The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday selected the Enterprise Center, Inc. to receive funding to conduct community air quality monitoring in Hamilton County communities. The grant is one of 132 air monitoring projects in 37 states will receive $53.4 million from the Inflation Reduction Act and American Rescue Plan to enhance air quality monitoring in communities across the United States. The projects are focused on communities that are underserved, historically marginalized, and overburdened by pollution, supporting the Justice40 Initiative.
“These grants will give communities in the Southeast the tools they need to better understand air quality challenges in their neighborhoods,” said EPA Region 4 Administrator Daniel Blackman. “EPA’s investment in ARP funding will not only advance the agency’s mobile air monitoring labs and air sensor loan programs but improve the agency’s ability to support communities in need of short-term monitoring and air quality information.”
In addition to ongoing research into the correlation between COVID-19 and air quality, developing data and a more granular understanding of air quality across Hamilton County communities that routinely rank at the bottom statewide for asthma, chronic illnesses, and hospitalization is a high priority for the Chattanooga Smart Community Collaborative and is the focus of this proposal. CSCC partners have already deployed more than 30 air quality sensors at locations across Hamilton County, which stream live data accessible to the public. Funds awarded will support 130 additional fixed, low-cost sensors in the study area, provide 50 sensors for resident use via a library loan program, and add resiliency via one additional FRM/FEM monitor. Live data visualization, health information, and educational resources will be hosted publicly for residents, and sensor data will be imported into repositories, including the city of Chattanooga’s Open Data Portal, ensuring practitioners and researchers have access to the network and increasing their ability to advance other research, inform public health advisories, and enhance citizen self-efficacy, said officials.
The air pollution monitoring projects are made possible by more than $30 million in Inflation Reduction Act funds, which supplemented $20 million from the American Rescue Plan and enabled EPA to support 77 additional projects, more than twice the number of projects initially proposed by community-based nonprofit organizations, state and local governments, and Tribal governments.
These grant selections further the goals of the Justice40 Initiative and Executive Order, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, which directed that 40 percent of the overall benefits of certain federal investments flow to overburdened communities that face disproportionately high and adverse health and environmental impacts. By enhancing air monitoring and encouraging partnerships with communities, EPA is investing in efforts to better protect people’s health, particularly those in underserved communities, said officials.
EPA will start the process to award the funding by the end of 2022, once the grant applicants have met all legal and administrative requirements. Grantees will have three years to spend the funds from the time EPA awards the grants.