BTI and EOU Mapping and Redeveloping Brownfield Sites in La Grande
By Garrett Christensen on Monday, April 17th, 2023 in More Top Stories Northeastern Oregon News
LA GRANDE – Older buildings certainly have their charm but also come with plenty of quirks. Unfortunately for property owners, including those in La Grande, these quirks can include hazardous materials like asbestos and other leftover contaminants, leading to potentially thousands of dollars in cleanup and renovations. Baker Technical Institute and Eastern Oregon University, however, are helping the community get a head start on analyzing local brownfield sites, setting the foundation for both environmental rehabilitation and economic rejuvenation.
The La Grande Brownfield analysis project is a joint venture between BTI and EOU that offers property owners within the community an avenue to examine structures for potential contamination and work toward renovation. The project is funded by an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant that was awarded to BTI’s Brownfield Job Training program last December in collaboration with EOU’s Sustainable Rural Systems Degree Program.
For those unfamiliar with what a brownfield is, BTI director Doug Dalton described it as, “a property that either has a real or perceived environmental hazard of some kind that might impair its ability to be renovated or sold.”
In practice, this involves property owners nominating their properties/buildings for analysis. Once the request is approved by the EPA, team members from BTI or EOU conduct a phase-1 EPA analysis. This involves a preliminary examination of the property and its records to determine if there is a risk of contamination. Dalton gave a further description of the process, stating:
“What that does is give us a good representation of is there a likelihood of a hazardous situation or potential contamination. Historic data is used, visual observations, those types of things.”
If materials are found and the property owner in question wants to proceed, the teams move to a phase-2 analysis, which involves physical examination and testing of materials to determine what it would take to remove them and how much it would cost to do so.
The project overall covers portions of Union and Baker counties, though the Jefferson Street area of La Grande in particular has several properties undergoing analysis. In collaboration with Timothy Bishop, Economic Development Coordinator for the City of La Grande, work is underway to modify the individual brownfield assessments on Jefferson Street and fold them into a single, comprehensive redevelopment corridor. While this development corridor is in its early phases, overall work in La Grande has been progressing without much issue according to Dalton, who remarked:
“La Grande has been great. The community has really jumped on board in seeing the value. Some of these projects, thousands and thousands of dollars is what a building owner would have had to pay to do this on their own, and they’re able to do it through this community collaboration that BTI is leading at no cost to the building owner. It’s put some projects on Main Street and Jefferson and some of those corridors through the commercial area. It’s also kickstarted some renovation and development.”
Note that the project primarily focuses on the analysis and outreach aspects, with the responsibility of physically cleaning, renovating, reconstructing or even selling brownfield properties falling to the owner once analysis is complete. According to Dalton, roughly eighty percent of BTI/EOU’s efforts consist of working with owners to identify hazardous materials, with the other major facets being community education on brownfields and planning development corridors like Jefferson.
And plenty of development is still to come. According to Dalton, only about a third of the $600,000 awarded in the grant has been spent. With the grant money, many more property assessments can be funded, leaving plenty of work for BTI/EOU students to get hands-on experience in community development. As more property owners come on board, BTI are hopeful that they’ll have enough community support to apply for a second grant once the initial funding runs its course. As for the immediate future, Dalton best summarized things:
“A phase one analysis for a property owner might be worth four or five thousand dollars. A phase two analysis can be anywhere between ten to sixty thousand dollars in value. As we provide some phase two analysis for properties that will use up some of the grant funding, I think the next phase is just continuing to work with property owners in these areas and continuing to partner and collaborate with the people in La Grande and Baker.”
