Pasco County is poised to go looking for land tainted with gasoline, motor oil, dry cleaning chemicals and other hazardous contaminants with a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Additionally, the federal government awarded the county a $195,000 grant to clean up contaminated land discovered during the construction of the Lewis Abraham Community Center at Stanley Park in Lacoochee. The county said it was the only community in the nation awarded both an assessment and cleanup grant under the $54 million federal program, commonly known as the Brownfields Program.
The assessments will be targeted toward commercial corridors like U.S. 19, U.S. 41 and U.S. 301, Melanie Kendrick, the county’s acting program administrator of its Office of Economic Growth, said via email.