A landfill contaminated with heavy metals near the Hanover Street bridge was once a waterfront park where Baltimore City residents could fish and swim.
Now, the National Aquarium plans to restore the 13-acre property, transforming it from a former dump for construction debris to a park and a new location for the aquarium?s Center for Aquatic Life and Conservation.
“We want to reclaim this land,” said Brent Whitaker, the aquarium?s executive deputy director of biological programs, standing on the edge of the site along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River.
The Environmental Protection Agency awarded the center a $200,000 brownfields grant to help clean up the South Baltimore site, which was created by filling the shallow river with building materials.
Although not a windfall of cash by government standards, the money will give a boost to the initial cleanup and help open up private investments, said Donald Welsh, administrator for the EPA?s mid-Atlantic region.
“It will help remediate the historic contamination,” Welsh said at a news conference announcing the grant Thursday.
The cleanup is estimated to cost about $800,000, he said.
Since the inception of the EPA?s brownfields grants in 2002, 140 communities in the mid-Atlantic have received $52 million in grants, Welsh said.
This year 209 communities nationwide are receiving grant funding to assess and clean up brownfields, which are abandoned industrial properties where contamination stands in the way of redevelopment, according to the EPA.
“We?re looking for sites with good prospects for future use and a demonstrated capacity to get it done,” Welsh said.
The aquarium plans to build a park with trails and a fishing pier and an Animal Care and Conservation Education Center. This center would replace the Fells Point location, whose lease expires in 2013, aquarium officials said.
The park will be part of the first phase after cleanup, and aquarium officials later will decide future phases, said Denise Aranoff-Brown, senior marketing director at the aquarium. A total cost of the project hasn?t been determined.
“We?re committed to this community,” Whitaker said.
