Grants to Help ‘Recycle’ State Land

By John David Sutter, The Oklahoman

Apr. 8–The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that five groups in Oklahoma will split $2.6 million in federal money to make contaminated lands useful again.

The announcement came at one of the new cleanup sites in the state — the vacant Nuway Cleaners building, west of downtown Oklahoma City, which will become an American Indian crafts market, thrift store, ministry center and soup kitchen for the homeless.

The building is abandoned and contaminated with asbestos. A $37,130 EPA grant will help Love Link Ministries Inc. put it back to use.

“I don’t want to see anything thrown away,” said the Rev. Wayne Stark, of the nonprofit group. His group is being bumped from its current location by the rerouted Crosstown Expressway, he said.

In the EPA’s Brownfields program, nonprofits, tribes and government groups apply for federal money to turn places like oil fields, landfills and asbestos-laden buildings into safe places to live and work. Since 1995, Oklahoma has received $10.3 million in the grant money. That’s gone to a number of high-profile projects. The Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City was filled with asbestos; Dell’s campus operates on atop a closed landfill; and much of Bricktown stands on old oil fields.

‘We need to clean it up’ At Monday’s announcement, state Secretary of the Environment Miles Tolbert said the program is part of the fix to a “throw-away society.”

“When we have contaminated the land, we need to clean it up,” he said. “We don’t throw it away. We recycle it. And that’s what Brownfields is about, recycling the land.”

He said these projects indicate Oklahoma is coming into a time of maturity after “an awkward adolescence” in which the state “ripped the hearts out of our cities” by contaminating urban land with toxic waste.

Nationally, the EPA awarded $74 million in grants Monday. Oklahoma got 3.5 percent of total federal funds.

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Copyright (c) 2008, The Oklahoman

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