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City of Clinton Receives Environmental Protection Agency Grant

CLINTON, IOWA (July 2, 2002) - The City of Clinton has been awarded a $100,000 Environmental Protection Agency grant to assess and clean up petroleum contamination from federally regulated underground storage tanks. Howard R. Green Company, a Cedar Rapids-based multi-discipline professional services firm, wrote the award-winning grant proposal.

The State of Iowa will administer the funding, part of an EPA pilot program called "UST (underground storage tank) fields." Clinton's project is part of an overall $3.8 million effort to clean up petroleum from underground storage tank sites in 26 states. Specifically, Clinton's grant will fund assessment and clean-up of Liberty Square, a 220-acre area with 27 known underground storage tank sites; 18 of which are contaminated. The city's goal is to protect human health and the environment, while eventually redeveloping Liberty Square with a mix of commercial and light industrial manufacturing businesses and green space.

Cynthia Quast, a Howard R. Green Company senior project manager, says the new funding is significant because petroleum contamination has generally been excluded from EPA's existing brownfields program. (Brownfields are abandoned or under-used industrial and commercial facilities in which expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental issues.)

"About half of all brownfields are impacted by leaking underground storage tanks or some type of petroleum contamination," says Quast, whose company, Howard R. Green Company, has conducted brownfield work in the Clinton area as well as several other Iowa communities. "We wanted to help Clinton and the State of Iowa obtain their fair share of this new funding, so that these areas can be addressed."

The $100,000 Clinton grant is the maximum amount available per pilot program. The State of Iowa received another $100,000 to work with the City of Des Moines to target underground storage tank sites in the Drake neighborhood.