CHESTERFIELD, N.H. (MyKeeneNow) The Town of Chesterfield has secured a $1.5 million federal grant to clean up the former Electro-Sonics property in Spofford Village, a long-contaminated industrial site where printed circuit board manufacturing left behind hazardous pollution decades ago.

The funding, announced this week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will be used to remediate the former Electro-Sonics facility at 409 and 411 Route 9A. The award is part of nearly $7 million in Brownfields funding allocated to projects across New Hampshire.

The roughly 0.4-acre property consists of two adjoining commercial parcels containing two main buildings, a smaller structure that once housed part of an industrial wastewater treatment system and a septic leach field shared by both parcels.

Electro-Sonics manufactured printed circuit boards at the location until closing in 1984. According to EPA records, untreated industrial wastewater contaminated with volatile organic compounds and heavy metals was discharged into an on-site leach field between 1968 and 1974. The contamination caused repeated wastewater overflows that reached nearby Partridge Brook.

EPA documents also indicate some wastewater may have been discharged directly into the earthen basement floor of the site’s original mill building. After a wastewater treatment facility was installed in 1974, officials believe those discharges to the ground and brook ceased.

Following the plant’s closure, portions of the property were repurposed for warehouse and office space under various owners. Today, sections of one building remain occupied by commercial tenants, including a furniture refinishing business and several small businesses that use the property for storage and warehouse operations.

The EPA’s Brownfields Cleanup Grant will allow Chesterfield to address contamination that has complicated redevelopment of the property while helping prepare the site for future economic use.

The Chesterfield project received one of the state’s largest individual Brownfields awards this year. The EPA said the program helps communities clean up contaminated properties so they can be safely redeveloped for businesses, housing, recreation and other local priorities while protecting public health and the environment.

Other New Hampshire recipients this year include Berlin, Lincoln, Somersworth and the Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Regional Planning Commission. The Monadnock Economic Development Corporation also received a $500,000 supplemental award for its Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund to support cleanup and redevelopment projects in Keene, Jaffrey and Lebanon.

EPA officials said grant funding will be released once recipients complete all required legal and administrative steps.