Ten Oregon projects are among more than 470 across the country stuck in limbo, with recipients denied access to millions in funding 

By Alex Baumhardt, Oregon Capital Chronicle

A new community center and “climate resilience hub” in the southern Oregon town of Chiloquin should be months underway right now. Instead, city officials are wondering if they’ll ever see the $16 million they were promised in December from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to build it. 

The community center and hub — meant for dual use as offices for city officials, community events and classes and as a disaster shelter for residents, with a commercial kitchen and medical facilities — is one of 10 projects in Oregon slated to receive a combined $88 million in EPA grants meant to help communities facing economic hardship prepare and respond to climate change. Instead, the projects have been suspended since early March under orders from EPA’s director, Lee Zeldin. 

On March 10, Zeldin announced in a news release that 400 grants worth more than $1.7 billion would be cancelled to “rein in wasteful federal spending.” But it wasn’t until late March that U.S. Senate Democrats were able to secure the list of all 477 grant awarded projects that EPA officials had left in limbo. 

The climate news site Heatmap News first reported the list of all suspended grants March 28, including data showing that just $3 million of the more than $88 million promised to Oregon projects had so far been released.

That leaves more than $85 million still being withheld for projects like Chiloquin’s community center and hub, as well as similar climate hubs in Lane County and on the Grand Ronde Reservation.

“These communities deserve answers, and we pray the federal government stands behind their commitments to these programs,” Sara Thompson, a spokesperson for the tribe, said in an email.

The suspended EPA grant programs were part of $3 billion allocated by Congress in 2022 under the Inflation Reduction Act to help low-income and historically underserved communities address air and water pollution and protect themselves from the impacts of climate change. 

The nine Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works demanded answers about the suspended grants from Zeldin in a March 24 letter, including how he and EPA officials decided which ones to suspend.

They also wrote that withholding Congressionally approved funding is illegal and a violation of court-ordered injunctions on President Donald Trump’s attempts to freeze funding approved by Congress before he took office. 

Among the senators was Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, who also recently pressed Sean Donohue, Trump’s nominee for general counsel of the EPA, on why the agency would cancel grants supporting public health and rural communities in Oregon. Donahue said he wasn’t aware which grants had been cancelled. 

Oregon impact

In Oregon, the grants include Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement Program, the Community Change Grant Program and the Government-to-Government Program. Each of the grants fund projects undertaken by nonprofits, local and state governments and medical and environmental agencies that address pollution, climate change preparedness and disaster response, as well as projects that generally improve public health.

The grants were available for communities with a high proportion of low-income residents, elderly residents, disabled residents and people living in areas that receive the brunt of major pollution, such as those along the state’s I-5 corridor.

Lane County’s nearly $20 million Community Change Grant, meant to fund six climate resilience hubs in Florence, Veneta, Eugene, Springfield, Cottage Grove and Oakridge, has been “suspended” since mid-March, according to Devon Ashbridge, a public information officer for the county. Ashbridge said county officials have requested a second review of the suspension and they are waiting to hear whether it will be granted.

Officials from the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde did not learn until March 7 that their grant for a climate resilience hub had been suspended, and they only found out when officials attempted to draw down some funds for reimbursement, Thompson said. They had been able to do so easily earlier in the year, she said, and then were suddenly no longer allowed.

Chiloquin officials have been able to get two small reimbursements for money they’ve already spent since Feb. 1, according to the city’s project manager, Cathy Stuhr. They have otherwise had no access to funds for the last 30 days.

Stuhr said the city is now nearly out of gap funds it received from nonprofits and state agencies and is missing work plan deadlines. 

The city spent three years cleaning up an abandoned 100-year-old auto repair shop to one day become the site for the new community center and climate hub. 

It applied for the EPA Community Change Grant in November and in December, found out they had been one of about 100 such projects nationwide selected from among 2,700 applications. The funding was also supposed to support a wood stove trade-out program, offering long-needed assistance for residents who want to remove old, non-EPA compliant wood stoves and trade them in for newer models that are safer and healthier to use in homes. 

Opening the community center and climate resilience hub was supposed to create jobs, and had spurred the restoration of other downtown buildings in anticipation, she said. 

“I don’t want to talk about it all in the past tense,” she corrected herself. “We are building a community resilience hub and municipal center.”

Alex Baumhardt has been a national radio producer focusing on education for American Public Media since 2017. She has reported from the Arctic to the Antarctic for national and international media, and from Minnesota and Oregon for The Washington Post.