• Home
• News
• Archive
• About
• Calendar
• Directory
• Advertisers
• Contact Us

Emeryville Snags Major EPA Grants for Site Cleanups

June 2007

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced the awarding of $400,000 in grants to the City of Emeryville as part of the Agency’s Brownfields Program, which helps municipalities clean up contaminated sites and return them to useful life.

The money will be used to help fund cleanup of the proposed Cultural Arts Center at 4060 Hollis Street (the former United Stamping Company building), and the proposed Park Avenue Area Park site at Sherwin and Halleck Streets.

City Manager Patrick O’Keeffe credited Ignacio Dayrit, the City’s Brownfields grant writing specialist, for obtaining these critical grants, citing his longstanding connections with the EPA and his grant writing abilities.

Dayrit has achieved widespread recognition throughout the area and in Washington, D.C., as a master of obtaining Brownfields grants, having over the years captured millions of dollars in such funding. As a city dominated for decades by heavy industry, capturing these funds for a small City like Emeryville has been an essential ingredient of the City’s reinvention and reemergence over the last two decades.

“The Brownfields program empowers communities to return blighted eyesores into community assets,” said Wayne Nastri, administrator of the U.S. EPA’s Pacific Southwest Office in San Francisco. “These grants provide jobs, curb suburban sprawl and clean up contaminated properties all at once. We look forward to helping more communities throughout the Pacific Southwest take advantage of this win-win grants program.”