The federal Environmental Protection Agency will give the town of Kit Carson $200,000 to clean up contamination in the Paxson Building downtown.
“Today’s announcement is an investment in Kit Carson’s future,” Carol Rushin, the EPA’s acting regional administrator, said in a statement. “This grant will help reclaim the Paxson site and catalyze the redevelopment of the town’s commercial district.”
The Paxson Building once housed an auto dealership, gas station, repair shop and restaurant. It is contaminated by fuel, oil and asbestos. It is the largest of four contaminated — or brownfield — sites on the main highway through the small town in eastern Colorado’s Cheyenne County.
The money will be used not only to clean up the building, but to prepare it for reuse.
