After weeks of speculation, the news fell in cold form:
“Dear EPA Grant Winner,” read the official government email. “Attached is the end of the award from the US Environmental Protection Agency.”
That’s how hundreds of organizations have discovered officially lost funding for EPA grants as part of many cuts to environmental programs the Trump administration has requested.
Among them was Community Water Center, a nonprofit organization that works to provide safe and clean drinking water to rural California communities. Their $20 million award was allocated to major projects to integrate the water systems of low-income central coastal communities in Pajaro, Sunny Mesa and Springfield.
The project has been over five years and is currently located in Limbo, where President Trump and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin are trying to significantly cut funds for more than 780 grants for environmental justice awarded under President Biden.
“That’s a huge disappointment. I think everyone agrees that this grant is funding infrastructure projects to deliver safe drinking water, and that residents across the US need to have safe drinking water.” “Safe water is not political.”
The notice arrived on May 1 after the EPA and the Ministry of Government Efficiency, the president’s informal ministry, first announced that Zeldin would end environmental grants totaling over $1.7 billion in what he described as “controlling wasteful federal spending.” Leaklist, reviewed by The Times, revealed that at least 62 California grants are in the Chopping Block.
However, court documents filed last week show that the actual number of US environmental grants is close to 800. The findings are part of a nonprofit lawsuit, as originally reported by the Washington Post, which challenges the administration’s efforts to freeze funds awarded under Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and Vipartisin’s Infrastructure Act. According to a legal declaration filed by the EPA, 377 grantees have already received formal notices of formal termination, with about 404 more coming soon.
It is not immediately clear how many organizations in California will lose federal funds. EPA officials declined to provide a list of affected groups and said the agency had not commented on the pending law.
But a small group in the state has confirmed that they are on the cut list. Among them, the Los Angeles area trust, which said it had lost a $500,000 grant aimed at supporting planning an equitable development project along the LA River, and the Contra Costa and Solano food banks, which said it had lost a $155,000 grant to a project that provides food to the Vallejo community.
Cade Candedi, director of the Palo Alto-based nonprofit climate resilient community program, said the group has lost a $500,000 grant to provide air purifiers to children with asthma and elderly people with disabilities in East Palo Alto. Communities suffer from high respiratory problems as a result of decades of redline, quarantine and zoning practices that concentrate pollution activities in the area, including vehicles discharged from dangerous waste disposal facilities and nearby highways.
“It’s a huge loss for our community, but what’s really sad is that for these communities, this is another broken promise in a series of broken promises over decades,” he said.
The closing email was the first communication the group has received from the EPA since Trump took office, he said. This represents a major blow to a small nonprofit that had already hired two new employees to help implement the project and deliver air purifiers to around 400 families and potentially several schools and advanced centres.
“In a small community-based organization like us, there’s no good cash flow. We don’t always sit for $500,000,” Kandedi said. “We rely on these grants and the refund process to make things work.”
The cancellation of grants is the latest in a series of actions from the Trump administration that claims to be harmful to the environment, including loose air and water quality regulations. Dismissing scientists and researchers. Increased coal production; open national forests for industrial logging. It narrows down the protection of endangered species and rejects hundreds of scientists, including major national climate reports.
Democrats, including California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, condemned the administration’s grant cancellation.
“The illicit, arbitrary and whimsical end of the EPA [environmental justice] The senator wrote in a March letter to seven other Democrats on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and in a March letter to Zeldin.
The EPA is facing narrow and potentially in the purse string. The 2026 Trump proposed budget will cut $5 billion from agencies tasked with protecting the country’s health and the environment, the largest cut in EPA history, accounting for around 55% of the 2025 budget.
According to the nonprofit environmental protection network, a DC-based watchdog group consisting of over 600 former EPA workers, reductions require massive layoffs, effectively crippling the core EPA functions.
“This is a suggestion of reckless, myopia that leads to higher levels of toxic contamination in the atmosphere we breathe and drinking water we drink across the country,” read a statement from EPN Executive Director Michelle Roos. “This is a wrecking ball approach that hinders America’s frontline defenses to protect people’s health and the environment.”
Certainly, loss of grant funding has real-world implications, according to José Franco García, executive director of the San Diego County-based nonprofit The Environmental Health Coalition. The group lost $500,000 grants aimed at many initiatives in the Barrio Logan area. This is a largely low-income community that is proximity to ports, industrial facilities and interstates, causing them to suffer from pollution, poor air quality and other environmental issues.
The project includes the creation of a much-anticipated park along Boston Avenue, a green shuttle bus system, and efforts to improve local homes through electrification, solar and lead reductions, Garcia said. He said the grant would also fund air filters for children with asthma homes.
“These are the exact things that EPA money should go,” Garcia said. “And not what the current version of the EPA intended to do, what it could be protected, or what it could be able to provide services.”
Garcia noted that cancellation of grants is also costly on nonprofits’ time and potential jobs as they rush to keep up with a rapidly changing situation. The grant was approved last summer, and the group spent several months preparing to start work.
“We thought the federal government would do the same, as it was expected to meet the terms of the contract,” he said.
Community Water Center’s De Anda was equally concerned about the public health impact of grant termination.
The Monterey County community in Pajaro, Sunny Mesa and Springfield have been suffering from water quality issues for many years, with 81% of wells in the country tested positive for one or more dangerous contaminants, including nitrates, 123-TCP, arsenic and chromium 6. According to the EPA, chemicals can contribute to serious adverse effects such as reproductive problems, infant blood status, and cancer.
The $20 million grant from the Community Water Center funded the first phase of critical infrastructure work, including building a pipeline to physically integrate the community and physically integrate it into a single water system owned and operated by the Pajaro/Sunny Mesa Community Service District, which serves approximately 5,500 people and primary schools.
Community Water Center is exploring every path to keep the work moving forward, she hopes state officials will step in to fill the void left by the EPA.
“Our community deserves to have a reliable infrastructure that delivers safe drinking water,” she said. “Stop the project is not an option.”
Maria Angelica Rodriguez, 49, one of the local residents, said that she must now rely on bottled water for her drinking, cooking and other basic needs. Every Thursday, the local bottled water program offers five gallons to each of the three households, including Rodriguez, his mother and sister.
But she is also concerned about her seven-month-old grandson, who babysits all week.
Speaking through an interpreter, Rodriguez asked Trump to stop and think about the children and farm workers in the area who need to drink water.
The project brought hope to the community, she said, and the cancellation made her very sad.
“El Agua es Vida,” she said: Water is life.
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