The City of Monmouth has received a grant through Brownfields Community Wide Assessment Grant that is used to identify environmental assessment and remedial planning activities on known Brownfield sites in Fulton, Hancock, Henderson, Knox, McDonough, and Warren Counties. Chad Braatz, Sustainability Coordinator for the City of Monmouth, explains the determining factor of a brownfield property and the locations in Monmouth that have been selected for assessment:
“Brownfields are properties, either publicly owned or privately owned, that have or could have an environmental issue. The Brownfield committee decided on four sites to look at as far as nominating to the Prairie Hills group for an assessment. We immediately identified the Howard Medical, also known as the Glassed Ex Building down between West 9th and West 10th Avenue as the primary site that we wanted to see back in the economic mainstream. The second site that we looked at was the Maple City Dairy on South A. The third site was City Hall, getting the upstairs on the second floor back into the economic mainstream or at least into use, and then several buildings on the 200 block of South Main,” states Braatz.
The grant for the five counties was a total of $600,000. Half will be distributed to the five counties and the other half to four of the largest municipalities in those counties, which included Macomb, Canton, Galesburg, and Monmouth.
To hear more from Braatz, listen to the entire interview below:
