Trump EPA Plans to Cancel 781 Environmental Justice Grants

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to cancel 781 environmental justice grants that were issued under former President Joe Biden, according to a court filing last week that went relatively unnoticed, reported The Washington Post.

The grants had already been awarded to recipients and were twice the number previously believed.

“EPA is in the process of sending out the formal termination/cancellation notices to all of the impacted grantees,” Daniel Coogan, deputy assistant administrator for infrastructure and extramural resources at the EPA, wrote in the filing. “EPA has already sent out formal notices to approximately 377 grantees. For the remaining approximately 404 grantees, EPA plans to issue notices within the next two weeks.”

The filing was the first public acknowledgment of just how many grants the EPA had decided to terminate, which included all environmental justice grants.

The agency is currently engaged in court battles over whether or not it violated the law when clawing back the grant funds.

In deciding which of the grants should be continued, Coogan said the EPA conducted “an individualized, grant-by-grant review,” The Hill reported.

Such a review is required by the EPA before any grants can be canceled, reported The Washington Post.

However, several experts and lawyers expressed concerns that the agency had misled the court and had not actually conducted such a review.

“I can tell you from working with many, many of those grantees that the review has never happened,” said Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice at nonprofit Lawyers for Good Government, which has provided legal assistance free of charge to several grant recipients, as The Washington Post reported.

“They’re claiming to the court that each one of those was done on an individualized basis, even though they haven’t shown any evidence, and almost none of the grantees has received a termination notice,” Blanchard explained.

In response to a request for comment, EPA spokesperson Molly Vaselious said in an email: “In keeping with a long-standing practice, EPA does not comment on any current or pending litigation.”

The EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights issued most of the grants. The Trump administration has plans to shut down the office, and officials have informed over 450 employees who were working on diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental justice that they would be reassigned or fired.

The grants would have provided funding for projects to help communities cope with worsening impacts of the climate crisis. Examples of plans to put the money to use in recipients’ communities are coastal flood protection in Alaska Native villages and sealing homes against wildfire smoke in Washington state.

Local officials said losing the grants will interfere with their ability to keep constituents healthy.

In Hampden County, Massachusetts, the air quality is frequently unhealthy, and over 49,000 adults and children living there suffer from asthma. A three-year EPA grant of nearly $1 million was intended to provide support for environmental public health projects to reduce the risk of asthma.

“By canceling these grants for Hampden County, the Trump Administration is undermining our efforts to improve the health of the people of Western Massachusetts,” Democratic Governor Maura Healey said last week in a statement, as reported by The Washington Post. “This is just their latest attack on the health and well-being of communities across our country.”