EPA Rolls Out Training Grants For Environmental Justice Communities

Sixteen technical assistance centers, created jointly by EPA and the Department of Energy, are expected to play a key role in helping facilitate funding under the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative.

Share This Article

Adam Ortiz, EPA Mid-Atlantic administrator, shown here in November 2022 at the Edmonston pumping station in Prince George's County, Maryland, visited the Ivy City neighborhood in Washington on Tuesday to award a $12 million grant for a technical assistance center. Credit: Aman Azhar/Inside Climate News.
Adam Ortiz, EPA Mid-Atlantic administrator, shown here in November 2022 at the Edmonston pumping station in Prince George's County, Maryland, visited the Ivy City neighborhood in Washington on Tuesday to award a $12 million grant for a technical assistance center. Credit: Aman Azhar/Inside Climate News.

Share This Article

WASHINGTON—A year ago, when Adam Ortiz, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Mid-Atlantic administrator, met with Shawn Scott here in the predominantly Black Ivy City neighborhood, she asked him a question with more than a little urgency.

“‘Adam, can you smell it?’” he remembered her asking him, referring to a chemical manufacturer next door to her home that neighbors had complained about for years. He could. 

Before his visit last fall, the EPA went to the neighborhood for a walk-through and then, about six months later, the agency’s air quality division began air monitoring around the facility, a Pentagon contractor. For the Biden EPA, which has made environmental justice a core issue, the factory’s presence, which dates back to World War II and predates the Clean Air Act, symbolized the disproportionate burden of pollution communities of color have shouldered for decades.

On Tuesday, Ortiz, flanked by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), came back to Ivy City’s Trinity Baptist Church and announced a $12 million grant award to fund a technical training center designed to help historically underserved and overburdened communities across the Mid-Atlantic region access funds for climate resiliency and pollution abatement from the Biden administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 2022 the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Newsletters

We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s top headlines deliver the full story, for free.

The EPA’s focus last year on Ivy City is one example of how the agency is listening to environmental justice communities across the country, Ortiz said. And one of the things officials heard was that those communities needed help obtaining available federal funding. Thus, Ortiz said, the $12 million grant would go toward one of 16 Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers. 

The centers are being created to provide services nationwide through a network of partners including community-based organizations, colleges, universities and other academic institutions and other non-profits so that communities of color and low-income neighborhoods can access federal funding opportunities under Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which commits 40 percent of numerous federal funding streams to those communities.

Ortiz said the grant was awarded to the National Wildlife Federation, which will oversee the technical assistance center in partnership with the University of Maryland Center for Community Engagement. A total of $177 million has been appropriated through EPA and the Department of Energy to fund the 16 centers. 

The technical training centers will train community organizations and nonprofits in navigating the federal government’s grant application process, with a focus on strong grant writing and funding management, Ortiz said. The centers will also provide community engagement, facilitation, translation and interpretation services for language-challenged communities. 

“I’m thrilled to have the National Wildlife Federation and the University of Maryland Center for Community Engagement as our partners in this historic endeavor,” said Ortiz.

 He said the technical assistance centers will provide a support network which would be critical in implementing Justice40, a commitment that covers funding for climate change, clean energy, energy efficiency, clean transit, affordable and sustainable housing, training and workforce development, remediation and reduction of legacy pollution and the development of critical clean water and wastewater infrastructure. 

“We secured unprecedented funding to address pollution, expand clean water access, and build safer, more equitable infrastructure,” said Carper, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “Now, we have a moral obligation to ensure that these investments reach those communities with the greatest need.”

This story is funded by readers like you.

Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.

Donate Now

 EPA is partnering in creating the centers with the DOE, whose funding will help communities identify opportunities for clean energy transition and financing options, including public-private partnerships, workforce development and outreach opportunities that advance energy justice. 

“We’re hoping that in the next one or two years people can start applying for funds,” said Adrienne Hollis, vice president of environmental justice, health and community revitalization at National Wildlife Federation. She said that grant writing is one of the areas needed most by the community. “So we hope to measure our success by the number of applicants we should see increase each year,” she said, “and then the number of applicants who are successful.”

“It’s time to go beyond data collection and get some work done,” said Parisa Norouzi, executive director of the D.C.-based nonprofit Empower D.C., which has been at the forefront of leading the campaign against the chemical plant in Ivy City.

She said being part of the EPA-funded technical center will bring more resources to bear on the efforts disadvantaged communities are making to improve their quality of life. “The biggest thing is being part of a bigger network of people, including scientists and community members, who are working on similar issues, and to assist each other to elevate the neighborhood’s concerns,” she said.      

About This Story

Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That’s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.

That’s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can’t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We’ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.

Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.

Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don’t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places?

Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.

Thank you,

Share This Article