The federal Environmental Protection Agency is withholding funding that would have gone towards extreme weather education and disaster preparedness in Cheshire County.
The group NH Healthy Climate had planned on using $75,000 towards preparing rural Cheshire County towns for potentially disastrous flooding in the future.
“It's one thing for a city like Keene or Portsmouth to have people working on their flood mitigation proposals,” said Paul Friedrichs, a NH Health Climate board member. “But you take a town of Langdon with a population of six or 700 people, they're not going to have the resources to do that flood preparation planning.”
Friedrichs recalled parts of Cheshire County experienced a major flooding event in October, 2005 that killed seven people and destroyed over 100 homes. More recent flooding in 2021 and 2023 destroyed roads and buildings.
But this spring, the group, which focuses on climate change’s impact on health in the state, learned from the grant administrator that even though its grant application was accepted, the EPA wouldn’t be funding it. The money was part of the Environmental and Climate Justice Program, a part of the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act. The program includes a grantmaking process that funds community initiatives to address environmental issues.
“It’s very unfortunate that the EPA does not believe that these communities need this minimal funding – $75,000 for our grant compared to the millions of dollars lost in any given flood,” Friedrichs said.
Over 30 New England organizations and many more across the country had grant proposals accepted as part of the EPA’s environmental justice program but did not receive the funding. One of the regional grant administrators for New England, Boston-based Health Resources in Action, joined a class action lawsuit in June challenging the EPA’s move to terminate the grants.
“There are irreparable harms that have been a result of the termination,” Ben Wood, Senior Director of Policy and Practice at Health Resources in Action, said.
“[These organizations] are trying to solve incredibly important community-based issues that will address environmental harms and the impacts of climate change. And without those dollars, those communities have one less tool in the toolbox to address those immediate and critical needs.”
The EPA told NHPR it doesn't comment on any current or pending litigation.
In Maryland, a US district judge recently ruled the EPA illegally terminated grants in the Environment and Climate Justice program. The plaintiffs were three regional organizations selected by the EPA to distribute the grants to local community groups. In an initial grant termination letter to the organizations, the EPA told the plaintiffs it was no longer supporting environmental justice and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which it alleged the organizations were promoting with their grants.
The EPA told NHPR it is reviewing the decision.
Paul Friedrich says he believes the NH Healthy Climate grant funding was also wrongly canceled because of the EPA’s move away from DEI.
“Our grant award was focusing on helping small towns in southwestern New Hampshire prepare for and address the risk of recurrent flooding, as there was in 2005,” Friedrichs said.
“Rural New Hampshire [are] the people that we want to take benefits away from because somehow that's equity and inclusion? I just don't get it.”
