Environmental Health Coalition Responds to EPA’s Official Termination of a $20 Million Community Change Grant for Climate-resilience Projects in San Diego.
On May 2, 2025, Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) learned that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had officially terminated a $20 million Community Change Grant (CCG) to fund clean-air and climate-resilience projects in San Diego’s Historic Central Barrios; – Barrio Logan, Logan Heights, Sherman Heights, Stockton, Shelltown, Southcrest, Mount Hope, Grant Hill.
The official letter of termination stated, “this EPA Assistance Agreement is terminated effective immediately on the grounds that the remaining portion of the Federal award will not accomplish the EPA funding priorities for achieving program goals. The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.”
In response, EHC’s Executive Director, Jose Franco Garcia issues the following statement:
The EPA terminated this grant because of who it was going to help – low-income communities of color who have unfairly suffered for generations from toxic, lung-damaging pollution and severe underinvestment. This grant would have helped fund air filters for children with asthma, home upgrades for low-income families, non-polluting buses, and more in these neighborhoods. We need to ask ourselves why this administration doesn’t want children with asthma breathing cleaner air? If clean air and a healthy environment are not consistent with this EPA’s priorities, then what is?
This is a huge hit to our communities, but EHC’s commitment to fight for environmental justice is unwavering, regardless of who is in the Oval Office. Environmental justice is the simple idea that all people deserve to live, work, and play in a clean and safe environment no matter what their zip code is. Now, we are calling on California’s Strategic Growth Council to step up and use Prop 4 funding to get the community back some of what was lost with the EPA grant termination.
Background
In 2024, the EPA awarded the CCG to the San Diego Foundation (SDF) to help fund the now impacted projects, which are part of Rooted in Communidad, Cultivating Equity, a joint initiative with EHC to develop climate-resilient projects that will preserve, protect and strengthen San Diego’s Central Historic Barrios. Without the CCG funding:
- the Boston Avenue Linear Park, a project decades in the making, is defunded.
- the MTS Electric Bus Program, a key project to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is canceled.
- the Holistic Healthy Homes program will have to provide fewer low-income families with free home upgrades that improve air quality, lower energy costs, and make homes more resilient to climate change disasters.
- Workforce Development Programs to provide training and placement in good-paying green jobs will face deep cuts.
- La Via Verde, Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center’s free electric shuttle service – which reduces air pollution and traffic – will have to decrease ride services drastically.
EHC, SDF, and a coalition of community partners will continue their work on the remaining RICCE projects, which will contribute to a community that is cleaner, healthier, and better prepared for climate change disasters. These projects are wholly or partially funded by a $22 million Transformative Climate Communities grant.
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About Environmental Health Coalition
Environmental Health Coalition (EHC) works for environmental justice in the San Diego/Tijuana region and throughout California. Founded in 1980, EHC has worked to reduce pollution and improve health and well-being for thousands of people in underserved, low-income communities.
About Transformative Climate Communities
The California Strategic Growth Council’s (SGC) Transformative Climate Communities Program (TCC), administered in partnership with the California Department of Conservation, funds community-led development and infrastructure projects that achieve major environmental, health, and economic benefits in California’s most disadvantaged communities. For more information, visit https://sgc.ca.gov/grant-programs/tcc/.
