University centers aid cleanup efforts

HUNTINGTON -- West Virginia communities are having greater success in obtaining federal grant money to clean up brownfield sites.

Local officials attribute the success to a state law passed in 2005 that authorized the development of two regional brownfields assistance centers located at Marshall and West Virginia universities.

The center at Marshall assists 22 southern counties, while the WVU center works with 33 counties in the northern half of the state.

George Carico, coordinator of the Southern West Virginia Brownfields Assistance Center at Marshall, said the center serves as a one-stop shop for counties and cities looking for help in cleaning up contaminated sites. The program helps local governments write assessment and cleanup grants and offers a loan program to encourage site infrastructure development.

Thus far, the center has helped Barboursville get a $200,000 grant to clean up an old brickyard. Wyoming and McDowell counties also have received assessment grants of $200,000 each to focus on mine-scarred lands.

The center recently helped the city of Huntington apply for an assessment grant to identify potential environmental hazards in dilapidated housing.

"For small communities, applying for these grants can be overwhelming," Carico said. "In some cases, they just don't have the resources to do it."

The Environmental Protection Agency's assessment and cleanup grant program is highly competitive, Carico said. Typically, a community applying for a grant is approved only 30 percent of the time on the first try. The Brownfields Assistance Center at Marshall has had a success rate of about 50 percent, he said.

Given the state's topography, the brownfields assistance centers are quickly becoming vital economic development tools in the state, said state Sen. Bob Plymale, D-Wayne. Plymale sponsored the bill that created the centers in 2005.

"We are a state with limited areas for industrial development," he said. "A lot of times, we have to manufacture flat land. It behooves us to not only clean up a contaminated site from an environmental standpoint, but also from a tax-producing standpoint."