State grant funding is going toward testing for contamination in four sites in Osceola County.
The 83-thousand dollar grant will be used to determine if past uses of the sites, including truck maintenance and dry cleaning, caused the contamination.
Julie Lowe is a brownfield redevelopment coordinator with the Department of Environmental Quality who awarded the grant. She said the properties being looked at are located in Marion, Reed City, and Evart.
“For all of these properties we’re doing phase one environmental assessments, there’s also funding for phase twos and baseline environmental assessments. So we’re just doing soil and groundwater testing on these properties to see if we have contamination in both the groundwater and in the soil.”
Lowe said cleanup efforts depend on whether soil or groundwater is polluted.
She said the plan is to accumulate future funding so that if any of the sites are contaminated, the state has the means to return the properties to productive use.
Lowe said the sites will be assessed in the fall.