‘Another broken promise': California environmental groups reel from EPA grant cancellations

Los Angeles Times

08-05-2025

After weeks of speculation, the news came down with chilling formality:
'Dear EPA Grant Recipient,' read the official government email. 'Attached is your Termination of Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.'
That's how hundreds of organizations found out they had officially lost EPA grant funding as part of the many cutbacks to environmental programs demanded by the Trump administration.
Among them was the Community Water Center, a nonprofit that works to provide safe, clean drinking water to rural communities in California. Their $20-million award had been earmarked for a major project to consolidate water systems in the low-income Central Coast communities of Pajaro, Sunny Mesa and Springfield, which have long been reliant on domestic wells and small water systems that are riddled with contaminants above legal limits.
The project was more than five years in the making, and now sits in limbo as President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin slash funding for more than 780 grants geared toward environmental justice that were awarded under President Biden.
'It's a huge disappointment — this grant would be funding an infrastructure project to deliver safe drinking water, and I think that everyone would agree that residents across the United States need to have safe drinking water,' said Susana De Anda, Community Water Center's executive director. 'Safe water is not political.'
The notice arrived on May 1, nearly two months after the EPA and the president's unofficial Department of Government Efficiency first announced that they would terminate more than 400 environmental grants totaling $1.7 billion in what Zeldin described as an effort to 'rein in wasteful federal spending.' A leaked list reviewed by The Times revealed at least 62 California grants were on the chopping block.
However, court documents filed last week indicate that the actual number of environmental grant cancellations in the U.S. is closer to 800. The finding is part of a lawsuit from nonprofit groups challenging the administration's efforts to freeze funds awarded awarded under Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as first reported by the Washington Post. A legal declaration filed by the EPA says 377 grantees have already received formal notices of termination, and approximately 404 more will be noticed soon.
It is not immediately clear how many California organizations will lose federal funding. EPA officials declined to provide a list of affected groups and said the agency does not comment on pending legislation.
But a handful of groups in the state have confirmed they are on the list of cuts. Among them is the Los Angeles Neighborhood Trust, which said it lost a $500,000 grant intended to help plan equitable development projects along the L.A. River, and the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, which said it lost a $155,000 grant for a project to provide food to communities in need in Vallejo.
Cade Cannedy, director of programs with the Palo Alto-based nonprofit Climate Resilient Communities, said the group lost a $500,000 grant that would have provided air purifiers to children with asthma and seniors with disabilities in East Palo Alto. The community suffers from high rates of respiratory issues as a result of decades of redlining, segregation and zoning practices that have concentrated polluting activities in the area, including hazardous waste processing facilities and vehicle emissions from nearby highways, Cannedy said.
'It's a huge loss for our communities, but I think the other thing that's really almost sadder is that for these communities, this is just another broken promise in a decades-long string of broken promises,' he said.
The termination email was the first communication the group has received from the EPA since Trump took office, he said. It represents a significant blow for the small nonprofit, which had already hired two new employees to help implement the project and deliver air purifiers to about 400 families and potentially some schools and senior centers.
'At small community-based organizations like ours, we never have excellent cash flow — it's not like we're sitting on half a million dollars at any point in time,' Cannedy said. 'We're dependent on these grants and the reimbursement process to make things work.'
The grant cancellations are the latest in a string of actions from the Trump administration that advocates say are harmful to the environment, including loosening air and water quality regulations; laying off scientists and researchers; ramping up coal production; opening national forests for industrial logging; narrowing protections for endangered species and dismissing hundreds of scientists working a major national climate report, among many others.
Democratic lawmakers, including California Sen. Adam Schiff and Sen. Alex Padilla, have condemned the administration's grant cancellations, which they say is an illegal clawing back of congressionally appropriated funds.
'EPA's unlawful, arbitrary, and capricious terminations of [environmental justice] grant programs eliminate commonsense, nonpartisan federal programs that clean the air and water and protect Americans from natural disasters,' the senators wrote in a March letter to Zeldin, along with seven other Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The EPA is potentially facing tighter purse strings. Trump's proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year would slash $5 billion from the agency tasked with protecting the nation's health and environment — by far the largest cut in the EPA's history, representing approximately 55% of its 2025 budget.
Meeting the reduction will require mass layoffs and would effectively cripple the EPA's core functions, according to the nonprofit Environmental Protection Network, a D.C.-based watchdog group composed of more than 600 former EPA workers.
'This is a reckless and short-sighted proposal that will lead to higher levels of toxic pollution in the air we breathe and water we drink across the nation,' read a statement from Michelle Roos, the EPN's executive director. 'This is a wrecking-ball approach that would gut America's front-line defense for protecting people's health and environment.'
Indeed, the loss of grant funding will have lasting real-world effects, according to José Franco García, executive director of the San Diego County-based nonprofit the Environmental Health Coalition. The group lost a $500,000 grant intended for a number of initiatives in the Barrio Logan neighborhood, a predominantly low-income community that suffers from pollution, poor air quality and other environmental problems due to 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 area homes with electrification, solar power and lead abatement, García said. He said the grant was also going to fund air filters in homes of children with asthma.
'These are the exact things that EPA money should be going to,' García said. 'And what the current version of the EPA is doing is not what it was meant to do, what it was meant to be able to protect, and what it was meant to be able to serve.'
García noted that the grant cancellations are also costing nonprofits time and potentially jobs as they scramble keep up with rapidly changing conditions. The grant was approved last summer and the group had spent months preparing to start the work.
'Just as we are expected to meet the terms of any contract, we thought that the federal government would be as well,' he said.
De Anda, of the Community Water Center, was similarly concerned about the public health implications of the grant terminations.
The Monterey County communities Pajaro, Sunny Mesa and Springfield have struggled with water quality issues for years, with 81% of domestic wells there testing positive for one or more dangerous contaminants including nitrate, 123-TCP, arsenic and chromium 6, she said. The chemicals can contribute to serious adverse health effects such as reproductive issues, infant blood conditions and cancer, according to the EPA.
The Community Water Center's $20-million grant would have funded the first phase of critical infrastructure work, including constructing pipelines to physically consolidate the communities into a single water system owned and operated by Pajaro/Sunny Mesa Community Services District, which would serve about 5,500 people and an elementary school.
Community Water Center is exploring all avenues to keep the work moving forward, De Anda said, and she hopes state officials will step in to fill the void left by the EPA.
'Our community deserves to have reliable infrastructure that delivers safe drinking water,' she said. 'Stopping the project is not an option.'
One of the area's residents, 49-year-old Maria Angelica Rodriguez, said she currently has to rely on bottled water for drinking, cooking and other basic needs. Every Thursday, a regional bottled water program delivers 5 gallons for each of the three members of her household, which include Rodriguez, her mother and her sister.
But she also worries about her 7-month-old grandson whom she babysits throughout the week, whom she fears could get sick from the area's tainted water.
Speaking through an interpreter, Rodriguez said she would like Trump to stop and think about the children and also farm workers in the area who need to drink the water.
The project brought hope to the community, she said, and its cancellation has made her very sad.
'El agua es vida,' she said. 'Water is life.'