When the Trump administration terminated the nearly $2 billion EPA Community Change Grant Program earlier this year, organizations across the nation lost millions of dollars in environmental justice grants.
In North Carolina, the birthplace of the environmental justice movement, three organizations have lost more than $41 million in grants combined, due to the termination of this program.
Southwest Renewal Foundation - High Point, NC
Dorothy Darr is the executive director of the Southwest Renewal Foundation of High Point, one of the North Carolina organizations that's been impacted by the cuts.
Darr believes the Trump administration is sending a clear message to organizations championing environmental justice.
“The message is, 'I don't want to help you.' We were termed (told) by our local senator, state senator, 'Oh you're just a DEI project,'” Darr said.
The elimination of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs is a leading reason as to why the EPA said they canceled hundreds of justice-focused grants. In a February press release, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called them “wasteful DEI and environmental justice initiatives.”
Southwest Renewal planned to use its $18.5 million EPA grant to improve water quality and plant more trees in High Point.
But those plans, such as removing lead pipes from local schools, took a detour when the EPA canceled their grant May 2.
A few months earlier, Southwest Renewal did receive more than $77,000 from the EPA; however, Darr said very little of the money was used towards their project since it was split amongst the organization and eight of its community partners.
“If you just divide it equally, plus us, which would be nine (total grant partners), none of us got very much,” she said.
Darr also said Southwest Renewal was very hesitant to use any of the funds due to the uncertainty of everything. When the grant was officially cancelled, she was devastated.
“To do all that work and follow all those guidelines and be within the rules, so to speak, and then have your work just jerked out from under you for no reason, no legitimate reason, except that the President doesn't want to fund the EPA anymore,” she said. “It was a real sense of betrayal.”
Over the past few months, the Trump Administration has ordered major layoffs and has terminated several arms of the agency, including the Environmental Justice and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion arm.
Democracy Green - Wake County, NC
Mother-daughter duo, Sanja and La'Meshia Whittington had similar sentiments when their non-profit's $20 million EPA grant was also canceled.
The Whittingtons are the founders of Democracy Green, a Fuquay-Varina-based grassroots organization committed to seeking environmental justice for marginalized communities.
La'Meshia says she and her mother joined the environmental justice movement after witnessing Hurricane Katrina devastate Black and Brown communities in 2005.
“We know that our communities have been historically under invested, having lack of government response, undercounted in the census, so much disenfranchisement, so all this intersection, we knew that it was only a matter of time before we saw this worsen for communities like ours,” La’Meshia said.
When Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina in 2018, La'Meshia said their work intensified.
“Those community members that we had been in relationship with, the youth that we were doing programs with their families, they actually began to call us on like Facebook, like the Facebook Messenger, call us, and they were like, hey, we actually need your help to evacuate,” she said.
After Florence, Democracy Green continued to expand their operations to community education workshops, statewide tours and more.
In 2022, they launched Clean Water is Safe Water, a statewide program aimed at addressing water contamination in local drinking water.
“We go in, train people, test their water sources, come back, teach them what their water tests state. And then we go into providing that mitigation, remediation service,” she described.
The Whittington's planned to use the now-canceled $20 million grant to expand Clean Water is Safe Water programming to Brunswick County, a county known for its prevalent Gullah-Geechee culture and unincorporated communities.
As Afro-Indigenous women, serving overlooked communities like Brunswick County is very important to the Whittingtons.
Using the grant funds, Democracy Green arranged to remove lead pipes from 500 local homes and remediate water infrastructure systems. However, only the first phase of the project was completed.
“We were able to pull down close to $30,000 to launch the very first community outreach,” said La’Meshia.
After that initial fraction of the grant was disbursed in April, the grant was officially cancelled in May.
Despite the challenges, La'Meshia's mother Sanja said Democracy Green is still running its program across the state while also taking legal action against the EPA among others.
“We're going to fight this. We're going to hold on,” said Sanja.
MDC Inc and North Carolina Hispanic Federation - Durham, NC
While they said they can't comment on any pending litigation, another organization in the Triangle may be looking at a similar fight after its $3 million EPA grant was also canceled.
MDC Inc, a Durham-based nonprofit aimed at advancing economic and environmental equity, has spent months partnering with the local Hispanic Federation to boost Latino participation in Eastern North Carolina’s environmental politics.
The Hispanic Federation's North Carolina director Lariza Garzón said this initiative combats years of exclusion.
“Historically, Latino communities have not been sitting on the table with decision makers when it comes to environmental issues,” Garzón said.
The $3 million EPA grant was supposed to help fund a project that the two organizations hope will solve this issue.
“The idea really for this project was that we didn't want leaders and nonprofits who are Latino-led to continue to work in silos. We wanted to make sure that we could create a bridge between them and local and state government,” Garzón said.
Before the grant was cancelled, the organizations received more than $366,000 to begin programming in April. However, only one community event was held before the grant was ultimately terminated in May.
“One community meeting did happen before the termination, only one of them in April,” said Paul Janampa, MDC’s partnership manager.
Now without the grant, the two organizations are continuing to adapt.
“You hear that you're going to have an award, you make plans to implement what you had proposed, right? And then when all of a sudden you don't have that, then you have to really adapt the work,” Garzón said.
“The work’s not stopping, it’s being adapted,” Janampa added. “The momentum's still going. It has happened due to a lot of the community support.”
Could these grants be reinstated?
Federal grants can be reinstated after termination for a number of reasons such as administrative review, renegotiation, presidential administration rollover or legal action.
Many organizations like the Southern Environmental Law Center, Earth Justice and Public Rights Project have filed class-action lawsuits against the Trump administration to have EPA grants reinstated.
