EPA offers $2B to clean up pollution, develop clean energy in poor and minority communities

“The Biden administration is making $2 billion available to community groups, states and tribes to clean up pollution and develop clean energy in disadvantaged communities in what officials called the largest-ever investment in environmental justice.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan called the grant program unprecedented and said it “has the promise to turn disadvantaged and overburdened areas into healthy, resilient and thriving communities for current and future generations.”

“Folks, this is historic,’’ Regan told reporters at a news conference Tuesday. The program, funded by the sweeping climate law signed last year by President Joe Biden, is aimed at poor and minority communities “that have long been overlooked and forgotten” and struggle to gain access to federal funding, Regan said.

The climate law authorized $3 billion for underserved communities burdened by pollution, including $1 billion that has already been allocated.

Regan, the first Black man to lead EPA, has made environmental justice a top priority and has visited a number of poor and minority communities in the South, Appalachia and Alaska in a years-long “Journey to Justice” tour.“