“If we don’t pull this trigger today, it’s not going to happen anytime in the future,” Scioto County Commissioner Bryan Davis said the county needs to act fast if it wants money to clean up the site of the old coke plant.
Scioto County Commissioners held a special Monday meeting to address the future of the old New Boston Coke Plant Site. Commissioners Bryan Davis and Scottie Powell voted to authorize Economic Development Director Robert Horton to apply for a ‘brownfield’ grant to help fund a cleanup of the site. Brownfield grants are used to clean up polluted former industrial sites making them suitable for reuse.
This grant would require the county to put up $1.25 million dollars of its own money toward the project.
“This is a project we’ve been working on for a while now,” Commissioner Powell said.
Commissioner Davis said, “As part of the brownfield remediation program that was put together by the Ohio Department of development, in order to receive grant monies, you have to provide a 25% match. Each county that applies will receive at least million dollars, if approved. We were hoping to apply the million dollars towards our match. The total project cost is $5.985 million.” Davis said the county was informed they could not apply the million dollars towards the match. He said the state said the county can use the money for the front end of the project, leaving their cost at $4.985 million.
Davis said he felt this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to clean up the site. “It is a terribly polluted piece of property. Probably the worst in the State of Ohio. We have an opportunity to clean up a blighted industrial piece of property that has some of the worst cancer-causing agents there is in the ground.”
Commissioner Davis acknowledged it was a lot of money, but the county could receive almost $5 million from the state for the cleanup.
Powell said there was a possibility some ARPA money could be used towards the county’s share. “We’ll figure it out.”
Davis said, “This thing has been languishing for 18 years. We have been trying for eight years to move this thing. This is our only opportunity on the horizon. If we don’t pull this trigger today, it’s not going to happen anytime in the future.”
Davis said the location of property could make it a very desirable property for development once the multi-year cleanup is completed.
