Six municipalities and organizations in Connecticut were awarded a total of $1 million in state grants that will help the entities in their efforts to remediate and redevelop clusters of blighted properties – also known as “brownfields” – and put them back into productive use.

The areas include Ansonia, Naugatuck, New Milford, Thompson, the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments and the Bridgeport Economic Development Corp.

The funds will be awarded by the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development through the recently launched Brownfield Area-Wide Revitalization Grant program. This is the second round of grants being awarded under the program. Created in 2015, the program encourages communities to consider areas such as neighborhoods, downtowns, waterfront districts or other sections with multiple blighted properties and develop strategies to assess, clean up and reuse the parcels for business, housing and public amenities that will generate jobs and revenues and revitalize the entire area.

“Blighted properties are an eyesore in neighborhoods and drive down property values,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said. “By making investments in these scarred, abandoned and otherwise unusable parcels of land, we can attract many more times that amount back in private investments while also making communities more attractive to business and job growth.”