Largest funding for group air monitoring in EPA historical past funded by President Biden’s Climate and Economic Plans
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (November 3, 2022) — Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has chosen the Enterprise Center Inc. to obtain funding to conduct group air high quality monitoring in Hamilton County communities. The grant is considered one of 132 air monitoring tasks in 37 states will obtain $53.4 million from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and American Rescue Plan to boost air high quality monitoring in communities throughout the United States. The tasks are targeted on communities which are underserved, traditionally marginalized, and overburdened by air pollution, supporting President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative.
“These grants will give communities within the Southeast the instruments they should higher perceive air high quality challenges of their neighborhoods,” mentioned EPA Region 4 Administrator Daniel Blackman. “EPA’s funding in ARP funding is not going to solely advance the company’s cellular air monitoring labs and air sensor mortgage packages however enhance the company’s capability to help communities in want of short-term monitoring and air high quality info.”
In addition to ongoing analysis into the correlation between COVID-19 and air high quality, creating information and a extra granular understanding of air high quality throughout Hamilton County communities that routinely rank on the backside statewide for bronchial asthma, persistent diseases, and hospitalization is a excessive precedence for the Chattanooga Smart Community Collaborative (CSCC) and is the main focus of this proposal. CSCC companions have already deployed greater than 30 air high quality sensors at areas throughout Hamilton County, which stream dwell information accessible to the general public. Funds awarded will help 130 extra fastened, low-cost sensors within the research space, present 50 sensors for resident use through a library mortgage program, and add resiliency through one extra FRM/FEM monitor. Live information visualization, well being info, and academic assets can be hosted publicly for residents, and sensor information can be imported into repositories, together with the City of Chattanooga’s Open Data Portal, making certain practitioners and researchers have entry to the community and rising their capability to advance different analysis, inform public well being advisories, and improve citizen self-efficacy.
The air air pollution monitoring tasks are made attainable by greater than $30 million in Inflation Reduction Act funds, which supplemented $20 million from the American Rescue Plan and enabled EPA to help 77 extra tasks, greater than twice the variety of tasks initially proposed by community-based nonprofit organizations, state and native governments, and Tribal governments.
These grant choices additional the targets of President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative and Executive Order, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, which directed that 40 p.c of the general advantages of sure Federal investments circulate to overburdened communities that face disproportionately excessive and adversarial well being and environmental impacts. By enhancing air monitoring and inspiring partnerships with communities, EPA is investing in efforts to higher defend folks’s well being, significantly these in underserved communities.
EPA will begin the method to award the funding by the tip of 2022, as soon as the grant candidates have met all authorized and administrative necessities. Grantees can have three years to spend the funds from the time EPA awards the grants.
See the complete listing of functions chosen for award.
Background
In spring 2021, Congress handed the American Rescue Plan, offering EPA with a one-time supplemental appropriation of $100 million to deal with well being consequence disparities from air pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic. Half of that $100 million, was devoted to air high quality monitoring. EPA Regions started awarding practically $22.5 million from this appropriation in 2022 as direct awards to state, tribal, and native air businesses for steady monitoring of high-quality particle and different frequent pollution. In addition, EPA Regions are within the means of procuring monitoring gear utilizing $5 million in American Rescue Plan funding to advance the EPA Regional Offices’ cellular air monitoring capability and set up air sensor mortgage packages. . These investments will enhance EPA’s capability to help communities that want short-term monitoring and air high quality info.
In July 2021, EPA introduced the $20 million American Rescue Plan Enhanced Air Quality Monitoring for Communities Grant Competition. The aim of this competitors was to enhance air high quality monitoring in and close to underserved communities throughout the United States, help group efforts to watch their very own air high quality, and promote air high quality monitoring partnerships between communities and tribal, state, and native governments. EPA obtained greater than 200 functions in response to the competitors.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 gives funding to EPA to deploy, combine, help, and keep fenceline air monitoring, screening air monitoring, nationwide air toxics development stations, and different air toxics and group monitoring. Specifically, the Inflation Reduction Act gives funding for grants and different actions beneath part 103 and part 105 of the Clean Air Act. EPA is utilizing roughly $32.3 million of this funding to pick out 77 high-scoring group monitoring functions.
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