Senators Move to Reauthorize Brownfield Environmental Cleanup Program

An EPA program that helped finance cleanups of Oklahoma City’s Bricktown, a new baseball park in Tulsa and dozens of other sites across the state was the subject of reauthorization efforts by Senators Jim Inhofe and others.

Inhofe’s a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He and others filed the Brownfields Utilization, Investment, and Local Development Act. The Brownfields program is administered by the EPA and helps communities in funding the cleanup and reuse of Brownfield sites. Funding goes to states, local governments, tribes and redevelopment agencies.

“The Brownfields program has been very successful in promoting economic development in our local communities and across the country by cleaning up contaminated sites,” said Sen. Inhofe. “Whether it’s Bricktown in Oklhaoma City or the new ballpark in Tulsa, Brownfields has been very good to us in Oklahoma.”

But there are numerous other Brownfields sites in the state according to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality. The list includes the Duralast Rubber plant in Tulsa, the National Institute for Petroleum Energy Research in Bartlesville, the Sinclair Topping plant in Cushing, Asphalt Technology in Claremore, part of the Blackwell Industrial Park in Blackwell, the former GM plant now used by Tinker Air Force Base, the Lillard Pipe site in Tecumseh, Valero Property in Ardmore and Southwest Chemical Services in McAlester.

There are many others still in the program. The measure submitted by Sen. Inhofe would reauthorize the Brownfield program at the same authorized funding level of $250 million a year through fiscal year 2018.