EPA cuts could leave Washington rural towns choking in smoke

When wildfire smoke drifts into Washington’s Methow Valley, it tends to stay, settling in the folds of the Cascade foothills like a choking fog. Recent summers have brought weekslong binges of unhealthy air to one of Washington state’s poorest counties, rivaling some of the most polluted cities in the world.

Countering this intensifying threat are small nonprofit organizations such as the Methow Valley Citizens Council, which has been distributing air purifiers, maintaining a network of air quality monitors, and spreading the message about how to keep safe when the smoke rolls in. Much of that work was funded by a three-year, $440,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, which got cut off last week amid the agency’s push to slash spending.

“We’re basically abandoning people who need it most,” said Jasmine Minbashian, the organization’s executive director.

The EPA’s decision to slash more than $1.5 billion in funding that Administrator Lee Zeldin characterized as “DEI and Environmental Justice grants” has hit hard in many rural communities in the West that have firsthand experience with the destructive realities of the warming climate. The cuts landed in Alaska villages reeling from melting permafrost and coastal flooding; Native American reservations suffering from smoke and long-running drought; and mountain towns in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by burning forests.

In a statement, the EPA press office said officials are scrutinizing this funding.

“As with any change in administration, the agency is reviewing its awarded grants to ensure each is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars and to understand how those programs align with administration priorities,” the statement said. “The agency’s review is ongoing.”

Residents and local organizations in these communities say the funding cuts undermine what little defense there is against growing climate threats.

“These were dollars that were going to really make a difference to people who are financially without the means to do this work to protect their health,” said Sarah Altemus-Pope, executive director of South Willamette Solutions, a nonprofit that saw its EPA funding to help seal homes against wildfire smoke in Oakridge, Oregon, terminated.

Oakridge, a city of about 3,000 people southeast of Eugene that Trump won in November, is surrounded by the Willamette National Forest. Last summer, a lightning storm ignited several fires in the forest close to Oakridge that burned more than 30,000 acres. In 2022, the massive Cedar Creek Fire inundated Oakridge and surrounding Lane County with thick smoke for weeks – including 37 days of unhealthy or hazardous air quality, more than anywhere else in the state that year.

“We’re in a low valley surrounded by higher ridgelines, so smoke will pool in the valley,” Altemus-Pope said. “It’s a pretty pervasive issue in the West, and it’s getting worse each year.”

Lane County’s air quality authority learned March 21 that its $1 million EPA grant awarded in September for “building community resiliency to the hazards of smoke and wildfires” – a chunk of it passed through to South Willamette Solutions – was terminated. The money, stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act, was intended for work on about 30 homes. The work included installing grates on attic vents to keep embers out and sealing doors and windows to keep out smoke.

The EPA wrote in an email that the grant “no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities,” said Travis Knudsen, director of the Lane Regional Air Protection Agency.

“The funding was to do good work, and at this point we’re evaluating options for the agency,” Knudsen said.

There are more than 450 terminated or frozen EPA grants totaling more than $1.5 billion, according to a list obtained by The Washington Post. The recipients include nonprofit organizations, Native American tribes, cities, counties and universities across the country.

Trump issued an executive order calling for federal grants to be terminated if they provide funding for programs that “promote or take part in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives” or “environmental justice initiatives.”

“It is a priority of the EPA to eliminate discrimination in all programs throughout the United States,” according to multiple termination letters reviewed by The Post.

Yet there is some uncertainty about what the administration classifies as DEI and environmental justice.

One EPA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals, said the cuts to EPA grant funding appeared based solely on grant description language.

“It’s like they just went through and if the word ‘equity’ or ‘environmental justice’ was used, it’s gone,” the official said.

The Alaska Native village of Kipnuk, on a riverbank a few miles inland from the Bering Sea, is prone to flooding, particularly when major storms slam into the coast. The town of about 600 people flooded at least 30 times between 1979 and 2022, mostly from storm surge, according to a report last year from the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Alaska’s warming climate and the rapid loss of sea ice in the Bering Sea makes coastal communities such as Kipnuk more vulnerable to storms for longer periods than in the past, according to Alaska climate experts. Rising seas and sinking land caused by melting permafrost has also exposed the community to flooding that has inundated homes and washed away portions of the wooden boardwalks that connect the community.

“It’s pretty staggering as far as the significant impact that flooding is causing,” said Nora Nieminski, coastal hazards program manager at the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Flooding has compounded the rapid erosion of Kipnuk’s riverbank that threatens homes and community buildings, as well as fuel storage tanks, wind turbines and other infrastructure.

Last year, Rayna Paul, Kipnuk’s environmental director, applied for two EPA grants to address the erosion. EPA officials visited to help develop a proposal, she said, and in December the community learned it was awarded $20 million to fortify a portion of the riverbank.

On March 11, Paul discovered through her account to access the funding that the grant was suspended. The Kipnuk funding appears on the EPA’s list of terminated or frozen grants.

Paul said the community does not have the money to secure the riverbank. Demolition started this week on Kipnuk’s tribal council bunkhouse because riverbank erosion has left the building in a precarious position, she said.

“We’re going to lose some important infrastructure if they don’t reinstate the funding,” she said.

Some nonprofit organizations that have been awarded EPA grants but have not received formal letters of termination are uncertain about whether they can still rely on that money.

Rena Shawver, executive director of the Okanogan County Community Action Council, said her nonprofit in Eastern Washington worked for nearly a year on an application for a $20 million EPA grant to support building a “resiliency hub” in the town of Omak. The county has suffered more than any other in the state from wildfire smoke in the past decade, according to data from the Washington State Department of Ecology.

In addition to the organization’s offices, the new building would include three child-care classrooms and a weatherization and home repair shop. It would serve as a community gathering point and facility for the county emergency management agency to use during natural disasters such as the wildfires that regularly break out in the nearby state and national forests. It would allow the council’s current offices to serve as a warehouse for its food distribution program that fed more than 13,000 people last year.

“We’re extremely rural, extremely isolated and extremely poor,” Shawver said. “So this kind of federal funding is really important to us because we don’t normally get the opportunity to get a $20 million grant to put up needed facilities that we’ve been planning for years.”

The plan for the facility has long been supported by county and state elected officials who represent the area. She also described Okanogan County as a “constituent community” where a majority voted for Trump.

“We are hoping that we will get support in the areas that we need the most,” she said.

Her EPA contacts have described the grant as “under review.”

“We’re still holding out hope for this money,” she said.