Once upon a time, there was a thriving business. Now, decades after the business closed, there's a vacant lot where the business once stood, and years of accumulated industrial chemicals lacing the soil.
This is the situation environmental agencies refer to as "brownfields," unused or little-used pieces of land with contamination no one can afford to clean up. Which is why the federal EPA runs a brownfields program, and it recently announced $8 Million in funding to clean up seven sites in Oregon.
We get the picture on the program and funding from Casey Sixkiller and Margaret Olson at EPA's regional office, along with Karen Homolac at the Business Oregon Brownfields Program and Mary Camarata at Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality.