Zender Environmental Health and Research Group selected to receive a $300,000 EPA Job Training Grant funds to train workers for a brighter, greener future. (AK)
(Seattle – July 20, 2011) The Zender
Environmental Health and Research Group of Anchorage, Alaska, has
been selected to receive a $300,000 in Brownfields Workforce
Development and Job Training Grant from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. Zender will use the funding to hold job and
certification training for Native Alaskans in 40 of Alaska’s
most remote and rural villages.
Brownfields was originally focused on training
workers to transform rundown, largely urban, commercial eyesores
into revitalized, productive properties. Recently the program has
expanded to provide workers valuable job training to assess, manage
and clean up a broader universe of contaminated sites in a variety
of venues.
“Brownfields job training provides workers
the tools they need to launch a career or get a better job,”
said Dennis McLerran EPA Regional Administrator. “It’s
a program we’re proud of because every day, the Brownfields
program puts local workers on the job improving the places they
call home.”
Zender plans to train and place over 34
participants in environmental jobs, and track graduates for 18
months.
EPA has awarded more than $35 million under the
Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training Program. As of
May 2011, more than 6,683 individuals have been trained through the
program, and more than 4,400 have been placed in full-time
employment in the environmental field with an average starting
hourly wage of $14.65.
EPA established the Brownfields Job Training
Program to help residents take advantage of jobs created by the
assessment, as well as to spur cleanup and sustainable reuse of
Brownfields sites and to ensure that the economic benefits derived
from Brownfields redevelopment remain in the affected
communities.
For more on brownfields job training
grants: http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/job.htm
For more about Brownfields work in Region 10
please visit: http://yosemite.epa.gov/R10/CLEANUP.NSF/sites/bf