Grant Helps Make Former Battery Site Usable

The Reporter of Fond du Lac, Wisonsin, says a $100,000 Brownfields grant will be used to finish the site cleanup and renovate a building at a former lead battery factory in Ashford, Wisconsin, where contamination occurred before stricter environmental controls were in place.

The award will go toward the completion of the environmental cleanup process started in 1999 through a team effort by the Town of Ashford, Fond du Lac County, Fond du Lac County Economic Development Corp., the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and the Wisconsin Department of Commerce. With the addition of the new grant, the cost of the cleanup and building improvements totals about $500,000 thus far.

An area business has offered to buy the former site of Ironsides Premium Battery of Wisconsin Inc. Once the EPA issues a letter of closure for remediation of the site, the property will be available for purchase.

“An investigation found that a small portion of the land, occupied since the 1930s by the battery company, contained high levels of lead and arsenic,” says County Planner Sam Tobias. “The state came in under an emergency response action and hauled away the contaminated soil and cleaned the property. They left in the fall of 2000, but it still wasn’t clean enough. We’ve been working on it ever since.” In addition to the contaminated soil, there are two structures which need decontamination.

Since June 1998, the Brownfields Grant Program has awarded close to $30 million to 72 projects across Wisconsin, resulting in the return of more than 830 acres of abandoned or contaminated sites to useable condition. According to the Wisconsin Ddepartment of Commerce, the awards helped to provide more than 4,000 new jobs.