[CPEO-BIF] "Port of New Orleans (LA) wants to clean up its brownfields"

[Lenny Siegel]

Port of New Orleans wants to clean up its brownfields

By Susan Buchanan
Louisiana Weekly
August 28, 2017


Polluted sites with vacant or falling structures along the Industrial Canal, including one in New Orleans East and others in the Florida Avenue Turning Basin in the Upper Ninth Ward, are slated for an eventual cleanup. In January, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency gave a $200,000 Brownfields Area-Wide Planning Grant to the Port of New Orleans so that it can find ways to rehabilitate its decaying waterfronts.

The port has begun work on a brownfields plan for the Industrial Canal Corridor, a 5.5-mile stretch of business, mixed-used and residential properties. Restoration should reduce risks to the public from contaminants and flooding, spur growth along the waterfront, and create greenery and recreation areas, according to EPA. Separately, the EPA in early June awarded the city’s Regional Planning Commission a $300,000 grant for a community-wide, brownfields assessment. Here we’ll look at the port’s grant since efforts on it are the furthest along.

“EPA’s $200,000 grant to the port funds planning work,” Jennah Durant, EPA spokeswoman in Dallas, said last week. “A property along Jourdan Road and several properties along the Florida Avenue Turning Basin have been identified as priority sites in the grant’s target area,” she said. Future development of those sites will be determined later. “Industrial reuse is possible because of their proximity to the canal and other transportation services,” she said. The port’s planning grant extends to April 2019.

…

For the entire article, see
http://www.louisianaweekly.com/port-of-new-orleans-wants-to-clean-up-its-brownfields/

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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel at cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org