Essex County Brownfield Program

In 2004, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPS) selected Essex County for an additional Brownfields Assessment Demonstration Pilot Grant (Brownfields Assessment Grant) to expand on another grant awarded to the county in 2000. The first grant, which targeted Belleville, Bloomfield, East Orange, Irvington, and Orange, was utilized to design and implement a model Brownfield cleanup and redevelopment process including identification, assessment, cleanup and redevelopment planning for Brownfield sites in the target communities.  The additional grant, totally $400,000, has been divided equally to assess/evaluate non-petroleum hazardous substance sites ($200,000) and petroleum sites ($200,000).

Essex County retained HMM to assist with the implementation of its Brownfields Program, which includes funding for both hazardous substances and petroleum sites. The project, initiated in 2006, includes identifying and ranking potential Brownfield sites to expand on existing County inventory information.  However, the focus and emphasis on the grant award(s) will be performing assessment and investigation activities to fulfill Essex County’s objective of redeveloping underutilized and abandoned commercial and industrial properties, or Brownfields, throughout the County.   Thus, the focus of the Brownfields Program is to identify and assess clusters of sites within individual municipalities in an effort to revitalize entire neighborhoods rather than isolated parcels. 

HMM has assisted the County in holding a technical workshop for municipal representatives, which resulted in a series of meetings with individual municipalities to identify “candidate” sites.  HMM updated and expanded the County Brownfield inventory and has performed multiple assessments and site characterization projects on sites identified through the program.  As an example, HMM performed a site investigation consisting of ground-penetrating radar, floor drain and trench inspection, and subsurface evaluation through test pits and soil borings at an abandoned site situated within a neighborhood area of one of the County municipality’s for potential redevelopment as a police substation.  Subsequently, HMM assisted the municipality and the County in obtaining approval to expand an existing BDA, resulting in enhanced funding for cleanup.  HMM has continued to provide oversight, remedial planning and reporting, as well as funding assistance to bring the project through the remedial process.