All News Releases By Date

Boston Non-Profit Corporation Receives Brownfields Environmental Job Training Grant

Release Date: 03/06/2008
Contact Information: Paula Ballentine, (617) 918-1027

(Boston—March 6, 2008) A Boston based company is one of thirteen communities in ten states to receive a portion of $2.5 million in job training grants geared toward cleaning up contaminated properties and turning them into productive community assets. Under its brownfields Initiative, EPA has awarded JFYNetWorks a grant of $200,000.

JFYNetWorks is Boston's largest workforce and career development training center for youth and adults. Since 1993, JFYNetWorks has offered Environmental Technology training as one of its high-skill career ladder programs as part of an initiative to train and place Boston residents in the environmental technology industry. In 1998, EPA selected the JFY Environmental Technology Training as one of the first 10 national Brownfields Job Training Pilots.

"JFYNetWorks is proud to have been an EPA Brownfields Job Training program since the inception of the program in 1998,” said Gary Kaplan, Executive Director of JFYNetWorks. “We have worked hard to develop the best environmental job training program possible and we strive to keep it relevant to the latest science, the latest regulations, and the needs of the industry. We are delighted to receive this year's award and we look forward to continuing our decade-long productive relationship with our good friends at EPA Region I and in Washington."

In partnership with Suffolk University and UMass/Lowell, the JFY Environmental Technology Training prepares candidates for jobs as field and lab technicians, hazardous materials handlers, emergency response technicians, decontamination technicians, environmental educators, and other jobs in the environmental and biomedical services industry. To date, JFYNetWorks has also received over $975,000 from other federal sources including National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences’ (NIEHS) Minority Worker Training and US Department of Energy’s (US DOE) Education Improvement Fund.

Since 1998, EPA has awarded more than $23 million in brownfields job training funds. The grants will teach environmental assessment and cleanup job skills to individuals living in low-income areas near brownfields sites. Approximately 4,000 people have completed training programs, with more than 2,500 obtaining employment in the environmental field, earning an average wage of $13.93 per hour. The program is designed to ensure that the economic benefits derived from brownfields redevelopment remain in the affected communities.

EPA's brownfields program encourages redevelopment of America's estimated 450,000 abandoned and contaminated waste sites. Since the beginning of the program, EPA has awarded more than 1,000 assessment grants totaling approximately $262 million, 200 revolving loan fund grants totaling more than $200 million, and 325 cleanup grants totaling approximately $65 million. EPA's brownfields assistance has attracted more than $9.9 billion in private investment and helped attract more than 45,000 jobs.

Information on grant recipients: www.epa.gov/brownfields/jt1106/jt1106.htm