NEW YORK CITY-The Bloomberg administration on Monday launched aprogram to award grants intended to help offset the costs ofstudying and beginning to clean up brownfield sites. It will makemore than $9 million in small grants available to community-basedorganizations over the next several years, the administrationsays.

Known as the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation’sBrownfield Incentive Grant program, the initiative is said to bethe first in a series of new programs targeted at environmentallycontaminated sites. Each of those programs “will help landownersand developers clean up contaminated properties and bring them backinto productive use,” Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith said in aspeech before the New York City Brownfield Partnership.

The BIG program will be administered by the Office ofEnvironmental Remediation, established by Mayor Michael Bloombergtwo years ago to implement the brownfield goals of PlaNYC.Bloomberg had unveiled the PlanNYC series of environmentalinitiatives on Earth Day in 2007.