Cleanup Funded for National Aquarium's Baltimore Brownfield

EPA has selected the nonprofit Center for Aquatic Life and Conservation to receive a $200,000 brownfields grant that will be used to clean up the center's Middle Branch site at 101 West Dickman Street in Baltimore.

"Brownfields initiatives demonstrate how environmental protection and economic development work hand-in-hand," said Donald Welsh, administrator for EPA's mid-Atlantic region. "This funding will help reclaim properties that have been unused for years and turn those sites into assets for the community, the environment and the economy."

The design of the new Center for Aquatic Life and Conservation was honored in the 2006 American Institute of Architects Maryland Design Awards competition. (Drawing courtesy the architects: Design Collective Inc., with Associate Architect Sasaki Associates Inc.)

Located along the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River, the site is contaminated with heavy metals, polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, and semi-volatile organic compounds.

The Center for Aquatic Life and Conservation project will reuse an old Department of Public Works warehouse and clean up and develop what was a wasteland of a site.

Situated across the river and south of the Cherry Hill community, the site degradation happened as construction and demolition debris from various projects around the city was brought in and dumped on a shallow flat in the river.

Cleanup is expected to help improve the water quality of the Middle Branch River.

"We are committed to the Middle Branch redevelopment, and look forward to being a part of reclaiming this vital part of Baltimore City and this waterfront," said Brent Whitaker, executive deputy director of biological programs at the National Aquarium.

"The first stage in this revitalization is this EPA grant, which gives us the ability to remediate the land that we acquired in February 2007."

This project supports plans to develop an Animal Care and Conservation Education Center, a waterfront and environmental demonstration park, and a public access trail and fishing pier.

Cleaning up and reinvesting in brownfield properties increases local tax bases, facilitates job growth, utilizes existing infrastructure, limits development pressures on undeveloped, open land, and both improves and protects the environment.

About 98 percent of Cherry Hill's residents are minorities, and the unemployment rate in this community is 18.2 percent, according to the project application documents.

The state of Maryland already has invested more than $5 million in the Center for Aquatic Life and Conservation project, and development of the site is expected to create jobs, and generate tax and tourism revenues.

Baltimore is one of 209 communities nationwide receiving more than $74 million in brownfields funding this year. Brownfields are abandoned industrial properties where redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived contamination. The EPA estimates there are more than 450,000 brownfields in the United States.

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