By Rebecca Randall for Sojourners.
Broadcast version by Chrystal Blair for Missouri News Service for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration.
A couple years ago, urban farmer DeAndress Green drove Uber and DoorDash for 10 hours straight and then returned to her home on the southside of St. Louis struggling to breathe.
“I thought I was having an asthma attack,” she said.
She tried drinking coffee, her family’s quick trick for calming wheezing. She found her nephew’s inhaler and took that, which helped. She went to the hospital, where medical professionals tested for asthma. It wasn’t her first asthma test or emergency room visit due to breathing difficulties, and the results hadn’t changed: She didn’t demonstrate the right characteristics for a diagnosis.
“They’ve never learned why I’m wheezing,” said Green. “They’ve only said it’s probably environmental, which makes me very angry because I don’t know when it’s going to happen.” It also means doctors have been unwilling to prescribe her an inhaler.
Green wonders what toxins she’s been exposed to all her life. She gets nervous when she goes to north St. Louis, or commutes through Sauget, Ill., where a hazardous waste incinerator is located. Growing up, she recalls an odd, sweet smell while playing sports in empty lots in her neighborhood. Her mother Clye James Verde, who worked as a residential manager and groundskeeper at a housing project, received an asthma diagnosis after using an industrial strength oven cleaner during a shift — Verde didn’t know they should have worn a mask and gloves.
Green and Verde’s story is similar to many others who share their demographics: Black St. Louisans are more likely to live near major highways and interstates and known polluters, and Black children and youth are 10 times more likely than white counterparts to visit emergency rooms for asthma treatment, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Social Services.
Black residents have been at the forefront of the fight to address air quality for decades. Green remembers her mother advocating to ensure her kids’ access to their inhalers and other asthma management in schools. But now, Green said, Black St. Louisans aren’t the only ones raising their voices on air quality. Green joined Metropolitan Congregations United, a local faith and advocacy organization.
“For once in my lifetime, we have people who don’t look like me speaking about this,” she said. Over 2022-23, MCU organized 15 churches to help researchers better understand air quality in St. Louis.
“This is a way to put your faith into action. If your faith teaches you to care for creation, what does that ministry look like?” said Beth Gutzler, lead environmental justice organizer at Metropolitan Congregations United. “It’s a little different than other ministries look. Some people do food pantries, some people fight food injustice.” And more frequently, St. Louis churches are prioritizing tackling air quality.
Using air monitors as a tool for action
Currently, Missouri operates eight Environmental Protection Agency air monitors across St. Louis city and St. Louis County — only one of which provides a comprehensive screening of pollutants. The data is not granular enough to illuminate neighborhood disparities on local air pollution, so, advocates for air quality improvements have little information with which to petition decision-makers.
The Jay Turner Group, an energy, environmental, and chemical engineering lab at Washington University in St. Louis, received a community grant to pursue a slice of this problem and installed QuantAQ monitors. The low-cost sensors track particulate matter, which comes from car exhaust, fossil-fuel power plants, construction dust, industrial activity and other sources. Particulate matter can vary depending on weather and the built environment, which is why neighborhood-specific data would help address clean-air disparities.
The Group worked with Metropolitan Congregations United, who recruited 15 congregations across the city to install the monitors. MCU is a regional organization that helps congregational leaders build collective power to address racial inequities. Churches offered a good location for consistent monitoring, whereas monitors at park locations tend to get unplugged, said Gutzler.
At $1,250, the monitors are vastly cheaper than EPA monitors, which cost thousands more. The sensors report data to remote servers via cellular connection, making them more accessible than Wi-Fi. The project measured at each site between 2022-2023.
Tyler Cargill, a doctoral student who helped churches understand the data from the monitors, said MCU’s community engagement played a role in the research.
“One of the main reasons we do this is to help people to understand what they can get out of these sensors,” he said. “We test them to be able to understand: What are their limitations? What are their strengths?”
Spurring community engagement
For Beth Gutzler, lead environmental justice organizer at Metropolitan Congregations United, a major success of the project is the new and renewed engagement of churches in air quality issues.
For New Northside Missionary Baptist Church, one of the churches that installed monitors, clean air has been on their radar for many years now, said Rev. Rodrick Burton. During a campaign to support the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, Burton recalls a church event where he asked his congregation to raise their hand if they or a family member had asthma. He recalls about 40 percent of attendees lifting a hand. “That kind of got everyone’s attention,” he said.
Since then, the church has installed solar panels, held a Green the Church summit, helped members access inhalers for asthma, and hosted EPA administrators. As a church leader, Burton has participated on local clean air advisory committees and attended national conferences with organizations like Moms Clean Air Force.
“Our belief is that as Christians we are to be good stewards of the resources that God has provided. It would be sinful for us to take what has been provided for all and not protect the universal use for everyone,” Burton said. He views clean air as a justice issue — “a universal right.”
Allowing scientists to collect data using church property was a natural fit for a Black church, he said, comparing it to Civil Rights activists who documented and demonstrated evidence of systemic racism in court cases like Brown v. Board of Education.
Air monitors were also located at churches that were not previously engaged on environmental issues. For these churches, the research helped begin a conversation about what neighborhood ministries can look like — sometimes including creation care for the first time.
“It’s different than Sierra Club,” said Gutzler, who attends Sts. Joachim and Ann Catholic Church in St. Charles. “I get to tie it to the doctrines and teachings of their faith.”
Congregations have dialogued about hosting a neighborhood lawn mower rental program to help with the transition from gas to electric, addressing indoor air quality by replacing kitchen gas appliances, and even divesting from fossil fuels in church-held investment portfolios, Gutzler said.
The air monitors also helped churches dive deeper into structural issues, moving from caring for community members with asthma to asking how they could work to improve air quality.
What to do with unexpected outcomes
The common view was that monitors would reveal higher rates of pollution in north St. Louis, which ranks high on the CDC’s environmental justice index. But Cargill said the data captured didn’t support that, with increases in PM2.5 (the particulate matter tracked) near roadways or buildings, not specific neighborhoods.
The data still proved useful for addressing clean-air access, however: Most of the monitors found PM2.5 levels near or above the EPA’s threshold for exposure, and well above the World Health Organization’s recommended threshold. This means likely all St. Louis residents are at risk for negative health impacts.
Cargill said future studies could still help address neighborhood discrepancies by measuring ozone. The monitors they used could not detect ozone, which can exacerbate asthma when it forms at ground level. Ozone develops generally on sunny, hot days, as a reaction of nitrogen oxide, from sources like tailpipes and construction, and compounds found in gas, paint, solvent, and even pine trees, Cargill said. But the current cost of these monitors likely keeps them out of reach for churches.
From knowledge to advocacy
To begin public advocacy, MCU asked for more transparency in community outreach from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, who regulates air quality in the state.
Previously the agency only allowed public involvement in construction permits related to air emissions when the public requested. In other words, projects sailed through permitting without public notice. You could not even see the permit that you might want to request a hearing about, said Gutzler. To appeal, a citizen had to make a public records request.
Now, the department maintains an automatic email list of upcoming permits, though a citizen still needs to request a hearing. Gutzler counts it as a win. It is the first step in her vision of helping congregations to engage the community and together become the watch dogs that pay attention to air quality in the permit process.
With more awareness of how to navigate the public process, MCU testified against an incinerator permit in Hannibal, upriver from St. Louis. Their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful — the permit was approved — but it gave them an idea of how to engage across the rural-urban divide, particularly as they hope to engage churches across the state.
For some congregations, the air monitors also focused community concerns on finding the right solutions. Cargill crossed off PM2.5 as the culprit causing odors that plague the Benton Park neighborhood, where Epiphany United Church of Christ placed a monitor.
At a public meeting in April, Doris McCarter, a plant scientist and congregant at Epiphany, asked Missouri regulators to use their authority to push for stricter EPA regulations and request a study that identifies the source of the odor and its potential health effects, even though it may be an Illinois plant.
Meanwhile, Epiphany member Kathleen Logan Smith formed Breathe Better STL, which meets at the church monthly to explore how to grow a movement to oppose air permits that allow exceptions for exceeding EPA emission limits.
Ultimately, community air monitors helped spur a growing interest in clean air advocacy among churches in Missouri. When the Washington University project ended, MCU helped find funds to cover lower-cost PurpleAir Network monitors for churches to “help fill out the St. Louis map,” said Gutzler. One strength of the PurpleAir Network is the open-source geographic data on air quality, but some residential areas — particularly in environmental justice communities — remain unmeasured.
The group also partners with the Heartland Environmental Justice Center, an EPA-funded research center, and the Gamaliel Network, which provides training on faith-based advocacy.
Gutzler aspires to engage the whole state of Missouri on air quality issues and help scientists and church leaders to see the potential for change that comes through working together.
Rebecca Randall wrote this article for Sojourners.
get more stories like this via email
By Kristoffer Tigue, Dennis Pillion, Dylan Baddour and Marianne Lavelle for Inside Climate News.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration
When a rare tornado swept through the north side of Minneapolis, Michelle Neal scrambled for cover at a fast-food restaurant. "It was unreal-we could have died," she told Minnesota Public Radio. "McDonald's saved me."
It's the kind of scenario that Julia Nerbonne, executive director of Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, wants to make sure communities are better prepared for as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather. The faith-based nonprofit hopes to transform churches and other congregations into emergency shelters with solar power and battery storage to withstand power outages-especially in historically disadvantaged communities, like north Minneapolis, which have long been overburdened by pollution and underinvestment.
"We want to have a building," she said, "in which they can have a cooling place, in which they can refrigerate their medication-a place where they can be with the community in the midst of a crisis."
Around the country, nonprofits and other community organizations like Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light were hoping these sorts of projects would receive funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has $3 billion to spend on environmental justice community grants through Sept. 30, 2026. But the Biden administration has only been able to award about half the money so far, and experts say the unspent 50 percent can most likely be clawed back by President-elect Donald Trump-a blow to communities of color and poor rural communities that had long waited for help like this.
Among the threatened initiatives is the EPA's Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program, which dedicated $600 million in block grants for projects aimed at tackling climate and environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. The money has been hailed by advocates as one of the most important federal investments ever made in closing the nation's long-standing socioeconomic and racial gaps.
The Biden administration has so far awarded nearly $266 million, according to an EPA database, leaving more than half-or just over $334 million-vulnerable to reversal efforts from Trump officials or Republican lawmakers. "EPA continues to work through its rigorous process to obligate the funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, including the Thriving Communities Grantmakers program," said Nick Conger, the EPA's communications director.
Last week, the EPA opened up the first round of applications for the Thriving Communities program, giving hopeful applicants like Nerbonne less than two months to navigate the complicated federal grantmaking process before Trump is sworn in. In fact, several EPA regions have yet to open their application processes, leaving some groups worried they won't be able to complete their applications on time.
"It just seems like an incredibly missed opportunity. I'd feel disappointed about that," Nerbonne said, when asked how she would feel if the program's funding was rescinded under Trump. "Congregations aren't talking about politics. They're ready to get to work serving their community and they're tired of politics, especially after this election."
Republicans Target Environmental Justice Funding
The IRA's idea for addressing historic environmental injustice through a community grant program was taken from the sprawling Environmental Justice for All legislation originally introduced in 2020 by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz) and the late Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.).
"We approached it with the fundamental belief that communities know what communities need best," said Grijalva in an email.
But Congressional Republicans have been vocal about their intention to cut or limit the environmental justice grant program, characterizing it as a form of cronyism, providing support to political allies of Democrats and opponents of fossil fuels.
"The EPA is awarding taxpayer dollars to special interest groups committed to a radical energy agenda," wrote U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) in a House Energy and Commerce Committee report, released just before Election Day. "Enriching nonprofit organizations to spread radical, left-leaning ideology is an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars. These programs demand rigorous scrutiny and meticulous oversight."
Trump himself suggested in a 2023 campaign video that he could "simply choke off the money" allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Typically, Congress would have to pass new "rescission" legislation to take away unspent money that Congress previously appropriated. Republicans could use the appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2025, which began in October and now appears likely to be in the hands of the newly elected Congress and Trump, to do so. But in order to avoid the threat of a filibuster in the Senate, they instead could use a budget reconciliation bill that only needs a simple majority-the approach Democrats used to pass the IRA. Republicans are aiming to embark on a reconciliation bill soon after taking office in order to extend and expand Trump's 2017 tax cuts.
Ending environmental justice grantmaking is also part of the vision laid out in Project 2025, the policy roadmap that conservative groups drew up for Trump's second term. Although Trump professed no familiarity with Project 2025 during the campaign, he has named authors of the plan to key positions in his new administration, including tapping Russell Vought, his former budget chief, to head the Office of Management and Budget again. Project 2025 called for pausing and reviewing all environmental justice grants in light of the Supreme Court's recent decisions against affirmative action.
The Thriving Communities grant program has become a particular target of Republicans, who singled out one of its recipients and accused it of being "radical" and "anti-American." The Climate Justice Alliance, a California-based organization, is one of 11 regional grantmaker organizations that were initially awarded $50 million each from the Thriving Communities program. Those groups would then disseminate $40 million of their funds as subgrants to community organizations in their regions.
The Climate Justice Alliance is the only regional grantmaker that has not received any of its funding, sparking speculation that GOP rancor could be to blame. In May, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the group for its support of Palestinians in Gaza and its opposition to Israel, calling its members "radical," "anti-American," and "antisemitic."
Conger, the EPA spokesperson, said the "EPA continues to review the grant for the Climate Justice Alliance," but provided no further details.
KD Chavez, the Climate Justice Alliance's executive director, said that the group's pro-Gaza advocacy is constitutionally protected speech that is separate from the work it would fund under the Thriving Communities program. "This grant money would only be used as intended by Congress, going towards things like air quality and asthma, water quality and lead, asbestos contamination," she said.
If the group's political views are the reason for the holdup in funding, Chavez said it could put at risk any social justice or progressive work that receives federal funding. "This could really be setting up a horrific First Amendment precedent moving forward for any type of organization across civil society," Chavez said.
Other groups involved in the EPA grant program pushed back against the GOP attacks as well. In addition to the 11 regional grantmaker organizations, another 18 institutions were chosen to act as technical assistance centers-known officially as Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers, or TCTACs-to help community organizations navigate the often complicated federal grant application process.
Bonnie Keeler, a University of Minnesota public affairs associate professor who runs the Midwest region's TCTAC, said it's a misrepresentation of her center's work to say it channels federal funding to "left-leaning activist or extremist organizations," adding that the program deserves broad bipartisan support.
"The TCTACs do not advance a particular policy agenda, we respond to requests for assistance wherever they come from," Keeler said. "To date, we have responded to over 400 requests for technical assistance from urban, rural and tribal communities seeking assistance with everything from energy efficiency goals, to cleaning up brownfields, to managing hazardous waste, to reducing indoor air pollution."
How Far Will Trump Go?
In the early 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon had a problem. A Democratic-controlled Congress wanted to fund highway improvements, drug rehabilitation and a number of other initiatives that the Republican president believed were "undisciplined" and "fiscally irresponsible."
So Nixon decided to withhold funds in the budget that he didn't agree with, sparking a constitutional struggle that resulted in the passage of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. That law, which is still in effect today, prohibits a president or other government officials from refusing to release congressionally appropriated funds and essentially substituting their own funding decisions for those of Congress.
The legislation also defines when federal funding has been "obligated," a legal term for when a contract has been signed between a federal agency and the recipient of federal funds, such as an organization applying for a grant, said Jeremy Kalin, a finance attorney for the law firm Avisen Legal. That means the $266 million dedicated to environmental justice under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed in 2022, and already obligated is protected from being rescinded, Kalin said.
But legal experts, including Kalin, aren't sure if Trump and his officials will respect that federal law and refrain from trying to seize or rescind obligated funds, pointing to statements made by Trump and Vought.
Vought and members of right-wing think tanks he is associated with have argued that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is unconstitutional, saying that Article II of the Constitution, which obligates the president to "faithfully execute" the law, also allows a president to forbid enforcement of the law.
Trump appears to agree with that interpretation. In a statement announcing Vought's nomination last week, Trump bragged about Vought's experience as a deregulator, saying, "Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government."
"Russell Vought," Kalin said, "may stretch the bounds of the Impoundment Control Act ... and just force people to stop it through the courts."
If that's the case, Kalin said, some funds-even those protected as "obligated" funds under the Impoundment Control Act-may be subject to reversals by the Trump administration, and only funds that get fully dispersed to organizations before Trump takes office may be safe from those efforts.
Trump has already tested this theory. During his first term in office, he withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine while pressuring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his family. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO, later ruled that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.
Trump will have an opportunity to appoint a new head of GAO next year when the 15-year term of the current Comptroller General ends, giving him a chance to choose who will have direct oversight of any decisions he makes to withhold funding.
If Trump decides to withhold funds, it will most certainly trigger legal fights that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. The high court has never directly weighed in on the subject, however, but the court's conservative majority has indicated it is willing to take an expansive view on presidential power.
"Time Is Just Not on the Side of the Grantees"
The short amount of time, roughly seven weeks, before Trump takes office, could also be discouraging some community groups from applying for federal environmental justice grants at all. In some cases, nonprofits see it as a reason to rely less on federal support to do their work.
Caleb Roberts applied for a $1.5 million grant earlier in November from another IRA-funded environmental justice program. He hoped to use the money to hire more employees at his nonprofit, Dallas-based Downwinders at Risk, to conduct door-to-door screenings to check residents' homes for conditions that cause asthma. But now he's unsure he'll ever see that money.
"We think we'll definitely run into some funding issues," he said. "Starting day one after inauguration, those things are probably under fire."
Another nonprofit, Alabama-based We Matter Community Association, said it plans to apply for a Thriving Communities grant to purchase 1,200 acres of land in the city of Prichard, on which it plans to build community amenities, including a community center, athletic fields, commercial space and affordable housing. But Carletta Davis, the group's president, said the organization will likely rely less on federal support in the future.
"[The election] is the reason why We Matter is really solely focused on trying to create a way to sustain itself without having to go through governmental grants," she said. "I think that our model is probably going to be the model going forward for EJ organizations."
Some organizations aren't sure if applying for a federal environmental justice grant is worth the effort at all. Applications for the Thriving Communities grant program, the largest single program of federal environmental justice block grants, haven't even opened in the EPA-designated area that includes Texas and Louisiana, home to the nation's largest petrochemical complexes and environmental justice communities.
"At this time, the groups we know of that may be interested still need more time to understand the grant program and whether they will apply," said Vanessa Toro Barragán, a senior program officer at the Houston-based Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, which isn't involved with the grant program.
But time may not be a luxury community groups can afford at the moment, should Trump officials and Republican lawmakers follow through with their threats.
Employees of organizations that work closely with the Thriving Communities program, also expressed concern that community groups would struggle to complete a complicated federal grant application before Trump takes office in just seven weeks, agreeing to comment anonymously to safeguard their prospects as potential grantees.
"Time is just not on the side of the grantees," one employee told Inside Climate News.
Still, organizations involved with the federal grant programs are encouraging community groups to apply and hope to see a big turnout.
"The fact is that this program, it still exists, and it doesn't make sense to turn away from an opportunity that is still there while it is still there," said Chandra Taylor-Sawyer, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the partner organizations helping to recruit applicants to the Thriving Communities program.
Keeler, who runs the Midwest technical assistance center at the University of Minnesota, expressed a similar sentiment. "The future of these programs is uncertain," she said. "That said, all we can do is continue the work we've started. We get new requests for support every week and we'll keep responding to those requests for technical assistance as long as we are able."
Kristoffer Tigue, Dennis Pillion, Dylan Baddour and Marianne Lavelle wrote this article for Inside Climate News.
get more stories like this via email
Contact
