By Austin Arceo
SHELBURN — A Sullivan County town received a grant of more than $150,000 to clean up the site of a grain elevator that burned.
The Indiana Finance Authority awarded Shelburn a brownfields remediation grant of $164,413 to clean up contaminants at the site of the Smith Grain Elevator at 98 South Thomas Street in the Sullivan County town. The site consists of three parcels that comprise 2.77 acres of land, according to a comment letter from a member of the Indiana brownfields program that was forwarded by Jay Southwood, Shelburn’s clerk-treasurer.
“We had a preliminary grant …,” Southwood said, “and this is a follow-up grant to, I guess, do a major clean-up to” make it “environmentally safe again.”
From the 1920s until 2000, the site housed a grain elevator until it was destroyed, the letter reported. The letter also concludes that groundwater and soil at the site “may have been impacted by historic bulk petroleum storage operations conducted on” an adjacent property.
Southwood said that a business owner is interested in purchasing the site and building a factory, though he declined to elaborate. He also said that the city could not afford to clean the site without the awarded funding.
“It’s a big economic plus, to have that grant program the state offers,” Southwood said.
The City of Sullivan also received a grant. The Indiana Finance Authority awarded the city a brownfield assessment grant for $24,753 for “Sullivan/Washington St. Rehab,” according to a finance authority-issued press release.
Cortney Stover, communications manager for the Indiana Finance Authority, said that the Sullivan Planning Commission submitted the grant application. A message left with the contact number for the grant was not returned last week.
Austin Arceo can be reached at (812) 231-4214 or austin.arceo@tribstar.com.
