WILMINGTON — The City of Wilmington’s effort to identify possibly contaminated abandoned properties will be the subject of a public stakeholder meeting Tuesday from 6 to 8 p.m. at City Hall.
Officials will inform and log input about the city’s Brownfields Assessment Project, fueled by $400,000 in federal grants and intended to document such properties for environmental assessment.
The grants came from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which oversees federal brownfields mitigation. The agency defines brownfields as properties whose development potential could be hindered by the presence of hazardous substances or pollutants.
“Cleaning up and reinvesting in these properties protects the environment, reduces blight, and takes development pressures off greenspaces and working lands,” the EPA says.
The agency last year gave Wilmington two grants to develop its Brownfields Assessment Project. The first, for $200,000, was for assessments of hazardous-substance sites; the second, another $200,000, was to assess petroleum-contaminated sites.
The city’s inventory of such properties “will aid prospective developers in understanding the costs and liabilities associated with purchasing and redeveloping brownfield sites thereby improving their ability to secure financing,” program literature explains. “Redeveloping these properties can produce a healthier environment, revitalize the surrounding area, generate new tax revenues and create new job opportunities in the community.”
The city does have a success story to tout in that regard. A 2002 federal brownfields grant enabled the assessment and redevelopment of the old Love Grove Landfill property, on 19 acres of land in a residential area adjacent to Burnt Mill Creek and Smith Creek. It was eventually developed into Archie Blue Park.
For more information, persons may visit https://wilmingtonnc.gov/brownfields, email [email protected] or call (910) 342-2779.
