New Jersey city receives EPA Brownfields Grant

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that the Camden (New Jersey) Redevelopment Agency has received a $944,710 Brownfields Grant for site cleanup and community revitalization.

The event took place at the site of the former Harrison Avenue landfill, which will be the target of the bulk of the grant funding, and was attended by EPA Regional Administrator Judith Enck, Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Salvation Army Major Paul Cain and Camden Redevelopment Agency Director of Economic Development Jim Harveson.

“The EPA’s Brownfields Program helps transform communities by cleaning up toxic pollution, improving the quality of life for neighborhoods and creating jobs,” Enck said. “The nearly $1 million of funding announced today brings to $6 million the total amount of Brownfield dollars that EPA has invested in Camden.”

The funding will also go toward cleaning up a site that has housed an experimental laboratory and toy assembly plant and a site formerly used for radio manufacturing. Together, these sites are contaminated with arsenic and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, chlorinated volatile organic compound and dioxin, among other substances. The grant will also allow the agency to assess the contamination at the Camden Laboratories property.