The Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission received a $2 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up a site along the north side of the St. Mary’s river.
The grant is part of the EPA’s Brownfields program, which provides grants and technical assistance to help assess, cleanup and reuse contaminated sites and will help speed up development of Phase II of the Riverfront Development Plan, with a focus on the North River site.
The EPA Regional Administrator Debra Shore praised Fort Wayne’s leadership over the years for seeing the natural beauty and potential of the rivers.
“They remember what a vibrant gathering place this summit city once was and they knew that a clean up would restore greenspace and renew opportunities for recreation.”
A brownfield is a site where an industry or factory once operated and left contamination.
The land is the site of the former OmniSource South property, which housed several industries, including rail repair and scrap iron recycling, and was assessed to have contaminants such as heavy metals, PCBs and dangerous chemicals.
PCBs are a group of man-made organic chemicals consisting of carbon, hydrogen and chlorine atoms. They can lead to adverse health effects in people and wildlife.
The grant will go towards remediating the site. Remediation is the process of getting the sites ready for new development. The EPA begins by conducting a site assessment, which means taking soil samples and testing them for contaminants. They then help the city develop a clean up plan.
Shore says the EPA awarded one of the first Brownfield grants to Fort Wayne to clean up the manufacturing site of Bowser Pumps in 1988. Since then, the city has received more than $3.5 million dollars from the agency.
