After weeks of speculation, the news fell with frightening formality:
“Dear EPA Grant recipient,” read the government’s official email. “Attaché is your termination of the US Award for Environmental Protection Agency.”
This is how hundreds of organizations discovered that they had officially lost the financing of EPA subsidies as part of the numerous reductions in the environmental programs required by the Trump administration.
Among them, the Community Water Center, a non -profit organization that works to provide safe drinking water to the rural communities of California. Their price of $ 20 million had been reserved for a major project to consolidate water systems in the communities of the low-income central coast of Pajaro, Sunny Mesa and Springfield, which have long depended on domestic wells and small water systems which are riddled with contaminants above the legal limits.
The project had more than five years taking place and is now in Limbo as president Trump and the administrator of the EPA Lee Zeldin Slash Funding for more than 780 subsidies focused on environmental justice which was allocated to President Biden.
“This is a huge disappointment – this subsidy would finance an infrastructure project to provide drinking water, and I think everyone should be that residents of the United States must have drinking water,” said Susana de Anda, executive director of Community Water Center. “Safe water is not political.”
The opinion arrived on May 1, almost two months after the EPA and the unofficial ministry for the effectiveness of the president’s government announced for the first time that they would dismiss more than 400 environmental subsidies totaling $ 1.7 billion in what Zeldin described as an effort to “slow down unnecessary federal expenses”. A disclosed list examined by the Times revealed that at least 62 subsidies in California were on the cutting block.
However, the court documents filed last week indicate that the actual number of cancellations of environmental subsidies in the United States is closer to 800. The conclusion is part of a trial of non-profit groups contesting the efforts of the administration to freeze the funds granted by Biden’s Inflation Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, such as the Washington Post. A legal declaration filed by EPA indicates that 377 beneficiaries have already received official dismissal opinions, and that 404 others will soon be noticed.
It is not immediately known how many California organizations will lose federal funding. EPA officials refused to provide a list of groups assigned and said the agency does not comment on current legislation.
But a handful of state groups confirmed that they were on the list of cuts. Among them, Los Angeles Neighbourhood Trust, who said he had lost a subsidy of $ 500,000 intended to help plan fair development projects along the river, and the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, who said he had lost a subsidy of $ 155,000 for a project to provide food to communities in need in Vallejo.
CADE CANNEDY, director of programs with non -profit resilient communities based in Palo Alto, said that the group had lost a $ 500,000 grant that would have provided air purifiers to children of asthma and elderly people with East Palo Alto. The community suffers from high rate of respiratory problems following decades of red practices, segregation and zoning which have concentrated polluting activities in the region, in particular the treatment of hazardous waste and the emissions of vehicles of neighboring motorways, said Cannedy.
“It is a huge loss for our communities, but I think that the other thing that is really sadder, is that for these communities, it is just another broken promise in a series of broken promises of several decades,” he said.
The termination email was the first communication that the group received from EPA since Trump took office, he said. It represents an important blow for the small non -profit organization, which had already hired two new employees to help implement the project and deliver air purifiers to around 400 families and potentially certain schools and upper centers.
“In small community organizations like ours, we never have excellent cash flow – it is not as if we were sitting at half a million dollars at any time,” said Cannedy. “We depend on these subsidies and the reimbursement process to make things happen.”
The cancellations of subsidies are the last people in a series of actions from the Trump administration who, according to the defenders, are harmful to the environment, in particular the relaxation of regulations of air and water quality; dismiss scientists and researchers; accelerate coal production; Opening of national forests for industrial logging; Distribute the protections for endangered species and reject hundreds of scientists working a large climate report, among others.
Democratic legislators, including the Senator of California Adam Schiff and Senator Alex Padilla, condemned the cancellations of the administration’s subsidy, which, according to them, are an illegal condition of the funds appropriate by the Congress.
“The illegal, arbitrary and capricious endings of the EPA from subsidies programs (environmental justice) eliminate non -partisan and non -supporter federal programs that clean air and water and protect Americans against natural disasters,” wrote the senators in a letter from March to Zeldin, as well as seven other Democrats of the US the environment and public works.
The EPA potentially faces tighter stock market ropes. The budget proposed by Trump for financial year 2026 would reduce $ 5 billion from the agency responsible for protecting the health and environment of the country – by far the strongest reduction in the history of EPA, representing around 55% of its 2025 budget.
Reduction of reduction will require mass layoffs and effectively paralyze the basic functions of EPA, according to the non -profit environmental protection network, a surveillance group based on DC composed of more than 600 former EPA workers.
“This is an imprudent and short -view proposal that will lead to higher levels of toxic pollution in the air we breathe and to the water that we drink across the country,” read a declaration by Michelle Roos, executive director of the EPN. “This is an approach to destroyed that would prohibit America’s first -line defense to protect people’s health and environment.”
Indeed, the loss of funding for subsidies will have durable real effects of the world, according to José Franco García, executive director of non -profit organization based in San Diego, the coalition of environmental health. The group has lost a subsidy of $ 500,000 intended for a number of initiatives in the Barrio Logan district, a low-income community with pollution, poor air quality and other environmental problems because of its proximity to the port, industrial facilities and an interstate highway, he said.
The projects included the creation of a long -awaited park along Boston avenue, a green shuttle bus system and efforts to improve houses in the region with electrification, solar energy and lead reduction, said García. He said the grant was also going to finance air filters in asthmatic children’s houses.
“These are the exact things that EPA money should go,” said García. “And what the current version of EPA does is not what it was supposed to do, what it was supposed to be able to protect and what it was supposed to be able to serve.”
García noted that the cancellations of subsidies also cost a non -profit time and potentially jobs when they reproduce with the conditions of rapid changes. The grant was approved last summer and the group had spent months preparing to start the work.
“Just as we have to respect the terms of any contract, we have thought that the federal government would also be,” he said.
From Anda, of the Community Water Center, was also concerned about the implications in the public health of the granting endings.
The communities of the county of Monterey de Pajaro, Sunny Mesa and Springfield fought against water quality problems for years, with 81% of domestic wells, testing positive for one or more dangerous contaminants, in particular nitrate, 123-TCP, arsenic and chromium 6, she said. Chemicals can contribute to serious harmful effects on health such as reproductive problems, blood conditions of infants and cancer, according to EPA.
The subsidy of $ 20 million from the Community Water Center would have financed the first phase of critical infrastructure work, in particular the construction of pipelines to physically consolidate communities in a single water system held and operated by Pajaro / Sunny Mesa Community Services District, which would serve around 5,500 people and an elementary school.
Community Water Center explores all avenues to keep work in the future, said of Anda, and she hopes that state officials will intervene to fill the void left by EPA.
“Our community deserves a reliable infrastructure that offers safe drinking water,” she said. “Project stopping is not an option.”
One of the residents of the region, Maria Angelica Rodriguez, 49, said that she must currently have bottled water to drink, cook and other basic needs. Every Thursday, a regional bottled water program offers 5 gallons for each of the three members of their house, notably Rodriguez, his mother and sister.
But she is also concerned about her 7-month-old grandson that she keeps throughout the week, which, she said, could become sick of the water tainted in the region.
Speaking through an interpreter, Rodriguez said she would like Trump to stop and think of children and agricultural workers in the region who need to drink water.
The project brought hope to the community, she said, and its cancellation made it very sad.
“El agua es vida,” she said. “Water is life.”
California Daily Newspapers
