By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Plans to put a hotel on the old W.S. Libbey Mill site received a $200,000 boost from the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday.

Lewiston picked up $400,000 in two brownfields grants, one to remove contaminated soil at the mill and the other $200,000 grant to study development sites around the downtown. Lewiston has received $1.6 million in the environmental grants since the EPA began the program in 1995.

“And it’s all been money that’s aimed for economic development,” said Greg Mitchell, Lewiston assistant city administrator.

In all, the EPA announced $1.6 million in grants for five Maine communities and two regional planning groups. The Androscoggin Valley Council of Governments received $200,000 to study cleanup sites around western Maine, and Norway picked up $68,000 to remove asbestos from the Cummings Mill complex.

Lewiston developer Travis Soule of Solo Properties plans to redevelop the Cowan and Libbey mills as condominiums, retail stores and restaurant space by 2007. Plans also call for a nine-story hotel on the current Libbey Mill site later.

Earlier money paid for environmental studies there, according to Lincoln Jeffers, Lewiston’s deputy development director. Stephen Dyer, environmental engineer for city of Lewiston consultants Aquarion Engineering, said the money should just cover costs to remove the soil. The soil contains metals and poly-aromatic hydrocarbons, which can cause cancer.

The second grant will be used to evaluate the environmental risk at other downtown developments.

“Almost any site downtown can qualify, just based on the historical extent of manufacturing here,” said Mitchell. “One of the first things we need to do for any site downtown is prove that it has a clean bill of health. That’s what we’ll use this for.”

Past grants in Lewiston have paid for the cleanups at the Bates Mill Enterprise Complex and the development of Railroad Park, and a job training program.

Regional focus

Another grant will bring that process to rural western Maine, according to Bob Thompson, executive director of AVCOG. The $200,000 grant will be loaned to rural communities to pay for environmental assessments there.

“Small, rural communities tend to be ignored in this process,” Thompson said. There are numerous rural business sites languishing, he said. Evaluating them will clear the way to get them developed.

“Until they are evaluated, no growth can happen, so this is an important tool to assist these communities and put them back to work,” he said.

Bob Shinner, vice president of Western Maine Finance, said a $68,000 grant to Norway’s Downtown Revitalization Corp. will open up the old Cummings Mill for development. The old wooden dowel mill has asbestos in six of the 15 buildings on the site, and it will cost as much as $85,000 to remove it.

“In my mind, this is one of the most beautiful development sites in western Maine,” he said. “It’s just lying fallow now, this is an essential ingredient to turn it back around.”

Other brownfields recipients in Maine are:

• The city of Brewer, which receives $350,000 to study costs to clean up the abandoned Eastern Fine Paper Mill site.

• The Kennebec Valley Council of Governments, $200,000 to study cleaning sites in Waldo, Kennebec and Somerset counties.

• The city of Portland, $200,000 to study eight sites around the city.

• The city of Bath, $200,000 to study abandoned and deteriorating properties along Bath’s waterfront.