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Homes in the Yupik Eskimo Village of Quinhagak on the Yukon Delta in Alaska are threatened by shoreline erosion as climate change makes the planet warmer. More than 22 tribes and nonprofits in the U.S., including Alaska, have had millions of dollars in federal funds for infrastructure projects frozen. Some of those projects were meant to help address the impacts of climate change. Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images hide caption
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Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images
The Tebughna Foundation threw a big celebration in February after the Environmental Protection Agency awarded the nonprofit $20 million to renovate or replace 20 homes contaminated with asbestos and lead for the Native Village of Tyonek in Alaska. The project, which would also connect the homes to solar panels, aimed to upgrade houses built in the 1960s.
" We were all just so happy about this grant that's going to literally change some people's lives," says Vide Kroto, the foundation's executive director.
But within a matter of weeks, the Trump administration froze the funding. When Kroto logged onto the federal payment system on March 7, the status of her grant said "suspended."
She wasn't alone.
More than 22 tribes and nonprofits across the country from Alaska to the Midwest, have had around $350 million in federal funding for key infrastructure projects frozen, often without notice. NPR spoke with 11 of them who say some have found out their funds were suspended when they logged onto the federal payment system in early March. Others have had their grants disappear from that system entirely. Tyonek and other villages in Alaska received no notice whatsoever.
Now tribes don't know if or when they will have funds to address the growing threats of climate change, from thawing permafrost to riverbank erosion to wildfire prevention.
That funding uncertainty, explains Kroto, has thrown projects like renovating homes, "in limbo, but the bills are still coming in."
The Native Village of Tyonek's project, along with others across the country, were part of nearly $1.6 billion in community change grants distributed by the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights under the Biden administration. The funds were flowing through the administration's signature climate policy, the Inflation Reduction Act. But in March, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency would end the "Biden-Harris Administration's Environmental Justice and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion arms of the agency." In February, the EPA put nearly 170 employees in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights on paid administrative leave.
Kroto says she's been fielding calls from tribal members asking if they are on the list to have their house renovated. " We have to tell each and every [village member] because of the current administration … all the grants across the board … have been frozen or terminated or suspended," Kroto says. "And we just don't have any answers."
Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP), the federal funding system, does not determine a grant's legal status, according to Zealand Hoover, a former senior advisor at the EPA under the Biden administration.
"The system was never designed to be used in this manner (constantly toggling thousands of grants on and off)."
EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou said in an emailed statement, "As with any change in Administration, the agency is reviewing each grant program to ensure it is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars and to understand how those programs align with Administration priorities. Each individual grant in the Community Change Grant program is undergoing this review."
So for now, the status of the Community Change Grants, including those going to tribal communities, is unknown.
Improving communities
Tyonek is 40 miles south of Anchorage, accessible only by plane or barge. Many people live in multi-generational homes. Between 165 to 190 people live in Tyonek, but there are close to 1,000 Tyonek tribal members in the country. Many who grow up in the village — like Kroto — move away to neighboring cities like Anchorage or leave the state.
The community is plagued with high energy costs; people pay anywhere from $300 to $800 monthly in electricity bills, according to Kroto. So they heat their homes with wood stoves.
But weather conditions can make getting firewood nearly impossible at times. Kroto says residents resort to grabbing coal from the beach to heat their wood stoves despite the health risks. Breathing coal fumes can cause lung damage and lead to long-term health impacts.
" Growing up, that's all you would hear is, 'I'm going to live at home, I'm going to help my people, we're gonna help make change.'" Kroto says.
So when people are ready to return to Tyonek, "there's no place to live and the cost of living is too high," she says.
Community Change Grants were some of the most flexible dollars in the federal government, according to Matthew Tejada, the former deputy assistant administrator for the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights during the Biden administration.
" You could work on housing, you could work on transportation, you could work on food, you could work on flooding," says Tejada, who's now the senior vice president at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "You could work on basically anything affecting your community."
The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in northwest Oregon discovered they couldn't access nearly $20 million on March 7. The community planned to use that money to build a community center that could function as an evacuation shelter during wildfires. The facility would also have solar panels to generate power during outages and grid failures.
The center is still in the design stage, but the Grand Ronde tribes say the delay could affect the construction timeline. "These are all things we are still trying to work through," the tribes' spokesperson Sara Thompson wrote in an email.
Thompson says the funds from the EPA are meant to support community initiatives in Grand Ronde and across the country. She says, "these communities deserve answers, and we pray the federal government stands behind their commitments to these programs."
Gussie Lord is the managing attorney of tribal partnerships program at Earthjustice, an environmental law nonprofit. She says the funding freeze and federal cuts are "really gonna impact the people that are most in need of assistance, especially in really rural areas where there's not a lot of economic development opportunity."
River erosion
The Native Village of Kipnuk in western Alaska was counting on nearly $20 million dollars to stabilize parts of a riverbank that has been steadily eroding due to climate change which is causing flooding. The village is losing between 10 to 28 feet every year, bringing water closer to swallowing buildings and homes.
The grant was approved just weeks before President Biden left office.
Kivalina is one of the many villages home to Alaska Natives confronting coastal erosion and storm surges as the Arctic warms from climate change. The Biden administration awarded nearly $1.6 billion in Community Change Grants to help communities address the growing threats of climate change, from thawing permafrost to riverbank erosion to wildfire prevention.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Hundreds of people call Kipnuk home, but the ground is sinking, as permafrost thaws and flooding regularly inundates the community.
" We are starting to see increased impacts of climate change," says Rayna Paul, the environmental director for the Native Village of Kipnuk.
When Kipnuk floods, "we see fuel tanks, containers [and] some smaller buildings are washed away," Paul says.
Like many remote villages in Alaska, Kipnuk is not connected to the state's road system and has no running water or sewer infrastructure. Residents use honey buckets — toilets that need to be emptied manually — and sewage can contaminate Kipnuk's water supply during flooding.
Time is of the essence in Kipnuk, according to Paul. She says the riverbank stabilization project needs to be completed in three years because the river is eroding so quickly, putting homes in danger.
There's also a short construction season because the river is frozen for nearly half the year, which prevents materials from being brought in.
If the riverbank stabilization project is delayed by a year, " that would leave us like two years to build. I don't think it could happen in two years," Paul says. "So that's one of my many worries."
Paul and others in the village wrote a letter to Alaska's congressional delegation, Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, as well as GOP Rep. Nick Begich.
Sullivan's office said in an email that he is assisting groups in Alaska who have had funding for projects frozen.
"On behalf of the Native Village of Kipnuk, Senator Sullivan's office is advocating for the Kipnuk project, which the EPA is currently reviewing," said Sullivan's spokesperson Amanda Coyne.
Coyne said the office was not aware of the Tebughna's Foundation project in Tyonek.
Former EPA senior official Hoover says because relatively few termination letters have gone out, there is a window of opportunity now for grant recipients to engage with the EPA and elected officials to try to unlock the funding, which would help communities such as the Native Village of Kipnuk where a river is threatening a village from being washed away.
"[This] is not some woke-crazy thing," Hoover says. "That is government protecting vulnerable communities. That is government upholding its treaty obligations to native communities."
