Vermont Business Magazine The Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission (TRORC) recently closed out its seventh federal grant aimed at bringing brownfield sites back into productive use and spurring new economic investment. TRORC has sought and been awarded over $2 million of nationally competitive funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the past two decades and has looked at dozens of sites in towns throughout Orange and Windsor counties.
TRORC successfully applied for another $500,000 in brownfields assessment grant funding from EPA this year. This new award will provide critical support for revitalization efforts across the region over the next 4 years.
A brownfield is any property that has known or suspected contamination due to its history of past uses. Liability concerns and the high cost of assessment and cleanup are hindering revitalization of many vacant or underutilized brownfield properties, which in turn drains economic vitality from our villages and downtowns.
Virtually every redevelopment project will have to go through a brownfield assessment process in order to manage liability, and those costs are usually paid out of pocket by the owners and/or buyers.
TRORC’s services smooth the road to redevelopment of valuable but underutilized sites by covering the cost of their assessment on behalf of owners and buyers.
Kevin Geiger, TRORC’s Director of Planning, notes that: “It is not unusual for us to spend more money figuring out what is on the site than it costs later for any cleanup.”
Some examples of redevelopment projects in our region that have benefited from TRORC’s assessment grant funding include: Prospect Street in White River Junction, Salisbury Square in Randolph, the expansion of FarmWay in Bradford, the East End in Woodstock, Wentworth Community Housing II in Wilder, and the Community Center in Bridgewater.
Assessments performed by TRORC and its specialized firms fully quantify the nature and extent of any contamination on a site through a multi-step process that evaluates what might be present, tests the site, and then makes a plan for any needed cleanup.
EPA and the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation review assessments, providing developers with assurance that this expensive and time-consuming work is of high quality.
TRORC is once again looking for sites that could benefit from this assistance.
Sarah Wraight, TRORC’s brownfields program manager, says, “TRORC is pleased to continue partnering with local communities to create opportunities for redevelopment and to protect public and environmental health.”
For more information about TRORC’s Brownfields Program, contact Sarah Wraight at 802-457-3188 or [email protected]
TRORC provides professional planning, mapping, facilitation, grant writing, and project management services for its thirty member towns in east-central Vermont.
Source: 6.2.2023. Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission
128 King Farm Road, Woodstock, VT 05091
