WESTFORD — The following press release was shared with WestfordCAT by the Town of Westford for publication and distribution.
The Town of Westford has been awarded a $500,000 grant by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through the Brownfields Multipurpose, Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund, and Cleanup Grant Program. The funds received will be used to perform additional assessment and continued remediation of contaminated soil at the former “Westford Anodizing” site located at 12 North Main Street and fund community outreach activities.
The 12 North Main Street parcel is in the Graniteville section of Westford, which has a long manufacturing history in our community. Westford has diligently worked to obtain both State and Federal financial assistance needed to fully clean up the property to unlock potential redevelopment opportunities. These types of grant funding programs are typically very competitive, and the overall cost of brownfield site cleanup is cost prohibitive for most municipalities to take out without some form of external financial support.
The Town has already leveraged a portion of $378,250 in local CPA funds to stabilize the building and start the hazardous material cleanup, $64,500 in Mass Development funding to complete a limited Phase I Environmental Site Assessment and $240,000 in Mass Development funding to perform hazardous material clean up on the exterior of the building in the rear portion of the lot. The Federal grant will allow the Town of Westford to further leverage funds to unlock this property for future use.
Due to funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, nationally, 262 communities across the nation were selected to receive over $215 million in competitive EPA Brownfields funding through the Multipurpose, Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund, and Cleanup (MARC) Grant Program. This represents the highest funding level ever announced in the history of the Brownfields Program. Even with this unprecedented level of funding, the Town of Westford was one of only sixteen Massachusetts organizations awarded EPA Brownfields Cleanup funding in 2023 which was announced in Worcester on July 7, 2023.
For more information on the EPA’s Brownfields Program: https://www.epa.gov/brownfields.
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