EPA Selects Recipients of Pollution Prevention Grants

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the selection of 32 recipients across the country that will receive over $9 million in pollution prevention (P2) grants made possible by recurring appropriation to EPA's P2 program. These grants will allow states and Tribes to provide businesses with technical assistance to prevent or reduce pollution before it is even created, while also reducing costs.

The grants announced today are in addition to $12 million in P2 grants that were announced in September and made possible by President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law's historic $100 million program investment in EPA's P2 program.

"For more than 30 years, EPA's P2 grants have helped businesses implement best practices to reduce dangerous pollution in communities, including those that are overburdened and vulnerable," said EPA Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pollution Prevention Jennie Romer. "Preventing pollution before it starts is an important step in our work to deliver on President Biden's ambitious environmental agenda, tackle the climate crisis and advance environmental justice."

Many proposed projects center on communities with environmental justice concerns including one in Louisiana that will provide technical assistance to chemical, metal, and food and beverage manufacturers in overburdened communities between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. A project in Rhode Island will use the EPA P2 Environmental Justice (EJ) Facility Mapping Tool to target technical assistance to metal manufacturers and fabricators in disadvantaged communities to reduce pollutants and wastewater discharges. In California, the Yurok Tribe will produce a case study on controlling invasive weeds on their ancestral lands without using herbicides.

The grants announced today, as well as P2 grants funded under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also deliver on the President's Justice40 initiative, which aims to deliver 40 percent of the overall benefits of climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, clean water, and other investments to disadvantaged communities. EPA anticipates the majority of grants will successfully direct at least 40% of their environmental and human health benefits onto disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.

The United States produces billions of pounds of pollution each year and spends billions of dollars per year controlling this pollution. Preventing pollution at the source, also known as P2 or source reduction, rather than managing waste after it is produced is an important part of advancing a sustainable economic and environmental infrastructure. P2 can lessen exposure to toxic chemicals, conserve natural resources, and reduce financial costs for businesses, particularly costs associated with waste management, disposal and cleanup. These practices are essential for protecting health, improving environmental conditions in and around disadvantaged communities, and preserving natural resources like wetlands, groundwater sources, and other critical ecosystems.

Selected grantees will, if awarded, document and share P2 best practices that they identify and develop through these grants, so that others can replicate these practices and outcomes. Each selected grantee will address at least one of six National Emphasis Areas (NEAs), which were established to focus resources to achieve measurable results and to create opportunities to share information among P2 grantees and businesses affiliated with similar NEAs. Each selected grantee will also develop at least one case study during the grant period on P2 practices that are new or not widely known or adopted, or where detailed information on the P2 practices could benefit other businesses or P2 technical assistance providers.

EPA anticipates that it will award the grants once all legal and administrative requirements are satisfied. Grants supported will be incrementally funded at the time grants are awarded.

Selected to receive funding is the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois, Chicago