Who we are

The City of South Bend, Mishawaka, and St. Joseph County in Indiana joined together to form a Brownfield Coalition to successfully apply for US EPA Brownfield grant funding in 2013. Through concerted effort, the comprehensive, data-driven approach that the coalition partners proposed to the EPA resulted in a three-year $600,000 grant funded project. We are the Brownfield Coalition, tasked with using these funds to identify, prioritize, and assess brownfield conditions in South Bend, Mishawaka, and throughout all of St. Joseph County.

What We Do

We are deploying an innovative approach to assess barriers to redevelopment throughout St. Joseph County. Through a cooperative effort the Brownfield Coalition successfully proposed a 3-year $600,000 US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Brownfields Community-wide Assessment Grant funded project. By combining innovative data mining, digital technology, community condition data gathering, and community planning efforts with public input, we can more effectively and efficiently target brownfield redevelopment need.  In a collaborative approach we can better prioritize and leverage brownfield assessment grant funds on sites that present environmental challenges to redevelopment.

What We Seek

We seek your help.  We seek to promote cooperation, input and understanding to enable redevelopment throughout St. Joseph County. Brownfields are sites that pose challenges to redevelopment due to perceived or real contamination.  The costs of determining if a property is contaminated, and if so, at what level, are often a first barrier to breaking a site out of a cycle of stagnation. This EPA grant funded effort intends to leverage community input, existing data, and new community condition data to prioritize sites for efficient use of the available site assessment funds. We seek broad community input and assistance in this cooperative effort. If you are concerned about a site in the community, or if you have a site that may need funding to conduct environmental assessment please contact us!