The Stakes: After months of mixed messages, Trump cuts EPA grants to polluted California communities, including North Richmond

“The Stakes” is a UC Berkeley Journalism project on executive orders and actions affecting Californians and their communities. 

For months community members devoted to reducing pollution and improving the quality of life for vulnerable people in Richmond and other parts of the Bay Area have been stuck in limbo, hoping that the EPA grants they were told they won wouldn’t be taken away.

On Friday, after promising these groups millions of dollars and then cutting off access to the money multiple times, the EPA sent out official letters that the grants are terminated as part of President Donald Trump’s federal budget purge.

California is the largest recipient of the Community Change Grant Program, with 15 marginalized communities awarded $216 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for life-changing projects.

The EPA had labeled the grants as “environmental justice,” a term that ended up making them targets for the Trump administration’s ax. It now appears that all 15 awards — part of the Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program — are gone.

In North Richmond, Berkeley and on Treasure Island, where the grants would have funded numerous community projects, the news was deflating. 

“They don’t understand the importance of communities like North Richmond benefiting from these grants,” said Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia. “Or they understand it, they don’t care.”

North Richmond was promised $19 million — said to be the largest single investment the community had ever seen. The county and partnering organizations planned to use it to plant shade trees in a schoolyard, provide zero-emission transportation through an e-bike lending library, restore the Wildcat Creek watershed and trail, construct energy-efficient housing and build a resilience center, a place where community members can gather during extreme weather or other climate-related emergencies.

The grant was accessible to the county at the start of the year, then was suspended without warning after Trump took office. In February, its status briefly was changed to open. But for the past two months, it was again frozen. Then on Tuesday, Gioia and others associated with the grant received an email from the county’s sustainability coordinator that said, “I am amazed to tell you that as of this morning, our grant is ‘open.’ ” 

But the good news didn’t last long, as the county received a grant termination notice Friday morning. 

“This EPA Assistance Agreement is terminated effective immediately on the grounds that the remaining portion of the Federal award will not accomplish the EPA funding priorities for achieving program goals. The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities,” wrote an EPA award official in the letter to the county. 

An internal EPA list published on March 25 by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works shows all of Califorrnia’s Community Change grants were among 400 grants the EPA designated for cancellation earlier that month. A total of 63 grants awarded to California projects — nearly $300 million in funding — appeared on the list.

And on Tuesday, The Washington Post reported that the administration is in the process of cutting all 781 environmental justice grants that were awarded to communities and nonprofits across the country. In the next two weeks, the Post reported, all of the recipients will be notified. 

Grant recipients receive the funds through reimbursements, not in a lump sum. Without the grant, the North Richmond Community Resilience Initiative will not move forward. The other Bay Area projects are also at risk, as are projects statewide. 

Treasure Island, Berkeley grants cut

In an internal email to EPA staff, which was released by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the agency’s general counsel office stated there is no plan to retract the grant terminations. The email said recipients would have to go through the dispute process or sue the EPA to have any chance of their grants being reinstated. 

Gioia said the county is exploring legal options. “This is all, unfortunately, part of a larger war on the American people,” he said. 

As of Friday, the Treasure Island Mobility Management Agency was still awaiting word from the EPA, after its $19 million grant appeared on the termination list. By Monday, the EPA had notified the agency that the grant had been cancelled.

The Mobility Management Agency said the EPA had paused the grant in January, pending an administrative review. As of last week, the agency still had not been told the grant was set to be canceled, said Stephen Chun, Mobility Management’s director of communications. The grant is to expand public transportation on Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Island.

A $1.2 million Community Change grant awarded to Land Together — a nonprofit based in Berkeley — is also on the termination list. Land Together provides nature-based programming to prisoners and has developed 12 garden programs in nine state prisons. The first garden was started at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in 2002. The organization intended to use its Community Change grant to work with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to teach 1,350 individuals about environmental and climate justice challenges faced by communities.  

Land Together declined to comment on the grant’s status. 

‘The people of North Richmond deserve better’

Like Mobility Management Agency, Contra Costa County was in limbo for weeks after the North Richmond funds were suspended earlier this year. The EPA was not answering the county’s calls or questions. Clarity first came in an April email from the EPA’s Office of Congressional Affairs to U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, who represents a swath of Northern California that includes west Contra Costa County. 

“The agency determined that this application no longer supports Administration priorities and the award has been cancelled. We have already conveyed this information to the grantee,” the email said.  

But the “grantee” — Contra Costa County — hadn’t heard the grant was canceled until Garamendi’s office relayed the message, Gioia said. Until Friday, the county had experienced radio silence from the EPA since January, he added. 

Urban Tilth, one of the partnering organizations on the grant, took to its social media last week to advocate for the North Richmond Community Resilience Initiative. In videos posted to YouTube and Instagram, the organization urged people to contact their federal representatives and demand that the Community Change grant funds be released.

Garamendi and U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, who represents east Contra Costa County, have called on the EPA to immediately reverse North Richmond grant’s termination. They said the agency’s action violates federal appropriations law, recent federal court injunctions and the EPA’s contract with Contra Costa County.

“The people of North Richmond deserve better. They deserve clean air, safe communities, and a government that honors its commitments. EPA must immediately reinstate this grant, comply with the law, and provide a full accounting of how such an egregious lapse in transparency occurred,” Garamendi said in an April 23 press release. “We will not stand by as legally appropriated funds are withheld from communities who need them most.”

California’s two U.S. senators have pushed the EPA to restore all of the state’s grants. In a March 25 letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff demanded that the agency immediately reverse grant terminations, stating that the EPA knowingly violated its own contracts. 

“EPA’s unlawful, arbitrary, and capricious terminations of EJ grant programs eliminate commonsense, nonpartisan federal programs that clean the air and water and protect Americans from natural disasters,” the senators wrote. 

Even current and former EPA staff have pressed the EPA to honor its contracts with communities. In an op-ed published in Environmental Health News, a group of anonymous workers noted that despite court orders to unfreeze billions of funds, the Trump administration has continued to withhold “critical money” from communities that need it most. 

“It is a waste of taxpayer dollars for the U.S. Government to cancel its agreements with grantees and contractors. It is fraud for the U.S. Government to delay payments for services already received. And it is an abuse of power for the Trump administration to block the [Inflation Reduction Act] laws that were mandated by Congress,” they wrote. 

This story was published in collaboration with Richmondside.

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