Brownfield sites to be considered by county
WAYNESBURG – Old gas stations, abandoned mine sites and a former lock and dam lock house were among properties identified by local officials Wednesday to be included on a Greene County Industrial Development Authority list of the county’s brownfield sites.
GCIDA, which applied for a grant to inventory and assess brownfield properties, formed a committee to help identify brownfields, former industrial or commercial land that may be difficult to redevelop because of possible contamination by hazardous materials.
The authority’s plan is to identify sites, assess those determined to be priorities and eventually seek additional funding to help prepare the properties for reuse.
The Greene County Brownfield Redevelopment Advisory Committee held its first meeting Wednesday.
Those in attendance included county commissioners, a representative of state Sen. Camera Bartolotta and officials from Franklin, Jefferson and Monongahela townships and Greensboro Borough.
GCIDA manager Crystal Simmons explained the committee was being created as part of a community involvement program for the $400,000 grant the authority applied for from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The committee will help the authority identify possible brownfield sites and provide information that will be used to prioritize the sites to be assessed, she said.
“It’s local officials who know their communities best,” Simmons said.
They know what properties were possibly contaminated by hazardous materials as well as those which have the potential to be redeveloped, she said.
Criteria is included in the EPA grant application that will be used to determine which sites will be assessed with the grant money, she said.
A resident of Cumberland Township, Dave Vrana, spoke of several abandoned gas stations in the Carmichaels area, including one on Route 88 near the drive-in theater that still has buried storage tanks.
Mary Shine of Greensboro Borough Council, spoke of plans to re-use the former Lock No. 7 lock house, which the borough owns.
The borough received a $250,000 matching grant to complete an environmental assessment of the property; however, it cannot afford the $125,000 match.
The project is ready to go; two residents would like to use the property, but they, too, can’t afford to pay the grant match, she said.
Commissioner Blair Zimmerman, former Waynesburg mayor, said he believed the borough’s former midtown auto lot on Greene Street could possibly be re-used but is known to have buried fuel tanks. He also cited a number of abandoned mine sites throughout the county.
Jefferson Township supervisor Rick Tekavec said his township would like to know what can be done about a three-acre slate dump along Ten Mile Creek near Pit Gas.
The township is developing property adjacent to the site for a park and wanted to know what can be done to remediate the former mine property, he said.
Monongahela Township supervisor Bill Monahan said the township would like to see something done with a parcel of property along the river owned by Duquesne Light Co.
Franklin Township supervisor Reed Kiger also spoke of former mining properties and several other sites, including a former gasoline station on Rolling Meadows Road that may still have buried fuel tanks.
Gregory Firely, an environmental scientist with Langan Engineering, which helped prepare the authority’s EPA grant application, said the authority should know whether it has received a grant in June.
He also said it’s possible that private property can be included in the assessment if the property owner works with a local municipality or the GCIDA.
The committee will meet quarterly and officers of the GCIDA board will serve as officers of the committee. Anyone municipal official or private property owner interested in brownfields can attend the committee’s next meeting at 10 a.m. May 13, in the second floor conference room of the county office building.
AT a GCIDA meeting prior to the committee meeting, Firely also presented the authority with a proposal to apply for a grant to conduct an environmental assessment of the Mather coal waste site.
The grant is from the state Department of Community and Economic Development’s Industrial Sites Reuse Program. The program also offers grants to remediate brownfield properties.
The Mather site is currently being reclaimed by a contractor hired by the state Department of Environmental using sediment removed from the now-dry Duke Lake at Ryerson Station State Park.
The authority owns the Mather site and is discussed possible uses for the property once reclamation is completed.