State Loan to Salvage Toxic Site

Touting a program to turn toxic former industrial sites into neighborhoods, state officials gave developers a $700,000 loan Tuesday to help turn a former battery recycling facility in Murietta into a 50-home community.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control delivered the money through a 2-year-old program known as CLEAN--Cleanup Loan and Environmental Assistance to Neighborhoods.

The loans target California’s “brownfields”--mostly abandoned pieces of industrial property with a history of pollution and other environmental problems. With the money secured Tuesday, a development team called Crossroads Investors III will clean up a 20-acre property on Adams Avenue in Murietta, near Interstate 15 in southern Riverside County.

Between 1955 and 1960, the site was used as a lead battery recycling facility. Riverside County health inspectors have found elevated levels of lead on the site, which will be treated with the loan money.

This is the sixth loan issued through the program. The loans have been worth a total of about $5.2 million.

Other Southern California loans have included $950,000 to clean up a former chemical manufacturing company in Santa Fe Springs and $1 million to clean up a former paint and lacquer manufacturer in Los Angeles.