Louisville air pollution regulator to contest grant termination for air toxics study
A logo on the side of an electric car for the Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)
Louisville's air pollution regulator will dispute the Trump administration's termination of a grant that funded an air toxics monitoring study in West Louisville, a larger community effort to study air pollution health impacts in neighborhoods near the Rubbertown industrial complex.
The Louisville Metro Air Pollution Control District (APCD) received a memo from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency March 31 stating a $1 million grant from the Environmental Justice Government-to-Government Program would be terminated because, in part, it was 'inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, agency priorities.' An EPA official in a court filing wrote recently that the agency was canceling hundreds of EPA grants, most of them involving environmental justice programs.
Matt Mudd, a spokesperson with APCD, told the Lantern Wednesday the regulator planned to dispute the grant termination with the EPA through an internal process. Rachael Hamilton, the executive director of APCD, in an April 16 board meeting described the option to dispute the grant termination as an 'administrative remedy' that would be sent to a regional EPA administrator. Hamilton said in the meeting last month there had been a 'fair amount' of litigation from other grantees that have had grants terminated.
The funding, announced in 2023 during the Biden administration, was set to support the placement of canisters measuring volatile organic compounds and two other monitors measuring airborne metals. Some of the monitors were to be placed downwind of Rubbertown, a cluster of chemical plants near West Louisville that have long been the subject of complaints from the adjacent neighborhoods and beyond.
The monitors were to be a part of a one-year study to compare the amount of air pollution and health impacts to a previous study done in the early 2000s that found levels of a number of cancer-causing pollutants to be unacceptable high. Mudd said the study's start date was 'imminent' before the grant was terminated.
Terry Johnson, a spokesperson for the EPA regional office that covers Kentucky, in a statement said the EPA was reviewing all awarded grants 'to ensure each is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars and to understand how those programs align with administration priorities.'
'Maybe the Biden-Harris Administration shouldn't have forced their radical agenda of wasteful DEI programs and 'environmental justice' preferencing on the EPA's core mission of protecting human health and the environment,' Johnson said in his statement.
Johnson did not answer emailed follow-up questions from the Lantern asking what specific issues the agency had with the grant.
Rep. Joshua Watkins, D-Louisville, who represents parts of West Louisville neighborhoods in the state legislature, said he hoped the city would exhaust all resources 'to ensure that their mission isn't hindered by any changes — this sort of whiplash of changes — that we see coming from the federal government.'
'Environmental justice is a freedom issue, and if you don't have a high quality of air, you aren't free to breathe and live a quality of life,' Watkins told the Lantern. 'Clean air is nonpartisan. You need it if you're Republican, you need it if you're a Democrat.'
Watkins, who noted city residents in predominantly Black neighborhoods in West Louisville have significantly lower life expectancies compared to the east half of the city, questioned why the air toxics monitoring study wouldn't align with the EPA's mission of protecting human health and the environment.
'What neighborhoods align, I guess, with the EPA mission?' he said. 'If not for the residents of West Louisville who have documented evidence of significantly worse health outcomes, why would we not focus on those citizens?'
The air monitoring study was a piece of a larger project addressing the health impacts of air pollution, involving other community partners including the University of Louisville's Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute, the West Jefferson County Community Task Force, Park DuValle Community Health Centers and Louisville's public health and wellness department.
UofL researchers planned to conduct a wastewater sampling study alongside the air toxics monitoring study and collect data from both to determine 'community health risks'; Park DuValle Community Health Centers would use the health impact findings from the project to train health professionals on how to treat exposure to air pollution; and the West Jefferson Community Task Force would hold community meetings to provide feedback on the project's findings and policy recommendations.
Arnita Gadson, the executive director of the West Jefferson County Community Task Force, told the Lantern she was especially interested in how the 'much needed' project planned to help inform community health workers and doctors on how to treat the impacts of exposure to air pollution. She said the health impacts of air pollution can also extend beyond West Louisville, given that residents impacted by pollution can move elsewhere and bring their health issues with them.
'This grant was to help everybody,' Gadson said. 'I think we were on the precipice of actually establishing a platform that meant that doctors really could start using some of this.'
Attempts on Wednesday to reach the CEO of Park DuValle Community Health Centers and a key UofL researcher involved with the project were not successful.
Eboni Cochran, the co-director of the grassroots organization Rubbertown Emergency ACTion that seeks to push back against pollution from industries in Rubbertown, told the Lantern while the termination of the grant was sad, APCD could do more to address immediate air pollution impacts. Cochran pointed to ongoing complaints of dust and fires at an industrial plant in the Parkland neighborhood of Louisville.
'An important part of what they were doing was to engage medical professionals, right? I think that is vital to the work of environmental justice,' Cochran said. 'However, you can even prevent or reduce people's likelihood of them even having to get to the medical professional if you listened to the people who live near these industries.'
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