Wrapping up the third and final year of their EPA Brownfield Assessment Grant, the City of Monroe and their Brownfield Coalition partners, the City of West Monroe, and the Ouachita Parish Police Jury recently submitted their Final Technical Report to the Environmental Protection Agency. Among their highlights, the cities of Monroe and West Monroe prioritized brownfield sites along the Ouachita River and created the Ouachita Parish Brownfields Revitalization Plan that re-envisions riverfront redevelopment with an emphasis on six catalytic sites. The Brownfield Revitalization Plan offers strategic recommendations for community driven and market-supported reuse concepts and included a funding resource roadmap of curated resources for both clean-up and subsequent redevelopment costs. For more information about the brownfield redevelopment opportunities in Ouachita Parish, check out the Coalition's brownfield website at www.ouachitacoalition.com.
2022 National Brownfields Conference - Scholarship Winner Perspective - by April Hawthorne, MPA
OKC Followed the Money
If you want to take your community to the next level you should have been at the 2022 Brownfield Conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (OKC). I did not have high expectations for my first time in Oklahoma. I thought I was going to see a lot of old oil wells (I saw one on my way to the airport), ghost towns and big Indian reservations. However, to my surprise Oklahoma City is a budding vibrant city with cultural history like any other city. This opportunity served as the inspiration and education needed to bring back to my great State of Louisiana and the Baton Rouge North Economic Development District.
This mid-sized city in the central United States created a new city from the inside out by focusing on an entrepreneurial approach to redevelopment. Linking architecture, sports, and local food in the city by recycling underutilized commercial and industrial property back to productive use, creating a vibrant community in the very spots that were once plagued with crime and blight.
However, my expectations were high in learning more about the unprecedented financial and technical resources available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill of $1.5 billion investment in EPA’s Brownfields program. This is how Oklahoma City was able to spur Urban renewal by receiving over 15 EPA Brownfields grants to assess and remediated
I had no idea that the new stunning 500,000 square foot Convention Center was a former Brownfields site.
100 % Walkable Pedestrian-Friendly City
I stayed in the heart of Bricktown area that was once a busy warehouse known as OKC’s pr
emier entertainment district. A great example of a city that has switched its point of view from behind a steering wheel to the sidewalks. A completely different infrastructure that was built to be more pedestrian -friendly.
I used several modes of transportation to get to and from the Cox Convention Center. The OKC Streetcar Bricktown loop, also known as MAPS 3 Streetcar. This impressive transportation system has converted the downtown into a modern metropolis. The water taxi tour was about 45 minutes with beautiful scenery and ride through the canal gave me a nice overview of the Bricktown River Walk Park area. My favorite mode was the bird and uber electric scooters.
I was so excited to meet and hear from experts around the county. This conference offered me the opportunity to get the tools and resources needed to create a vision for the future development of North Baton Rouge areas that may qualify as brownfields site for redevelopment. Any thing I could imagine or think of could be used to create a community that is vibrant and full of life. I felt like a kid in a candy store, to know that this federal funding could be use for a plethora of projects such as road, green infrastructure, water quality, green spaces, housing, workforce development, and jobs. Once we apply and hopefully get a grant approved, BRNEDD will get 5 years to get the community shovel project ready. I was overwhelmed with the wealth of information, but I am grateful to have meet our EPA representatives from region 6, Paul Johnson and Althea Foster; Scott Nightingale with Kansas State University TAB; Rebecca Otte with Louisiana DEQ; and Jessica Rury with Leaaf. I was so proud to see Louisiana represented, especially from a technical perspective. I hope to replicate the Brownfields Blueprint from North Louisiana. North Baton Rouge has been a food desert for years and this is one of the main reasons the district was created. North Lake Charles used a suite of federal technical assistance programs to develop a Community Action Plan to address their food desert and transform their community into a food system that improved access to local health foods. I look forward to reimagine North Baton Rouge.
The FY23 Brownfields Multipurpose, Assessment, RLF, and Cleanup (MARC) Grant Guidelines are now available in www.grants.gov and on the OBLR MARC Grant Application Resources webpage along with other General Program Resources. The application submission deadline is November 22, 2022.
EPA anticipates awarding approximately 198 grants nationwide at amounts ranging from $500,000 to $2 million per award. A portion of the funding available during this grant cycle, approximately $104 million, is available through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which makes a historic investment in cleaning up legacy pollution and delivering economic benefits. With this funding more vacant and abandoned properties will be turned into community assets that will attract jobs and promote economic revitalization in communities.
The Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization will host an outreach webinar on September 29, October 4, and October 6 at 2 PM EDT to explain the guidelines for interested applicants and to address questions. Prior registration is not required.
A link to each of the Request for Application notices, additional application resources, and links to attend the webinars are available on the MARC Grant Application Resources page.
