The Bourbon County Fiscal Court will receive $4 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated ground at a former dump near the historically Black Westside neighborhood in Paris.
The city originally built the 20-acre dump in 1965, before the EPA was established. A nearby incinerator was built later, with the dump itself eventually turned into a waste transfer site. The property was fully demolished earlier this year.
“If you lived in the neighborhood for the last 70, 80, 90 years, you’d have vehicles — primarily trucks — driving through your neighborhood with solid waste,” Bourbon County Judge-Executive Mike Williams said.
In order to qualify for the federal cleanup grant, Paris agreed to transfer ownership of the land to the Bourbon County Fiscal Court.
Anna Allen Edwards is the founder of the Paris Westside Neighborhood Association and a former city commissioner. She’s been working to move the transfer site out of the neighborhood since 2019.
“There was only one way in and one way out, and I wanted to see about having a road that would take us out to the bypass, so people could get safely in and out of the community,” she said.
Edwards said the area was once called Fairview, named for its scenic nature. It was also known for its old baseball field, where Black baseball teams would play due to segregation.
“People would come from as far as Cincinnati, and what have you, to play ball over there in Fairview, over there at that baseball field,” Williams said.
Engineering firm Tetra Tech is in charge of the ground testing and has been taking soil samples to measure the extent of the pollution. The firm will remove and replace any contaminated soil in the area.
Williams said the earliest Bourbon County will receive the money is in October, at the beginning of the federal government’s next fiscal year. The county has four years to use the grant money, but he expects the cleanup to be much faster.
“Our consulting firm, Tetra Tech, can't determine yet how deep the contamination might be. So, literally, we don't know how deep the recovery of the soil has to be,” he said. “We don't know whether it's 10 feet down, or 20 feet or whatever the case is.”
Meanwhile, the city is discussing potential plans for redevelopment, including turning the area into a park with walking trails and an amphitheater.
