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Western Regional Report
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of abandoned Samoa Mill |
Rural California Receives EPA Brownfield Grant to Turn Around Local Economy
As part of a comprehensive economic development strategy, the County of Humboldt,
California has identified brownfield redevelopment as integral to replacing
the income and jobs lost in the lumber and fishing industries.
Humboldt workers are shifting to lower-paying jobs in the service sector as
timber and other resource-based sectors decline. From 1994 to 1999, there was
an increase of 840 jobs in the service sector and a decline of 80 jobs in the
goods-producing sector per year. This trend is expected to continue.
The county’s nascent redevelopment agency has identified eight rural redevelopment
areas that represent the most economically stagnant communities in Humboldt.
Each of these areas is riddled with abandoned and underutilized industrial property,
representing acres of vacant mill sites and fishing docks.
The county received a $400,000 EPA grant in 2004 to inventory and assess brownfield
sites in targeted communities. This grant will be used to clearly identify and
categorize the brownfields in all eight areas. The data garnered by the assessment
will identify those properties that are apt to have economic development.
In order to keep the momentum going, the county has applied for a $1 million
EPA Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) grant. The big advantage to a county applying
for the RLF is that it can be used by the county, other city jurisdictions within
the boundaries and developers wanting to redevelop the many underutilized brownfield
sites.
The work is just beginning, but with a comprehensive economic development strategy
and long-term view of the redevelopment process, there is expectation that the
current economic trend can be turned. More on Humboldt County’s efforts
to clean up rural brownfield sites will appear in the next issue of Brownfield
News.