By Mike Tony, Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Nothing can hold a community back quite like environmental contamination.
Hazardous pollutants complicating the expansion, redevelopment or reuse of properties can limit job opportunities, local tax revenues and residential property values, all while damaging the environment.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls these properties brownfields.
West Virginia has plenty of brownfields to redevelop, and the agency has awarded communities across the state nearly $3 million to assess and clean up such sites — more than all but three states got in the agency’s fiscal year 2021 brownfields grant funding announced Wednesday.
The funding is to consist of just under $1.5 million for four grant recipients to clean up brownfield sites and $1.5 million for three grant recipients to support brownfield inventories, planning, environmental assessments and community outreach…
