Amador County – Jackson City Council and Amador County Recreation Agency held a public hearing Monday to take input on a Proposition 84 recreation grant for Oro de Amador park land within the city of Jackson.

City Manager Mike Daly said ACRA is lead agency in seeking the grant for the 155-acre property, which is vacant, and was the mine tailings depository for the Kennedy Gold Mine. The city owns the property, and has worked with the Department of Toxic Substance Control, which along with the EPA awarded assessment grants of the property. The mine tailings left arsenic on the property, and tests showed it OK for “trespassing” uses, that is, going through the park once every six months.

Daly said the entire property has been tested by the Department of Toxic Substance Control, and cleanup is the next phase. There are some “hot spots with high levels of arsenic,” and the next step is to get money to clean up the property. The city submitted three cleanup applications in the fall, and should hear the fate of those in the next few weeks.

Daly said “when you are out on the property, it’s like nowhere else in the town, nowhere else in the county.”

ACRA Executive Director Tracey Towner-Yep said her agency’s role is to gather the facts to see what people would like to see by way of a park on the Oro de Amador property.

Towner-Yep said Monday’s was the best attended public hearing so far that has been held regarding the Oro de Amador land. She said a “tree fort idea from the fourth grade class was probably the coolest idea” so far. She said Prop 84 offers up to $5 million in grants for different improvements to parkland. A survey being distributed on paper, or which can be filled out on the ACRA website, will help determine how the park grant will be designed.

Towner-Yep said the amount of the grant applied for depends on the survey, and she would like to see Jackson’s park buck a Prop 84 trend. Of $160 million awarded in Prop 84 funding, $140 million of it “went to big urban areas.” She asked that parents take surveys and tell what they want.

She said the goal is to put together a grant application by July 1, and they could get a response by November, or maybe March. She said the selection process last year received $1.6 billion in requests for $1.64 million given out last year.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.