City of Tacoma Awarded $300,000 in EPA Brownfields Job Training Grant funds to train workers for a better, greener future (WA)
(Tacoma, Wash. – July 20, 2011) The
City of Tacoma will receive $300,000 in EPA Brownfields grant
funding to provide job training to assess, manage and clean up
solid and hazardous waste sites. Celebrating their fifth EPA
financed job training program, the City of Tacoma and its partners
boast a 75% placement rate for its graduates at an average wage of
$13.74.
Brownfields was originally focused on training
workers to transform rundown, largely urban, industrial real estate
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 helps provide
workers with 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 especially proud of because
every day, the Brownfields program puts local workers on the job
improving the places they call home.”
The City of Tacoma and Clover Park plan to train
90 students with the latest grant and expects to place a minimum of
65 graduates in environmental jobs. The City plans to track the
success of its graduates for one year following their
training.
Trainees will receive certifications in 40-hour
Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response, industrial spill
response, lead and asbestos abatement, and Operational Safety and
Health Administration construction readiness. Participants also
will receive instruction in one of three tracks focused on
life-cycle assessment, wastewater treatment apprenticeship, or
green site remediation.
Since 1998, 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 EPA’s Brownfields Workforce
Development 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