Official praises project

The DEP secretary praised one company's efforts to reuse an industrial area.
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- The Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Kathleen A. McGinty, thinks that Winner Steel Services is proof that Pennsylvania is still a manufacturing state.
McGinty toured the steel galvanizing operation on Sharpsville Avenue and got a quick look at the adjacent Winner Industrial Park project Thursday.
Winner Steel occupies the southern end of what was once the Westinghouse Electric Corp. plant, and the industrial park development encompasses the rest of the remaining Westinghouse plant, about 1 million square feet of industrial and office space.
The site is now owned by Winner Development LLC.
Project plans
Winner Steel is in the process of adding a third galvanizing line, which should be operational in about six weeks, said James E. Winner Jr., company chairman.
The project will add 110 jobs to the galvanizing operation, which already has more than 200 employees.
Winner said his goal is to develop the industrial park as his legacy and have 1,000 people working at the complex.
Part of preparing the old brownfield site has been the environmental cleanup of PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) used in Westinghouse's production of electrical transformers. The federal Environmental Protection Agency put the plant on its Superfund hazardous site list in the late 1980s.
The cleanup, which has already cost Winner and predecessor owners more than $24 million, is expected to grow to more than $30 million, which would include some off-site work between the plant and the Shenango River.
The remaining cleanup work in the plant involves some of the industrial floor and that could be finished by the end of the year.
Re-establishment
"Contamination cleanup at the former Westinghouse site in downtown Sharon is bringing new jobs with family-sustaining wages and increased economic stability to the Shenango Valley," McGinty said.
She credited the company with making good use of the state's brownfield revitalization program.
Winner said he's already spent about $40 million on the expansion. The industrial park project is expected to cost about $10 million more.
Winner plans to ask the state for a grant of $10 million to help complete all of the financing.
McGinty also visited Three Sisters Farm, an organic produce grower near Sandy Lake, in the morning to tout the state's Energy Harvest Program, which provides grants for cleaner and renewable energy technologies.
The farm got a $6,100 grant to replace its electric water pump irrigation system with a solar-powered pumping unit.
McGinty also got a look at a proposed passive recreation area that was once an industrial dumping ground in Wheatland.
The site has been cleaned up under the direction of the DEP, and Wheatland has created a recreation authority to take ownership of the site adjacent to the Shenango River.