EPA awards Cresson Township funding for former Ridge cleanup

Joshua Byers, The Tribune-Democrat, Johnstown, Pa.
Updated ·2 min read

CRESSON, Pa. – Cresson Township has been awarded a sizable U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grant to help complete remediation of the former Cresson Ridge site along old U.S. Route 22, officials said Monday.

Township supervisors board Chairman Scott Decoskey was pleased by the news, stating it took a lot of hard work and a lot of people putting in time to get to this point.

“It’s been on our plate for a long time,” he said. “We acquired the property with hopes of cleaning it up.”

Cresson Township received $325,000 for the work just months after the Redevelopment Authority of Cambria County awarded a contract to demolish five structures on the property.

Renee Daly, authority executive director, said the EPA funding will handle removal of hazardous materials from the former gas station site. A previous test revealed there are five underground storage tanks on the site.

She said the township was previously awarded brownfield clean up funding for the former Mr. Gas site nearby on Old U.S. Route 22.

Cresson Township took ownership of the property in 2009 and has worked with the redevelopment authority since roughly 2019 to clean it up.

Decoskey said the township has received interest in developing the former Cresson Ridge location throughout the years, but the in-ground tanks were always a deterrent.

The goal once remediation is complete is to have commercial development there and bring jobs to the area, he added.

“Today’s a victory for not just Cresson Township, the Cresson area, but Cambria County,” Cambria County Commissioner Thomas Chernisky said.

He lauded the use of Act 152 funding, which allows counties to collect $15 fees on mortgages and deeds to pay for demolitions of blighted structures to help remediate the property.

Chernisky said the Cresson Ridge site’s cleanup is a good example of collaboration.

“It shows everybody working together,” he said. “Local, county and federal government working together.”

The federal allocation is part of a $300 million grant awarded through President Joe Biden’s Investing in America initiative aimed at cleaning up brownfields across the country.

“Seventy-eight communities will receive 181 grant awards totaling $231 million through EPA’s MAC Grant Programs,” according to an EPA release.

EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan said the Biden considers “contaminated sites and blighted areas as an opportunity to invest in healthier, revitalized communities” and said that’s why “he secured historic funding under the bipartisan Infrastructure Law, supercharging EPA’s brownfields program to clean up contaminated properties in overburdened communities and bring them back into productive use.”