For decades, petroleum and arsenic seeped into the groundwater aquifer below a Union Pacific Railroad rail yard a stone’s throw from Fremont Boulevard.

Today, after the city of Las Vegas leveraged millions in Environmental Protection Agency funding and private capital, the city and federal agency say it’s one of the nation’s biggest environmental success stories, where a so-called polluted “brownfield” became a community asset — Symphony Park.

Kurt Goebel, senior vice president, principal geologist and environmental division manager at the firm Converse Consultants, said he has worked on the project with the city for years.

During a Nevada Brownfields Conference tour of sites across the Las Vegas Valley on Wednesday, Goebel said Symphony Park’s transformation shows what is possible when local governments, nonprofits, tribes or developers make use of federal dollars to clean up brownfields.

“Symphony Park really is the ‘Cinderella’ story of brownfields,” Goebel said. “It started with a vision. It was a blighted railroad property, and, ultimately, it evolved.”

Symphony Park is now Las Vegas’ most up-and-coming neighborhood. It’s the site of the Smith Center for the Performing Arts, the Discovery Children’s Museum, the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, a hotel, an Italian restaurant and several mixed-use apartment buildings with current or future retail attached on the bottom floor.

On Wednesday and Thursday, some 150 Nevada officials, environmental consultants and others got a crash course from EPA Region 9, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection and the Center for Creative Land Recycling on how they might go about the redevelopment of the state’s brownfields in the future.

What is a brownfield, anyway?

The EPA’s definition of a brownfield is broad, and it can apply to any property where the “presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant” prevents its use or development.

Nevada’s state environment division provides brownfield grants, and the EPA doles out funds directly, too.

Brownfields are identified at a much lower level than the EPA Superfund program, where the federal agency steps in to clean up the country’s most polluted areas. Only about 1,300 Superfund sites exist, but the EPA says 450,000 brownfields cover the nation.

That’s a conservative estimate considering that many cities have not taken a full inventory of possible sites, according to Stephanie Steinbrecher, the EPA’s regional brownfields project manager.

Aside from Symphony Park, Steinbrecher pointed to successful brownfield cleanups of the Belvada Hotel in Tonopah, a former blighted bank building, and the Centennial Fine Arts Center in Ely, a performing arts center. Both projects used funding to abate asbestos issues.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin praised his agency’s brownfields program in an interview with Las Vegas Review-Journal last month, when he visited Symphony Park and a Las Vegas Valley data center owned by Switch.

“Now, you have a vision being realized of an extraordinarily beautiful new community here in Las Vegas that you can make the argument is already thriving,” Zeldin said of Symphony Park. “It has beautiful sidewalks, great architecture, very professional construction. It’s certainly come a long way.”

The Trump administration and Zeldin have drawn the ire of environmentalists for the rollback of rules meant to hold polluters accountable, statements of climate change denialism, allowing endangered species act exemptions for oil and gas companies in the Gulf of Mexico and the firing of longtime agency bureaucrats.

The EPA brownfields program has largely survived the extreme tightening of the federal government’s purse strings.

In the financial year 2026, the agency planned to issue 26 cleanup grants up to $4 million, up from its usual 8 to 10 large grants.

More cleanups coming to valley

Attendees got a glimpse Wednesday into brownfields of Southern Nevada’s past, including one that is a resource for North Las Vegas residents.

Using a brownfield grant, the city of North Las Vegas helped turn an abandoned NV Energy service station into the Dolores Huerta Resource Center, which offers everything from English classes to career services.

Maggie Mora, the city’s community outreach manager, said the old building was anything but inviting.

“It was like a dungeon,” Mora said.

According to the state environment division’s website, three current projects underway in Nevada include a mine tunnel in Dayton, a gas station in Wells and the Nishikida Laundry Building in Gardnerville.

The state agency’s brownfields program coordinator, Scott Goldfarb, said more projects are underway, including a project by the nonprofit Olive Crest to rehabilitate a central Las Vegas building to provide family services.

North Las Vegas spokeswoman Liz Abebefe said the city’s redevelopment agency is working with a contractor to identify sites that could be potential brownfield cleanups. It has a $400,000 EPA grant to fund cleanups in its downtown.

The city of Las Vegas’ master plan put forward a goal of eliminating all brownfields within city limits by 2050. In addition to Symphony Park, it lists three city-owned buildings in the Historic Westside as targets for cleanups.

Within Henderson, efforts continue to redevelop properties along Boulder Highway using EPA brownfield assessment grants. Clark County did not return a request for comment about whether it has any sites officials would like to clean up.

“There is no limit to what a brownfield can become, as long as it’s aligned with your community’s goals and your vision for these properties,” said Steinbrecher, of the EPA. “There are lots of examples all across Nevada.”

Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.