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Chester Waterfront Redevelopment Project Awarded Top Honors

Release Date: 9/28/2005
Contact Information: Bonnie Smith, 215-814-5543

Bonnie Smith, 215-814-5543

PHILADELPHIA – The Waterfront Redevelopment Project in Chester, Pa. has been
selected to receive the highest honor for innovative remediation -- the Phoenix Award.

“The Chester Waterfront Redevelopment Project is a terrific example of how to bring a property blighted by pollution back to productive reuse. EPA is proud to be a partner with PECO, an Exelon company, and the community in its huge redevelopment project,” said Donald S. Welsh, mid-Atlantic regional administrator.

The Waterfront Redevelopment Project in Chester, Pa. is being recognized for excellence in brownfields redevelopment. It is a 90-acre former industrial site along the Delaware River that is being converted into an office park with some open space.

This property was selected as a pilot project under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act brownfields pilot initiative in 2001. EPA, PECO and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection worked together to develop a plan to remediate the entire site. Redevelopment of this site will provide jobs and commercial and recreational space for the community. For additional information, see EPA’s website https://www.epa.gov/reg3wcmd/ca/pdf/peco.pdf.

The Phoenix awards, established in 1997, are given annually by the non-profit Phoenix Awards Institute to recognize innovative yet practical remediation projects at brownfields sites in the U.S. and abroad. Brownfields sites are former industrial sites where real or perceived contamination can be an impediment to reuse. These sites can, and are, being cleaned up and returned to productive reuse.

The Chester Waterfront Redevelopment project is among 14 winners from across the country which will be recognized at the brownfields 2005 conference in Denver, Colorado in November. More information about the Phoenix Awards is available at: http://www.phoenixawards.org/.