Brownfield Grants and Loans

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) Brownfield Grants and Loans program provides funding to assist local communities in putting contaminated, blighted, or functionally obsolete properties back into productive reuse while protecting human health and the environment. The program aims to revitalize abandoned sites, restore them to local tax rolls, encourage private investment, foster job creation, and reduce urban sprawl by maximizing the use of existing municipal infrastructure.

Funding is available to local units of government, including municipalities, brownfield redevelopment authorities, and economic development corporations. Eligible applicants must demonstrate administrative capability and financial stability, including having completed an independent audit within the preceding 24 months. Applicants must not be responsible for the contamination at the target site, except under specific statutory criteria where a local unit of government has an approved redevelopment plan yielding measurable economic benefits.

Eligible projects must involve properties known or suspected to be contaminated with economic development potential. For grant awards, the anticipated development must yield measurable economic benefits that exceed the grant amount requested. Eligible funding activities include baseline environmental assessments, phase investigations, due care activities, response and corrective actions, underground storage tank closures, hazardous waste and universal waste abatement, industrial cleaning, and limited demolition or debris removal when directly tied to environmental remediation.

Applications are accepted year-round on a rolling basis. Applicants must submit a completed application form detailing site ownership and history, environmental conditions, proposed eligible activities, itemized budgets, work schedules, local support resolutions, and an enforceable property access agreement if the site is not owned by the applicant. EGLE reviews complete applications and typically issues final funding determinations within 90 days.