Community Spotlights: ARP Funding Recipients and Stories
Florence Fang Community Farm (San Francisco CA)
On June 28, 2022, Region 9 Administrator, Martha Guzman visited the Asian Week Foundation (Florence Fang Community Farm) in San Francisco California, to highlight The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) continued environmental justice efforts. EPA announced a $75,000 environmental justice grant to the Florence Fang Community Farm to address air quality and food insecurity issues in San Francisco’s Bayview community. The grant funds come from the 2021 American Rescue Plan and are being awarded under EPA’s Environmental Justice Small Grant program. With the assistance of ARP grant funding, Florence Fang Community Farm developed the Bayview Food Sovereignty and Environmental Justice Project to develop partnerships with neighborhood farmers, markets, restaurants, and food access programs to implement a “soil-to-soil” food distribution supply chain and train community members to grow and maintain their own sustainable food gardens. Community farming practices can alleviate air pollution in urban areas. Addressing asthma-triggering air pollution through Clean Air Act (CAA) 103(b)(3) projects reduces the chances of severe illness from COVID-19, as people with moderate-to-severe or uncontrolled asthma are more likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19.
YH20 Mentoring Program (Baltimore, MD)
On June 25, 2021 at Ashburton Filtration Plant in Baltimore, Maryland, Administrator Regan announced that $200,000 is going to the YH2O mentoring program in Baltimore City – an on-the-job training program that prepares young adults to be employed in full-time jobs within the water industry. Participants are involved in water quality monitoring, sampling, and reporting as they develop skills to improve water quality in urban and rural communities and ultimately transition into water infrastructure jobs. This grant will be funded with $100,000 in ARP funds for training authorized by SDWA 1442 and $100,000 in annual EPA appropriations for training authorized by section 104 of the Clean Water Act.