The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded Giles County, Virginia, a $3,693,800 Brownfields cleanup grant to remediate contamination at the former Leas & McVitty/New River Tannery site. The award comes through the EPA's Brownfields Multipurpose, Assessment and Cleanup grant program, the federal vehicle that funds assessment and remediation of properties where real or suspected hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants complicate redevelopment.

For Giles County, the grant converts a 130-year-old industrial legacy into a fundable remediation project. Leas McVitty Inc. opened its tannery in Giles County in 1894, drawn by the abundance of locally available timber then central to the tanning industry. The company also operated facilities in Pennsylvania and Salem, Virginia. The site now enters the cleanup pipeline rather than the assessment phase — the grant dollars are designated specifically for cleanup activities at the county-owned brownfield parcels.

U.S. Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA), whose Ninth District includes Giles County, announced the award and framed it in economic terms.

"Redevelopment of brownfield sites in Virginia's Ninth District are promising projects that account for economic growth potential," Griffith said in a statement following the EPA notice. "This EPA Brownfields Grant for nearly $3.7 million helps Giles County conduct brownfield site cleanup activities."

A regional funding pattern

The Giles County award extends a funding trail EPA Brownfields dollars have cut across Southwest Virginia since 2019. Communities in the Ninth District that have received Brownfields Program funding over that period include Pennington Gap in Lee County, Dublin and Pulaski in Pulaski County, Bluefield in Tazewell County, Martinsville City and Bristol City, according to EPA grant data.

In 2025, the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission — which serves Lee, Wise and Scott counties and the City of Norton — received multiple Brownfields-related EPA grants supporting community-wide assessments of local brownfields. Those are assessment dollars: inventory, planning, environmental assessment and community outreach. The Giles County grant is a different instrument, a cleanup grant, which moves a site from characterization toward actual contaminant removal and reuse-readiness.

Griffith has made the program a legislative focus. Before his July 2025 appointment as Health Subcommittee Chairman, he chaired the Subcommittee on Environment, and in March 2025 he chaired a hearing on the EPA's Brownfields Program. Duane Miller, executive director of the LENOWISCO Planning District Commission and a Scott County native, testified to the panel on the program's importance to Southwest Virginia communities. Griffith also delivered remarks during a March 2026 legislative hearing on the program.

What the program buys

The Brownfields Program funds states, communities and other stakeholders to prevent, assess, safely clean up and sustainably reuse brownfield sites. The grant structure matters for how smaller jurisdictions access it. According to the EPA, Assessment Coalition grants are designed for one "lead" eligible entity to partner with two to four eligible entities that lack the capacity to apply for and manage their own EPA cooperative agreement — a mechanism that lets communities like those in the LENOWISCO district pool administrative capacity they could not build alone.

Cleanup grants such as Giles County's are the downstream step. They pay for the remediation work that determines whether a former tannery site can carry new industrial, commercial or civic use.

What to watch

The near-term milestone is the scope and timeline of the cleanup work plan Giles County develops under the $3.69 million award — which parcels of the former Leas & McVitty/New River Tannery holdings get remediated first, and to what standard. The county's execution of the cleanup, tracked through EPA's Acres reporting system, will determine when the site re-enters the local tax base and what redevelopment projects can realistically follow. For a region that has stacked assessment grants since 2019, the Giles County award is one of the first tests of whether Southwest Virginia can convert federally funded assessment into completed remediation and economic reuse.