When environmental justice advocates from around the Mid-Atlantic region joined local and national officials to launch an unprecedented funding and assistance program, it was no accident that it took place in a centuries-old Black church in northeast’s Ivy City Sept. 26. Community activists have spent years calling attention to environmental injustices in the neighborhood, and both local and national officials—several of whom attended the kickoff event at Trinity Baptist Church—have begun to take notice.
“It is a reflection of the relationships that have been built over the last couple of years,” said Parisa Norouzi, executive director of Empower DC, which has led organizing efforts for environmental justice in Ivy City and nearby Brentwood. “We were able to be a partner in the [federal program] and be able to offer and suggest that the announcement take place in Ivy City…I interpreted it as a nod of recognition and, and support of the aims and the goals of our work.”
Empower DC’s involvement in the new Environmental Protection Agency initiative represents a small step toward change. The Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers Program—abbreviated to TCTAC, pronounced “tic-tac”—aims to support grassroots groups that have historically been shut out of the federal grant-making process.
“I can say from experience, as the director of an organization that literally started in a church basement with no funding, that it’s taken 20 years to develop a lot of the capacity that is required to be able to even manage [local] grants,” Norouzi said.
Empower DC now expects to receive its first federal grant as one of 10 partners in the Region 3 TCTAC, which will help connect environmental justice groups throughout the Mid-Atlantic with assistance on federal grant applications and management. The region, which covers Pennsylvania through Virginia, received a total of $12 million for the five-year project period.
The EPA first announced the program in April and set out to have 16 TCTACs up and running around the country by the end of September, said EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator Adam Ortiz.
The EPA selected the National Wildlife Federation as the grant’s parent partner for Region 3, and the organization will oversee the technical assistance center along with the Center for Community Engagement Environmental Justice and Health. In partnership with a network of nine subgrantee organizations, the TCTAC will offer assistance for community groups across the region. Empower DC’s role in the project will include connecting other grassroots organizations in the city to the resources available through the TCTAC, Norouzi said.
Technical assistance may take a lot of different forms, such as help with increasing organizational capacity, expertise around relevant laws and policies, or support for scientific needs like air quality monitoring. In particular, the TCTAC hub aims to provide assistance for organizations on how to write and manage grants.
“It’s not one size fits all,” Norouzi said.
Big Money from Biden for Environmental Justice
The TCTACs are launching amidst a wave of federal money for pollution, climate and environmental justice issues, and a sizable chunk of that change comes in the form of grants. The Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in August 2022 as the biggest climate investment in U.S. history, included more than $9 billion in environmental justice-related grants from the EPA and other agencies.
“How do you fight money, power and influence? With money, power and influence,” Maria Payan, co-founder of Sussex Health & Environmental Network, one of the Region 3 TCTAC partners, said in remarks at the announcement.
Federal agencies have been announcing new grant opportunities at a rapid clip in recent months. Just a few weeks ago, the U.S. Forest Service announced that the D.C. area would receive $34 million to work on equitable tree cover. In June, six DMV trail projects aimed at improving biking and walking connections in underserved areas received $25 million from the Department of Transportation (that cash came from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law).
Environmental justice activists say that the Biden administration’s prioritization of environmental justice represents a major shift after decades of advocacy.
“It’s unprecedented—people use that word a lot, but this is actually unprecedented,” said Vernice Miller-Travis, co-founder of WeACT for Environmental Justice and one of the environmental justice movement’s long-time pioneers.
Ortiz, the EPA administrator for the Mid-Atlantic Region, said in his remarks at the event that his office’s budget for grants has grown from $400 million to $1.2 billion in just the last two years.
“That’s not chump change,” said Miller-Travis. “That’s real money, intended to make real impact.”
Getting Grants Into the Right Hands
Advocates have long pointed out that the federal grant system has historically failed to include many of the community groups that could most benefit from the funding boost. Larger, better-funded and more well-established organizations can devote more resources to labor-intensive grant applications and the complicated reporting requirements for showing how the money gets used.
“There’s a lot of barriers in place to getting grants—it’s not an easy process, it’s very time-consuming and intense,” Norouzi said. “The grant-making system is yet another system that has inequities embedded into it.”
The TCTAC program aims to address part of that problem by connecting smaller organizations with technical assistance so that they can successfully apply for and manage federal grants. Community organizers may often not know about the money that’s available or strategies for how to obtain it, said Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Democrat from Delaware, in her remarks at the launch event in Ivy City.
“On a lot of issues, we have not moved the needle where we should, and I think that’s because we’ve been doing the same old thing, giving money to the same old people and not getting it to the places that can actually make a difference,” Rep. Blunt Rochester said. “This is about empowerment, making sure that we actually do move the needle—for all of us.”
Other nearby organizations selected to participate in the Region 3 TCTAC include the University of Maryland’s Environmental Finance Center, Morgan State University and South Baltimore Community Land Trust. These organizations will receive funding through the grant for the purpose of providing support to other grassroots groups.
“The resources, the money—that’s what’s always been missing, because it’s always gone to places where it never hit the ground,” Payan said. “It’s hitting the ground. The change is coming.”
