Environmental Groups, EPA Spar In Court Over Trump’s Cancellation of Resiliency Funding

WASHINGTON—Last month, the town of Dante in Southwest Virginia’s Appalachia region saw about 3.5 inches of rainfall over a couple of hours. The heavy downpour ran off the steep mountainside surrounding the town, and surged upward from nearby Lick Creek.

The normal amount of rainfall for the town in July is about 5 inches, according to the National Weather Service’s office in  Morristown, Tennessee. No one died in the flooding that ensued, according to local reports, but 13 people were injured in the town of about 600.

The episode of rainfall leading to flooding is not new for the communities that are struggling to revitalize themselves after the decline of the coal industry. Damage and destruction hit the Virginia towns of Hurley in 2021 and Whitehood in 2022, and then swept across Southwest Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee last fall when Hurricane Helene devastated the region with intense rainfall and catastrophic flooding. 

One nonprofit group, Appalachian Voices, has sought to use funding from the federal government to build flooding resiliency in Dante and four other communities to better prepare for those extreme weather events scientists say have been amplified by climate change.

Nonetheless, President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency terminated the Biden administration’s $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program in February—and is sticking with its decision, despite loud protests from community members in Dante and beyond. 

On Tuesday, attorneys for Appalachian Voices and other plaintiffs from around the country in a class action lawsuit asked Judge Richard J. Leon in U.S. District Court to stop the Trump administration’s funding termination. EPA attorneys countered by urging him to dismiss the suit. Leon promised a decision soon. 

“It needs to continue,” Tom Cormons, executive director of Appalachian Voices, said in an interview after the hearing of the work funded by the now-terminated grants approved by Congress as part of former President Joe Biden’s signature climate act, the Inflation Reduction Act. “The rule of law matters.”

The case before Leon is one of two lawsuits the Southern Environmental Law Center has brought against the EPA on behalf of Appalachian Voices and other clients.  The other is a case filed in Charleston, South Carolina, that has resulted in an unfreezing of funds. The Trump administration is now appealing that ruling.

Obligated or Not Obligated

The case stems from two executive orders signed by Trump to halt the funding. The first order, “Unleashing American Energy,” directed federal agencies to stop spending funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. The second, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” ordered equity-related funding to end within 60 days.

Ben Grillot, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, alongside attorneys from Earthjustice, the Public Rights Project and Lawyers for Good Government, argued that Trump’s orders violated the Constitution’s separation of powers by having the executive branch void congressionally mandated spending. 

The IRA, argued Grillot, created the program under the Clean Air Act. Funds for the program were then obligated when awards were made to applicants, of which there were thousands that underwent review.

Further, Grillot said that Travis Voyles, the EPA’s assistant deputy administrator—and former secretary of natural and historic resources in Virginia—violated the Administrative Process Act when he ordered termination of the grants “wholesale” based on the president’s priorities and without a detailed analysis.

“Those themselves are not sufficient,” Grillot said, referring to the executive orders granting any authority to terminate the program.

Jessica A. Lundberg, a Justice Department attorney representing the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin, argued that the case is moot since Congress recently passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included a recession of unobligated funds for the program. 

Even though the Congressional Budget Office found that the OBBA would return about $500 million in unobligated funds by terminating the program, Lundberg argued that by ending the program, Congress had made the program free for rescission of the remaining $2.5 billion. 

Through the OBBBA, Lundberg said, Congress stated it “wants its money back.”

Grillet countered that emails between EPA staff and the controller show that de-obligating funds doesn’t fully occur until appeal decisions are finalized and outstanding reports are completed—neither of which happened. 

“It’s disingenuous for them to come back now to claim those funds were not obligated,” Grillot said. 

The EPA declined to comment on the pending litigation.

After thanking both sides, Leon said he would “do my best” to render a decision “soon.”

“It’s not easily understandable,” he added.

Southwest Virginia Struggles

The grant award Appalachian  Voices received came under the Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreements subset of the program. Its work would have been reimbursed for up to $500,000. 

Across five communities in Southwest Virginia, the funding would have gone toward creating resiliency hubs, plans to demolish buildings with asbestos that stood in floodplains, and constructing a river walk in the town of Pound. 

“It’s an asset to the neighborhood,” said Grillot, adding that the resiliency hubs would have been places where first responders could find refuge during extreme weather events.

In Dante, a community identified as a Special Flood Hazard Area in FEMA’s new flood maps, the planned resiliency hub also would have provided refrigeration for medications, Emma Kelly, new economy program manager at Appalachian Voices, said in an interview. 

Solar and battery storage, with a backup generator, would have been added to provide clean, reliable and affordable electricity, she added. Dozens in Dante used a makeshift center during the July 18 storm that displaced six families for two weeks.

“Folks are mad, folks are hurt, folks feel betrayed,” said Kelly, adding that reimbursement meant expenses would have been verified. “At every step of the way community members were with us. They saw that there wasn’t any waste, any mishandling. They saw the value in what they were creating.”

The group has pursued funding from foundations, other nonprofits and state agencies to pick up the slack, but has come up way short because of resource limitations, she said. Kelly praised Virginia for its partnership by assisting with various potential sources of funding, including its Community Flood Preparedness Fund. 

Administered by the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the CFPF uses revenues from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the carbon market that Gov. Glenn Youngkin has withdrawn the state from.

“As the climate continues to get warmer,” Kelly said, storms will “stay longer in the same area. We’re just going to see more and more.”