The City is using EPA Brownfields Grants for environmental cleanup, planning, and community involvement activities.
NORFOLK, VA – SCS Engineers, an award-winning environmental consulting firm, is supporting the City of Norfolk in four neighborhoods in the downtown and coastal areas along the Elizabeth River with environmental assessments. Funding for the projects is through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program.
The EPA selected the City of Norfolk for two brownfields assessment grants. The community-wide hazardous substances grant of $200,000 is for conducting six Phase I and seven Phase II environmental site assessments. A community-wide petroleum grant of $100,000 will fund four Phase I and four Phase II environmental site assessments related explicitly to petroleum clean up.
SCS’s environmental assessments focus on 218 acres in the downtown and coastal areas including East Downtown/Harbor Park, Tidewater Gardens/St. Paul’s Quadrant, Fort Norfolk and surrounding Ghent Neighborhood area, and the South Elizabeth River Waterfront. The City has been developing an area-wide plan and implementation strategy with the community and other stakeholders to improve the infrastructure, economic, environmental and social prosperity of the area.
To accomplish the plan, SCS Engineers will perform environmental assessments on the properties. The assessments are necessary to protect human and ecological health, which allows for future expansion, redevelopment, or reuse. Improving the infrastructure could be complicated by the potential presence of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contamination in long-established areas, and especially if they were previously industrial sites.
“Our SCS team is supporting the City of Norfolk to spur a green, resilient, mixed-use transit-oriented development,” stated Keith Matteson, the project director at SCS.