Ann Arbor Times

The City of Ann Arbor Office of Sustainability and Innovations, in partnership with the Ann Arbor Office of Emergency Management, has been awarded a $1,000,000 grant from the United Stated Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental Justice Government-to-Government (EJG2G) program. This provides funding at the state, local, territorial and tribal levels to support government activities that lead to measurable environmental or public health impacts in communities disproportionately burdened by environmental harms including poor indoor and/or outdoor air quality, recurring flooding, extreme heat and increasing energy burdens.

The three-year grant will enable the city's Office of Sustainability and Emergency Management staff to increase the resilience of residents and community organizations within the city and throughout Washtenaw County by undertaking three primary activities: 

1. Launching a regional resilience network.
2. Investing in three additional (plus one match-funded) brick-and-mortar resilience hubs throughout Washtenaw County.
3. Launching a resilience grant program for community-based organizations.

“Resilience, the act of bouncing forward regardless of what acute or chronic disruption occurs, is an often aspired-to goal but one that has remained out of reach for most communities and with increasing climate-related impacts and growing socio-economic disparity, the need for resilience has never been greater," said City of Ann Arbor Director of the Office of Sustainability Dr. Missy Stults. “I'm thrilled that Ann Arbor was awarded an EJG2G grant to allow us to continue this valuable work. Strategy 6 of Ann Arbor's A2ZERO plan, to achieve a just transition to community-wide carbon neutrality, focuses explicitly on 'enhancing the resilience of our people and place' to existing and future changes in climate. As such, this award will directly help the city advance A2ZERO with direct investments in residents and community-based organizations."

The EJG2G grant will allow the city's resilience efforts to reach the most underserved residents in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County. Efforts will include co-developing a living regional resilience network that will create facilitated communication channels to assist network partners in resource pooling, collective emergency response, and other acts of mutual aid. This project also will include investments in four local brick-and-mortar resilience hubs and the creation of a resilience grant program that fosters a connection among the various hubs. Resilience hubs are community-serving facilities augmented to support residents and coordinate resource distribution and services before, during, or after natural hazard events. 

Learn more about the city's adaptation and resilience work. Details about the EJG2G grant program are available at https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/environmental-justice-government-government-program.

Original source can be found here.