EPA grants for air pollution monitoring, cooling kits and A/C units in Pa. and Del. terminated

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Federal grant cancellations and freezes worth at least $13 million have hit projects to monitor air pollution, plant trees and protect residents from extreme summer heat in the Philadelphia region.

“We’re very disappointed,” said Russell Zerbo, an advocate at the nonprofit Clean Air Council. The organization received notice this week that its Environmental Protection Agency grant to launch an air pollution monitoring program around the Delaware City Refinery had been terminated.

“We will absolutely not be able to do this project without this grant,” he added.

The refinery has a history of fires and environmental violations. It once paid state environmental regulators close to $1 million to settle violations, including releasing dangerous air pollutants. 

Nonprofits, states and local governments across the country have faced uncertainty around federal funding for environmental projects since President Donald Trump took office and ordered federal agencies to pause grant payments under former President Joe Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

While a federal judge ruled earlier this month to extend a block on the Trump administration’s funding freeze, some grant recipients have still reported finding their funding frozen without explanation.

“There’s a lot of chaos and cruelty,” said Adam Ortiz, former head of EPA’s Region 3, which is headquartered in Philadelphia. “It’s uncertain what legal authorities exist, but there’s no question that this is the most coordinated attack on environmental progress since the EPA was created in 1970.”

Early this week, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency had cancelled 400 “DEI and Environmental Justice” grants across nine programs, totaling $1.7 billion.

Environmental justice efforts, a priority of Biden’s EPA, have been a target of the Trump administration’s cuts. 

The Clean Air Council’s nearly $500,000 grant from the EPA’s 2023 Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem Solving grant program would have funded a community air monitoring network around the refinery to measure several cancer-causing or hazardous pollutants commonly associated with oil refining, which Zerbo said are not currently monitored continuously or in real-time. It also would have helped the organization create a disaster preparedness network with nearby residents.

Without this project, “people will be on their own if there’s a fire or something there, to try to get information,” Zerbo said.

The termination letter received by the Clean Air Council said the goals of the grant award are “no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.” It said the agency must comply with civil rights laws and assess whether grant payments are “free from fraud, abuse, waste, and duplication.”

“It is a priority of the EPA to eliminate discrimination in all programs throughout the United States,” the letter reads. “This priority includes ensuring that the Agency’s grants do not support programs or organizations that promote or take part in diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) initiatives, ‘environmental justice’ initiatives, and conflict with the Agency’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in performing our statutory functions.”

Another award under the EPA grant, to the North Philly-based nonprofit Esperanza for a project to build climate resilience in Hunting Park — one of the city’s hottest neighborhoods — was also terminated, senior vice president for community engagement, research & health equity Jamile Tellez Lieberman confirmed in an email. The project would have planted and maintained trees in the neighborhood, distributed cooling kits and air conditioning units, built youth leadership, trained residents on heat mitigation and environmental policy and gauged the impact of heat on neighborhood health, according to a description on the EPA’s website. Tellez Lieberman said the organization is appealing the grant termination.

The nonprofit Overbrook Environmental Education Center in West Philly lost a multi-year grant of up to $700,000 to help other organizations navigate the federal grantmaking process to secure funding for environmental projects in disadvantaged communities. The organization’s director told the Philadelphia Inquirer he has not yet had to turn away organizations seeking this assistance, but is looking for other funding to replace the lost grant.

Last week, officials at Philadelphia’s Department of Parks and Recreation said the city and its partners were unable to access a $12 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to set up a new nonprofit to coordinate implementation of the Philly Tree Plan and to plant and maintain trees. A spokesperson for Parks & Rec declined to comment on the status of the grant Friday. The USDA has terminated other grants to plant trees in areas that need them. 

In a briefing before the Philadelphia mayor’s budget address this week, budget and finance officials said the city had lost a sustainability-related federal grant, but did not specify what the grant paid for.

The EPA and USDA did not respond to questions about the grants terminated or frozen in the region.