Press Release: Remediated Brownfield Site has been recycled into Agri-Business

[Tony Chenhansa <tonyc@cpeo.org>]

For Immediate Release: May 11, 1999
http://yosemite.epa.gov/r3/press.nsf/news

EPA Selects Philadelphia Urban Farming Project for $50,000 Sustainable
Development Challenge Grant - Remediated Brownfield Site has been
recycled into Agri-Business

PHILADELPHIA -- The Greensgrow Philadelphia Project is one of 41
projects nationwide selected for funding under the EPA's Sustainable
Development Challenge Grant program.

Now in its third year, the challenge grants provide seed money to
encourage creative local approaches and cooperation to improve the
environment. It funds community partnerships among citizens, non-profit
organizations, government and business.

In 1998, $5 million was allocated to promote sustainable development
projects throughout the U.S.  Across the nation, 656 proposals were
submitted requesting a total of $82 million. In Region III, 73 proposals
were submitted and four were selected for funding.

The Greensgrow Philadelphia Project began in 1997 to develop a model
urban agricultural business that grows plants in a special nutrient
mixture rather than soil -- which produces four to 10 times the yield of
conventional methods. The goal is to replicate the process in other
neighborhoods and other parts of the country.

Situated on a former brownfield site in the Kensington section of the
city, the project will create low-skill jobs in economically depressed
neighborhoods. Currently the urban agri-business is cultivating
specialty lettuces on a previously abandoned three-quarter acre site
that has been remediated by the EPA. Partners in the project include
business and civic leaders, city and state agencies, private and public
funding sources, business people and schools.

Three other sustainable development grants were awarded in EPA Region
III -- to the Sustainable Community Initiatives in Washington, DC for
job training; Prince George's County Department of Environmental
Resources, Landover, Md., for improvements along the Anacostia River and
watershed; and the Lightstone Foundation Inc., Moyers, W. Va., for
support of sustainable family farming, natural resources management and
rural development.

Once these grants are finalized, the EPA Sustainable Development
Challenge Grant program will have funded 96 projects totalling $10.5
million.

Information about the EPA's Sustainable Development Challenge Grant
Program, including the 41 new awards, can be obtained at:
www.epa.gov/ecocommunity. A new request for proposals for the 1999/2000
program will be announced this summer.


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[EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY: CPEO'S PHONE NUMBER HAS CHANGED
TO 415-405-7751. OUR FAX NUMBER IS STILL THE SAME]

Tony Chenhansa,  Program Coordinator
Center for Public Environmental Oversight (CPEO)
425 Market Street 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA  94105
ph: 415-405-7751 fx: 415-904-7765
e-mail: tonyc@cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org

A program of the San Francisco Urban Institute