More Brownfield grants will be sought after for properties in the Marshall County area, but the entity going after the grant will be the Michiana Area Council of Governments (MACOG).
A brownfield is a property previously used for industrial purposes or some commercial uses. It may have been contaminated with hazardous waste and the Brownfield Grant helped assess those properties and plan clean up strategies.
Marshall County, the City of Plymouth and the Town of Bourbon recently closed out a Brownfield grant where 18 properties were investigated in the county and 22 properties were tested for contamination or the presence of storage tanks.
Leah Thill from MACOG explained to the commissioners that another $600,000 Brownfield grant will be sought this time by MACOG and the funds will be negotiated next year between Marshall, Kosciuscko and Elkhart Counties. She said it may be easier for the money to be split between all three counties, thus the basis for a three-county coalition.
“Perhaps one county can’t use the full $600,000 in three years – that’s a lot of pressure,” said Thill. “MACOG has been in conversations with each of those three counties to come up with a way that the counties themselves could form a coalition similar to how the City of Plymouth, Town of Bourbon and Marshall County did and that would enable more flexibility. That would also centralize the administrative burden of that to MACOG rather than having each of those counties continue to administer the grant funds.”
The commissioners unanimously approved a motion to approve the formation of the coalition along with a letter of support for the grant once the paperwork is drafted.
