EPA grant helps fund West Meadows cleanup

The West Meadows area is west of downtown in a former industrial corridor and rail yard slated for an ambitious brownfield-to-green-space transformation laid out in the city’s Vision 20/20 plan.

West Meadows will feature greenway trails, storm water management and wetlands areas, according to a city news release.

Contaminants left behind from decades of industrial use, however, must be removed before the city can move forward with its plans for the property, which is bordered by Main and Phelps streets and Fort and Main avenues. Petroleum and volatile organic materials are among the environmental hazards present at the site, according to a news release from U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt’s office.

The city acquired the first piece of West Meadows last year, when Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad donated 16 acres along Jordan Creek. Remediation work funded by the brownfield grant will cover about two acres beneath the Grant Avenue overpass.

Brownfields assistance

The city has received six federal brownfields grants from the EPA since 1999, but this is the first environmental cleanup grant. The grant requires a 20 percent match, which will come from storm water acquisition funds collected through the city’s 1/4-cent capital improvement sales tax, according to the release.

EPA Region VII Administrator John Askew presented the grant Tuesday to Springfield Mayor Tom Carlson.

“One day this will be Springfield’s Central Park,” Carlson said in a release. “The first step in reclaiming this land is cleaning up potential contaminates present in the soil. This EPA grant is crucial (to) returning the Jordan Valley West Meadows site as a park development that will benefit the city’s residents for 100 years or more.”

This story originally appeared in SBJ’s April 9 free e-news Daily Update. Click here to register.