Baltimore to assess contamination in vacant lots with $200,000 EPA grant

Baltimore Business Journal
Emily Bregel
August 18, 2015

Baltimore officials will use a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant to assess whether some vacant properties can become clean, blossoming green spaces.

With $200,000 in EPA funding, the city’s Office of Sustainability will assess the soil health of at least seven vacant sites that could be contaminated with hazardous material – from industrial waste to lead paint – and gauge the sites’ potential to become urban farms, gardens or parks. The city will focus on areas with the most vacant properties and the least potential for traditional redevelopment.

The initiative can play a role in Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake‘s goal to grow Baltimore’s population, she said Tuesday at the Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition.

“We have to continue to look for ways to make life better for people who have chosen to make Baltimore their home,” Rawlings-Blake said. “We can’t have truly active and healthy neighborhoods when people are surrounded by hazards.”

In collaboration with local residents, the Office of Sustainability will scout for East and West Baltimore areas that have high concentrations of vacant land, minimal green space and a lower possibility of being redeveloped through private investment, said Beth Strommen, director of the city’s Office of Sustainability.

Cultivating vegetable gardens in those neighborhoods will also help address the lack of grocery stores there and alleviate the urban food deserts that make it hard for residents to access fresh produce, she said.

Former brownfield sites that have been revitalized include Canton Crossing, Clipper Mill Industrial Park and the former American Can Co. factory, now the Can Company building in Canton, said Shawn Garvin, EPA regional administrator.

More than 30,000 vacant properties remain in Baltimore City, and 17,000 of them are lots without structures on them. Those lots have the potential to add to a community, or help destroy it, said Earl Johnson, executive director of the Come Home Baltimore, a privately funded initiative to rebuild Baltimore neighborhoods.

“We react to the green spaces that are in our communities,” he said.

The Civic Works training for remediation work has turned lives around for many Baltimore residents, some of whom went from dealing drugs to leading productive lives, said Johnson, who is from Oliver in East Baltimore.

EPA assessments, leading to remediation and redevelopment, are one path to creating jobs for under- or unemployed Baltimore residents, said Eli Allen, director of Retrofit Baltimore, a project of Civic Works.

Since 2003, Civic Works has trained more than 450 people for brownfield remediation, he said.

The assessment process starts with a review of the site’s history to determine whether operations such as a laundry facility or paint factory could have contaminated the soil, followed by soil testing and other assessments. If the site is contaminated, the city can apply for EPA clean-up funding.

Baltimore has received $1.6 million in brownfield assessment grants from the EPA, allowing the city to assess 65 properties.