Former Saint-Gobain Manufacturing Site Selected for $2M Brownfields Cleanup Grant

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) recently selected New Garden Park, Inc., to receive a $2,000,000 Brownfields Cleanup Grant that will be funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The Brownfields Program promotes the prevention, assessment, clean up activities, and reuse of brownfield sites. This $2,000,000 grant was one of only two awarded in all of New England, and one of 19 nationally.

New Garden Park, a wholly owned 501(c)(3) non-profit organization subsidiary of Worcester Business Development Corporation (WBDC), is working to revitalize struggling areas of Worcester, Massachusetts through collaborative redevelopment projects with a focus on leveraging and promoting the local creative and innovative economy. This grant will be used on a portion of 51 acres of underused land in Worcester’s “Greendale Campus” area, which is the site of the former Saint-Gobain manufacturing company.

BETA Group, Inc. (BETA) is excited and privileged to be part of the development team working on this site. The firm has been working on the site since 2015, providing environmental assessment services for potential sources of contamination both in building materials and within the subsurface environment. With this grant funding, BETA will focus its work on an eight-acre portion of the larger 51-acre campus, providing Licensed Site Professional (LSP) and environmental engineering services. Previously conducted environmental assessment activities completed in 2020 through 2022 revealed contaminants within subsurface soils, ground water and/or subslab soil vapor beneath the footprint of the buildings located on the site. The source of this contamination has been determined to be from historical manufacturing activities.

The reuse strategy for this area directly aligns with the City of Worcester’s community goal of increasing and enhancing the city’s industrial and manufacturing sector which has suffered a significant decline in recent history.  The proposed remediation and redevelopment of the Saint-Gobain campus has the potential to revitalize and enhance the surrounding neighborhood. The awarded USEPA funds will facilitate the hazardous materials abatement and demolition of vacant and obsolete buildings, and remediate the subsurface soils, ground water, and subslab soil vapor beneath structures located on this eight-acre area, allowing for clean, pad-ready development sites.

Upon completion of the remediation, New Garden Park anticipates these pad-ready sites will be redeveloped, placing the vacant and blighted parcels back into productive use, creating new jobs in the community, and generating additional tax revenue for the City.  Additionally, the remediation and redevelopment of this site will increase public accessibility, providing the surrounding community with the ability to utilize the streets and sidewalks to navigate through a parcel that had previously been inaccessible to the public.

Senior Vice President Marylou Armstrong, LSP and Senior Project Manager Susan Benoit will lead BETA’s efforts for this project, acting as the Qualified Environmental Professionals (QEPs) and New Garden Park’s primary points of contact. Ms. Armstrong is licensed with the Commonwealth as a Licensed Site Professional (LSP) and has managed numerous hazardous waste site evaluations and cleanup projects under the Massachusetts Contingency Plan (MCP).  Both Ms. Armstrong and Ms. Benoit have experience working with federal, state, and local funding sources on complicated brownfield cleanup projects.