Kansas City is awarded $475,000 from the EPA for environmental cleanups

Kansas City has been awarded $475,000 in Environmental Protection Agency funding for environmental cleanups.

The city won that money based on its successful performance in cleaning up other contaminated “brownfields” sites, said Kansas City brownfields coordinator Andrew Bracker.

The award is part of a $13.2 million national package of supplemental revolving loan funding that the EPA announced Wednesday in Kansas City. St. Louis will receive $400,000 and the state of Missouri will receive $500,000.

The announcement came at the site of the former Horace Mann Elementary School, a long-blighted property at 39th Street and Euclid Avenue that has been cleaned up with other brownfields funding and is now being redeveloped into duplex housing.

Bracker said the new money should be enough to clean up two to four contaminated areas. In most cases, the city lends the money to borrowers who qualify through the EPA’s strict screening process. As the loans are repaid, the fund is replenished and made available for other community cleanups.

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Kansas City is awarded $475,000 from the EPA for environmental cleanups."