About

In the late 1990s, the Town commissioned work that led to the development of the Comprehensive Plan.  The overarching goal of this plan was to better position the Town for growth and development and to better plan for the allocation of resources and funding.  One of the goals of this plan was to rehabilitate the Moratoc Park as a centerpiece of the riverfront, including the redevelopment of surrounding properties.  The Town believed that they could effectively use their most accessible natural resource, the Roanoke River, to attract tourists. 

In June 2011, the Town of Williamston was awarded two $200,000 grants from the Environmental Protection Agency to build a sustainable Brownfields program (read more). A Brownfield is an abandoned, idle, or underutilized property where the real or perceived threat of environmental contamination has hindered its development. The Brownfields Assessment grants will target potential properties throughout the Town but will focus on Williamston’s River Road area, where properties adjoin or are in close proximity to the Roanoke River.  These properties are also adjacent to or in close proximity to Moratoc Park and would be part of a planned expansion of the riverfront for recreation and associated commercial uses.  It is the Town’s plan to redevelop these nearby properties to provide additional opportunities for citizens and visitors and enhance those opportunities by providing additional recreation and economic development benefits.

The Town’s Brownfields project consists of four components; community outreach, site inventory, environmental site assessments, and cleanup and redevelopment planning.Community outreach efforts will keep stakeholders in the Town and County well informed and can provide valuable input into the identification and ranking of sites, environmental assessment results, potential health and safety impacts, and redevelopment strategies. Site inventory activities will identify potential Brownfields sites and prioritize them for subsequent assessment. Phase I and Phase II Environmental Site Assessments will be performed on select sites based on their priority to identify and characterize potential environmental conditions at the sites. Finally, select sites will be studied for cleanup and redevelopment options.

Mr. Brent Kanipe, the Town’s Director of Planning and Development, is the project manager for this endeavor. The Town hired Mid-Atlantic Associates, Inc. (www.MAAonline.com), an environmental and engineering firm headquartered in Raleigh, NC, to assist the Town with this project.

To learn more about EPA’s Brownfields program, click here (http://www.epa.gov/brownfields/index.html).