SCS Engineers has been awarded Phase 1 and Phase 2 on-call brownfield services for the City of Tucson. Voluntary Remediation Programs encourage property owners and other interested parties to invest resources voluntarily to restore contaminated sites as quickly as possible to healthful standards. Often these sites are in now historically significant neighborhoods with excellent infrastructure.
Remediation of Historic Properties
In 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency selected Tucson for a $1 million grant to focus on the neighborhoods of La Doce, Thrive in the O5, Barrio Centro/Julia Keen Neighborhood, and Downtown Tucson/Historic Barrios. The areas were chosen because of their economic and cultural significance to the community and redevelopment potential. Priority sites include a vacant former fueling station, a vacant former private school, a transit center, and an adjacent parking lot.
SCS offers full services such as assessment, cleanup planning, remediation, and regulatory closure of properties participating in grant-funded activities and properties owned or redeveloped by the City.
“Our team has deep experience in brownfield environmental services and understands the complexities involved to remediate property successfully,” said Iain Olness, senior project manager at SCS Engineers’ Tempe office. “We are honored to work with local governments across Arizona to return sites into economic drivers for their communities.”
SCS Engineers welcomes Melissa Schick to the environmental firm’s Brownfields and Voluntary Remediation practice, which works nationwide, supporting municipal and public/private sector ventures to remediate previously thought unusable properties back to life.
These properties are not exclusively but often found in urban areas with existing supporting infrastructure. New technologies and environmental processes can turn these well-situated properties safe again for almost any redevelopment purpose, whether housing, recreational facilities, retail/office, or logistics centers.
Schick brings her knowledge of state and federal brownfield redevelopment and voluntary remediation cleanup program regulations. She specializes in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Regions 3, 4, and 6, supporting the grant application process or overseeing the implementation of USEPA assessment and cleanup grants which provide funds for municipalities to redevelop sites.
Since brownfields and voluntary remediation create valuable economic and natural resources for communities, clients find her experience coordinating communications, outreach, and educational events helpful. As this work demands, Schick often focuses on improving the communications between private developers, regulatory agencies, community leaders, and other partners to smooth project implementation, keeping projects on track and within budget.
“Importantly, Melissa is an ethical and caring person whose work in communities matters to her,” states Kirk Blevins, SCS Project Director. “As a local environmental engineering and consulting firm, she enhances our national practice as a detail-oriented resource to augment communications, outreach, and reporting for comprehensive and cohesive project success.”
Schick has professional affiliations with the Florida Brownfield Association – Board of Directors, the Society of American Military Engineers, and the Florida Association of Environmental Professionals.
We welcome you to learn more about Melissa Schick’s work, background, and education in land remediation services on the SCS website.
Additional Resources:
SCS’s next webinar helps our clients prepare to capitalize on upcoming opportunities to redevelop contaminated properties as a result of market demands, stimulus funding, and traditional Brownfields grant programs. In this live, non-commercial presentation we’ll cover the following:
This educational, non-commercial webinar with a Q&A forum is free and open to all who want to learn more about meeting the environmental challenges these new opportunities offer. We recommend this month’s discussion for developers, contractors, municipal officials, city managers interested in using stimulus funds for local development, and advisors such as banks, insurance firms, and attorneys to private and public entities.
DATE: Thursday, April 29, 2021
TIME: 2 p.m. ET, 1 CT, Noon MT, 11 PT
You will receive a Zoom email with your link to attend. Do not share this link.
