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SACRAMENTO – The
California Air Resources Board (CARB) awarded $10 million in
grants to help 33 community organizations and five Native American
Tribes reduce air pollution in their neighborhoods.
The Community Air
Grants were awarded to communities across California that face
significant challenges with air pollution including the Inland Empire/Border
region, the Central Valley, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and San Diego.
The Community Air
Grants Program is part of CARB’s overall efforts to implement Assembly Bill 617. Community Air Grants are designed to establish a
community-focused approach to improving air quality and reducing exposure
to toxic air pollutants at the neighborhood level. AB 617 is unique in
that it requires CARB and air districts to work with residents,
businesses and other stakeholders to tackle air pollution at the
community scale. The current grants elevate community voices and their
specific priorities regarding air pollution where they live. As a
result, the projects funded will help communities identify areas with the
most harmful air emissions and then take actions to reduce exposure or
address the underlying cause of the pollution.
“The Community Air
Grants provided by CARB are an important tool to help residents and
Tribal communities throughout the state identify and combat the harmful
effects of local air pollution -- and create a cleaner environment for
their families,” said CARB Chair Liane Randolph.
“These grants continue
to build on the model of AB 617—creating opportunities for CARB to
support the work of communities to develop local solutions to address and
reduce a variety of sources of air pollution in the communities,” said
Chanell Fletcher, CARB Deputy Executive Officer of Environmental Justice.
“These funds provide a much-needed resource for communities to clean the
air residents and their children breathe.”
“I am pleased to see
California focus funding to support our most environmentally vulnerable
communities and Tribes on the front lines of the climate crisis. These
grants will help fulfill the goals of AB 617 by empowering diverse
neighborhoods across our state with the tools to combat their own unique
air pollution concerns and significantly improve their local public
health outlook,” said CARB Board Member, Assemblymember and AB 617 joint
author Eduardo Garcia.
The
selected projects reflect the diverse needs across the state and include
community-driven air monitoring, improving public access to information
about local pollution sources, reducing community exposure and tracking
progress on pollution reduction efforts. Examples of selected projects
include:
Southern California
Breathe Southern
California (Breathe SoCal) will pilot an accountability-focused Freight
Sustainability Score for major retailers who move cargo via the San Pedro
Bay Port Complex in an effort to improve public health and environmental
justice, primarily in disadvantaged communities.
OneOC and its
collaborators will build on their air monitoring pilot project of the
industrial corridor in Santa Ana and expand monitoring to include more
sources of air pollution, which have been identified by residents. These
sources include truck traffic, fireworks and noise pollution.
Northern California
The Paskenta Band of
Nomlaki Indians proposes to develop an air monitoring network for the
Tribal community to raise awareness of air quality issues stemming from
wildfire and other pollution sources.
Blue Lake Rancheria
will establish a community PM air monitoring network and include
educational materials about PM air quality in general and during
woodsmoke and wildland fire events, along with conducting extensive
capacity building.
Central Valley
Catholic Charities of
the Diocese of Stockton and Little Manila Rising are working in
collaboration to implement a community engagement strategy that supports
Stockton’s AB 617 Community Emissions Reduction Plan (CERP).
Central California
Asthma Collaborative continues the work of maintaining, expanding and
enhancing the SJV Community Air Monitoring Network (SJVAir). This
includes data collection, analysis, display and automated text
notification of real-time data from calibrated PM2.5 monitors (Purple
Air) installed in disadvantaged communities across the San Joaquin
Valley.
Inland Empire/Border Region
Comité CÃvico del Valle
(CCV) aims to continue the community monitoring efforts in the Salton Sea
Air Basin, a region that encompasses the Imperial and Eastern Coachella
valleys.
Casa Familiar plans to
sustain the community-based air monitoring system in the U.S.-Mexico
border town of San Ysidro that has been in place since 2017. Concerns in
this border town include location next to the busiest land Port of Entry
in the Northern Hemisphere, freeways bounding the community, freight
trains and pollution transported from Mexico.
The Community Air
Grants Program is part of California Climate Investments, a statewide initiative that puts billions of
cap-and-trade dollars to work, particularly in disadvantaged communities.
The Board will hear an
informational update on Community Air Grants in the morning on Friday,
February 25, at its regular meeting.
Additional Resources
CARB is the lead agency in California for cleaning up the
air and fighting climate change to attain and maintain health-based air
quality standards. Its mission is to promote and protect public health,
welfare, and ecological resources through the effective reduction of air
and climate pollutants while recognizing and considering effects on the
economy.
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