PETALUMA BROWNFIELDS PROGRAM

What Is It?

EPA’s Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative is designed to empower states, communities, and other stakeholders in economic redevelopment to work together in a timely manner to prevent, assess, safely clean up, and sustainably reuse brownfields. The EPA Brownfields Program has been in existence since the early 1990s. In 2002, the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act was passed to help states and communities around the country cleanup and revitalize brownfield sites.

A Brownfields site is a property that could face complications during redevelopment, expansion, or reuse due to the presence or potential presence of pollution, hazardous substances, or contaminants. In order to provide Petaluma property owners with an opportunity to access grant-funded environmental assessment services, the City applied for EPA grants in 2003 and 2004. By 2006, the City of Petaluma had been awarded two EPA Brownfields Assessment grants totaling $400,000 to conduct a community-wide assessment, identify priority redevelopment properties in the City, and provide grant-funded Phase I and Phase II environmental assessments to interested property owners. Completing an environmental site assessment on a property is often a standard requirement of a commercial lender and regulatory agency reviewing redevelopment plans, or interested buyer.

Contacts:

Petaluma Brownfields Program Manager: Larry Zimmer
(707) 776-3674 / lzimmer@ci.petaluma.ca.us

Petaluma Brownfields Project Manager: Diane Ramirez
(707) 776-3658 / dramirez@ci.petaluma.ca.us

EPA Region 9 Brownfields Coordinator: Glenn Kistner
(415) 972-3004 / kistner.glenn@epa.gov