Federal officials gathered in Chickamauga on Friday to announce a $4 million Environmental Protection Agency grant to clean up the former Crystal Springs textile mill, where more than 100 years of industrial activity left the soil and water contaminated with heavy metals and other pollutants.
“This … grant is not just about cleaning up an old industrial site,” Chickamauga Mayor Roy Evitte Parrish IV said at the event. “It’s about taking a property that has been an obstacle and turning it back into an opportunity.”
The brownfield grant will go toward extensive environmental remediation at the site, which has been vacant since the mill closed in 2013. The grant’s aim is to address pollution from over a century of textile production, which the city’s grant application estimates impacts more than 27,000 cubic yards of soil.
Brownfield sites include any property where redevelopment may be complicated by the presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant, according to the EPA.