The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently awarded Brownfield program and environmental justice collaborative problem-solving grants to the Pioneer Bay Community Development Corporation. 

The grants will help further “environmental justice, spur economic revitalization, and create jobs by addressing contaminated, polluted, or hazardous brownfield properties in the Port St. Joe [Fla.] community,” a recent EPA news release said.

“Brownfields investments provide critical funding to empower communities such as Port Saint Joe to address and reverse the effects of economic stress, particularly in areas that have experienced disinvestment and decay,” Daniel Blackman, EPA Region 4 administrator, said in the release. 

“The EPA Brownfields Job Training Grant is a wonderful opportunity to provide much needed environmental job skill training and focused workforce credentials in which careers are built and lives are changed for local underrepresented individuals,” Dr. Krystal Hepburn, program director of the Pioneer Bay Community Development Brownfields Job Training Grant, said in the release. “Additionally, this grant serves as a vehicle to positively transform the community, establish a pathway for Environmental Justice leaders of tomorrow, and provide a great start for capacity building that the community needs for long-awaited restoration and growth.”

Brownfield projects can consist of anything from cleaning up buildings with lead or asbestos contamination to abandoned properties that once oversaw dangerous chemicals, the release said. Once the buildings are cleaned up, they can be redeveloped into productive assets like affordable housing, grocery stores, health centers, museums, parks or solar farms.