LEWISTON – Two federal grants totaling $400,000 would help clean up the W. S. Libbey Mill site and train local people to do the work.

The city is applying for two $200,000 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency grants for pollution cleanup at old industrial sites. The first is aimed at cleaning up the W. S. Libbey Mill site. Alyson Stone, city grants coordinator, said competition for cleanup grants is stiff.

“There are many, many cities trying for those grants,” Stone said. “We’ve had some of the preliminary assessment work done, so we feel pretty good. The city’s odds are better for a $200,000 job-training grant. That money would be used to train as many as 75 local people to do the environmental cleanup work.

“It would allow people to come out of this with a certification for doing this kind of work,” Stone said. “It’s a very valuable thing for employers. This allows the trained employee to go right to an employer.”

The grants are specifically for “brownfield” sites, contaminated properties that are valuable to a community for potential redevelopment or reuse, according to the EPA.

The city of Lewiston won a $500,000 brownfield grant to clean up the Bates Mill complex two years ago, about the same time it won a $75,000 grant in to help evaluate contamination at the 1.9-acre W.S. Libbey Mill site.

Stone and other city officials are set to discuss the grants and possible job education benefits at 6 p.m Tuesday in the B Street Community Center, 57 Birch St.

“We were very close to getting it last year, and we’ve gotten good feedback on our applications,” Stone said. “We understand that the EPA really wants to establish a training program in this region, so they have been very encouraging.”

staylor@sunjournal.com