro area. The focus of the East St. Louis Pilot is on developing a sustainable secondary materials manufacturing district on the former Alcoa site. The site is in an economically depressed area, which has a 90% minority population, a 24% unemployment rate, and a loss of 10,000 jobs in the last three decades. The Pilot will develop and test innovative remediation technologies for the clean-up of the Alcoa site, recovering gypsum and red-clay tailings for reuse if possible.
The East St. Louis Pilot, called the Metro East Initiative, will develop a geographic information system (GIS) to locate other contaminated sites in the area and assist in on-site remediation projects and in measuring environmental and fiscal impacts of brownfields redevelopment. The EPA grant will be used for an Advisory Committee, title searches and research, GIS creation, GIS analysis, transaction screening of sites, and reports and presentations.
Activities
The Pilot is:
- Evaluating technical, legal, and financial risks associated with effective reuse of the Alcoa Aluminum site;
- Implementing and adapting a GIS database to inventory brownfields in the metro area;
- Developing a community neighborhood outreach program;
- Creating a market-based index of available, brownfields sites for prospective employers; and
- Conducting a base-line analysis to determine availability of secondary resource materials manufacturing in the metropolitan region.
Experience with the East St. Louis Pilot has been a catalyst for related activities including the funding.
- East St. Louis is working with the Economic Development Administration (EDA) about infrastructure grants for the redevelopment of the Alcoa Aluminum site.
- East St. Louis continues to coordinate technical and financial resources from EPA, EDA, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to target brownfields redevelopment in the metro 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: East St. Louis, IL, City of
(618) 482-6634
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.