The Southern Indiana Development Commission is building a multi-county coalition to try to identify and ultimately redevelopment brownfield sites in Daviess and surrounding counties.
The organization will include representatives from Knox, Lawrence, Greene, Martin and Daviess counties that will be working on pieces of property that have either real or perceived environmental contamination that make it difficult for redevelopment.
"We have brownfields all around us," said Greg Jones with the SIDC. "We did a really quick survey before we started and came up with at least 100 locations that might qualify."
The SIDC plans to seek a grant from the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs to begin identifying the locations and then go back to the Environmental Protection Agency seeking additional grants to clean up the sites. The plan is to build an inventory using local resources and a local committee to come up with potential end uses and then hire certified consultants to do assessment studies of them.
"Daviess County is acting as the lead county in this," said Jones. "We have a history of working with them on these types of multi-county projects. They also have one large potential project we feel will help get the attention of state and federal agencies."
That project is the old Tokheim property on Front Street in Washington. The factory was torn down, but the land has not been redeveloped. "Tokheim is the project everyone mentions when we talk about brownfields," said Jones. "It is the kind of big project that is tough for a community to assess and cleanup."
Tokheim may be a big example but there are a lot of other smaller projects throughout Daviess County that could need attention. "We have several sites," said Ron Arnold with the Daviess County Economic Development Corp. "The whole corridor along the railroad tracks may need to be looked at, the old Hoover buildings, bulk stations, even old gas stations."
Old dry cleaners and printing shops can be a problem," said Jones. "Brownfields are kind of like snowflakes. Each one is unique."
Brownfield projects are not new to the area. Some have been successfully redeveloped. "WestGate@Crane began as one of those projects," said Jones. "That area was filled with old apartments that were filled with asbestos. They had been abandoned and there were issues with crime and dumping in the area. A grant was worked up to clean it up, sewer lines were brought in and now the area is home to a lot of jobs."
Even the WestGate area still has some property that has enough questions that it is bogging down potential redevelopment. "There are a couple of them," explained Jones. "The WestGate Authority has looked at them, but hasn't moved forward because they don't know what they are getting into. They decided to leave them alone until they know what is there and if it is economically feasible to put it back into service."
Officials call the entire project one of land redevelopment. "No one will invest in something that is distressed and don't know what it will cost to fix," said Arnold.
"This is really an economic development issue," added Jones. "This should identify the problems and incentivize people to take on these problem properties. We also want to catch some of these things before they become major issues."
Just how many major issues or potential major issues might be in the area is part of the unknown at this point. "It really is hard to quantify," said Jones. "There is no way of knowing without an inventory. We believe that the number of sites may be large but the level of contamination may not be severe."
Knowing the exact nature of the environmental problems on those properties though and even getting some of them cleaned up and back into service is important. "It is especially important in rural areas," said Jones. "It can help rebuild communities and keep them from sprawling out."
Local officials point out that even though the project is taking its first steps this could take some time to complete. "We are working on the inter-local agreements," said Jones. "If we get funding we probably won't hear anything until February or March of 2015. After that we will begin building prioritization committees and bring in environmental consultants to help identify some of the redevelopment opportunities."