There are 27,000 known brownfields, or sites contaminated with pollutants, dotting the state. Many of them are locations where factories once stood.

About half are what the state calls “orphan sites,” meaning there’s no responsible party that owns the land and would otherwise have to clean up the pollutants, said Phil Roos, the director of the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.

“Sometimes people don’t even want to touch it if they don’t know the nature of the contamination or can’t address it,” Roos said.

That’s why the state is funding restoration projects, offering developers grants of up to $2 million, he said. The grants cover assessing what the contaminants are, the best ways of removing them and often helping with the first stage of clean-up, Roos said.

“Because w

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