2 Middle GA cities received $1.5M in grant money to clean up properties. What’s the progress?
Macon and Milledgeville received $1.5 million from the EPA in federal grant money last spring to conduct environmental site assessments and prepare revitalization plans for potentially contaminated properties.
The Middle Georgia Regional Commission (MGRC) was the primary recipient of the Brownfields Assessment grant, and they’re “very early in the process” of the project, according to Greg Boike, Director of Planning and Public Administration for the MGRC.
Though the grant was awarded last spring, the MGRC didn’t actually receive the money until October at the beginning of the federal fiscal year, according to Boike
Since then, the MGRC has contracted Terracon, an environmental engineering consulting firm, that has conducted initial inventories of sites and drafted a community involvement plan, which includes a schedule of public hearings and meetings to make sure the public is aware and able to provide feedback and input on potential sites that may be of importance to the community, according to Boike.
The grant will target areas in east Macon from the Ocmulgee River up Gray Highway and out Emery Highway. It will also target south Macon from Eisenhower Parkway to Tobesofkee and Rocky creeks down to the five-way interchange with Broadway Street and Pio Nono and Houston Avenues, where the new roundabout is.
In Milledgeville, the grant targets South Milledgeville to around the Central State Hospital property and the surrounding neighborhood.
Macon-Bibb County and Baldwin County are project partners on the grant.
“The regional approach allowed us to secure more funding,” Boike said. “Typically, a single community is capped at $500,000 ... whereas a regional project can apply for up to 1.5 million. So there is an incentive to work together.”
The typical process includes three phases:
▪ A Phase 1 environmental site assessment (ESA) is generally a relatively cheap study, according to Boike. It includes looking at the site, at the history of ownership and uses, and doing preliminary investigation to determine if there is likelihood of contamination.
“A lot of properties may have a bad reputation, or somebody may not want to invest in that property because of the thought that there may be contamination on the site,” Boike said. “If you do a phase one ESA, that’s a great way to rule that out and make that site more appealing for reuse in the future.”
▪ Alternatively, if the ESA determines there is contamination, then the next step is Phase II, which is the more in-depth report, according to Boike. That report details the full types of contamination on the site and what needs to be removed or remediated so the site can return to “a healthy, productive use in that part of the community,” Boike said.
▪ The final phase of an assessment grant is what’s called Clean Up planning, which looks at potential reuses of the site and helps plan on how to apply for separate cleanup funding in the future, according to Boike.
Boike said the MGRC predicts 41 phase one ESAs, 23 phase two ESAs and six Site Reuse Assessments with three complete Brownfield Revitalization Plans, which are both apart of the final phase.
When asked whether the recent freezing of federal grants affected this project, Boike said, “We haven’t received definitive guidance one way or another. We’re continuing to work on any federal grants as we have been doing.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
