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POINT: The Competitive Spirit
By Becky Brooks and Sven-Erik Kaiser
Competing for federal grants? This is nothing new to the Environmental Protection
Agency’s Office of Brownfields Cleanup and Redevelopment (OBCR). EPA’s
Brownfields Program has been competing its brownfield grants ever since it began
as a small initiative in 1995, providing assessment grants up to $200,000 each
to states, municipalities and tribes to inventory, characterize, assess and
conduct planning and community involvement related to brownfield sites.
Soon to follow were the Job Training grants, which provide funds (up to $200,000
each) to communities to develop environmental training programs to put people
to work at brownfield sites. Then came the Brownfields Cleanup Revolving Loan
Fund (RLF) grants (up to $1 million each) to capitalize a revolving loan fund
to carry out cleanup activities at brownfield sites.
The newest brownfield grants — direct cleanup grants of up to $200,000
each — came with the passage of the Small Business Liability Relief and
Brownfields Revitalization Act (“Brownfields Law”) in 2001. The
Brownfields Law not only provided EPA with a law for implementing its brownfields
program, but it also set forth criteria for a national brownfields grant competition.
Since the passage of the Brownfields Law, the number of assessment, revolving
loan fund (RLF), cleanup, and job training proposals received by OBCR has increased,
making the annual competition for these brownfields grants more competitive.
(More than 600 proposals were received for this year’s competition.)
Eligible applicants — including, but not limited to states, municipalities,
tribes, and in some cases, non-profits — are provided an equal opportunity
to prepare a proposal for consideration during the competition process. They
all must respond to the same evaluation criteria outlined in the Proposal Guidelines
for Brownfields Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund, and Cleanup Grants and the
Proposal Guidelines for Brownfields Job Training Grants.
The “playing field” is level, so to speak. In the end, those proposals
with the highest rankings based on the evaluation criteria in the proposal guidelines
and availability of funds are the ones that get selected. For fiscal year 2005,
EPA anticipates awarding approximately 200 brownfields assessment, RLF, and
cleanup grants and 10 brownfields job training grants.
Counterpoints
You Call This Level? By Anonymous
Grants Not for Everyone by Betsy
Bowe
Grants One Piece of the Puzzle by Leah
Yasenchak and Michele Christina
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