With $1 million grant, Dublin prepares to clean up industrial park

The town of Dublin is preparing to use a $1 million federal grant, among the first of its kind in Virginia, to tackle environmental issues at an industrial park.

The multipurpose grant recently awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will not just allow the town to assess how the Dublin Industrial Park’s previous large occupants — a World War II munitions factory and a textile plant — impacted the property, but also to plan how to clean it up.

Addressing the problems will help pave the way for further developing the site to attract new businesses as well as creating public amenities such as a dog park and a walking trail, said town manager Tye Kirkner.

“It’s been a huge asset to us, and now we have the opportunity to better that asset,” he said.

During World War II, the New River Ordnance Plant , aka the Dublin Bagging Plant, operated at what is now the industrial park, employing thousands who bagged powder used to fire artillery shells. After the war, Burlington Industries set up shop there, dyeing and finishing textiles until the plant closed in the 1980s. The town acquired the property in the 1990s to create the industrial park.

Today, businesses use about one-third of the town-owned park on Newbern Road off Interstate 81, and that revenue accounts for about a third of the total $6.3 million annual budget for Dublin, a Pulaski County town of approximately 2,600 residents.

“It has been our lifeblood because we are so small and we have limited general fund revenue,” Kirkner said.

Wytheville-based Camrett Logistics operates a 300,000-plus-square-foot facility in the industrial park, providing warehousing and distribution services to clients including the Volvo Trucks North America plant in Dublin ; in October, Camrett announced it would expand its footprint . Other businesses rent multiple smaller buildings for storage space.

But the property also has asbestos and potentially other hazards left over from its previous uses. The EPA grant will allow the town to evaluate five sites within 158 acres of the park and determine what needs to be done to fix the environmental problems. Although the grant is for five years, Kirkner said that “we would like to be much quicker.”

“I’d love to see it no longer than three years. A lot of that depends on what we find, when we find it and what the solutions are,” he said.

The EPA grant is one of two that together are the first of their kind awarded in Virginia under a new program designed not only to assess environmental problems at brownfields sites — places that are unused or underused because of industrial pollution — but also to help localities plan how to revitalize those properties.

The other recipient is the town of Dumfries in Prince William County, which also is getting $1 million. The grants, awarded in May, were celebrated late last month at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s annual Brownfields Conference in Lynchburg.

“Many communities that are under economic stress, particularly those located in areas that have experienced long periods of disinvestment, lack the resources needed to initiate brownfield cleanup and redevelopment projects,” the EPA said in a news release. “As brownfield sites are transformed into community assets, they attract jobs, promote economic revitalization and transform communities into sustainable and environmentally just places.”

The grant has a significant community engagement component, and Kirkner said town officials will call upon a variety of residents to share their thoughts on how the industrial park should be used once it’s cleaned up.

“This is a real opportunity for us to make sure we know what we have and take a look at developing the first steps for our future,” he said.

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