When Christy Zamani received word late last year that her nonprofit, Day One, was awarded a $20 million federal grant, it was a shot in the arm for a group that, for nearly 40 years, has served marginalized communities in the San Gabriel Valley.

“Honestly, we were very excited because the proposal we submitted was going to do a lot of good for some communities,” Zamani said of the grant awarded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Then, two weeks ago, bad news. Word came that the grant had been cancelled, part of the Trump administration’s broader pullback of hundreds of what are called “environmental justice” grants, money initially aimed at  efforts to improve minority communities impacted by pollution, climate change and air and water quality issues.

Those included nearly $300 million for more than 60 projects in California, according to a review of the canceled grants provided by California Sen. Adam Schiff’s office. More than $67 million was set to go to more than a dozen projects spearheaded by organizations in Los Angeles and Orange counties, as well as the Inland Empire.

In a flash, Day One’s grant of $20,452,614 was gone. And, with it, so was its multipronged plan — to work with seven other nonprofits on a program of planting trees in public spaces, and giving away fruit trees, as a way to offset the effects that extreme heat has in communities that are otherwise  blanked with pavement.

The group has other plans, too: To grow greener schoolyards, using composting, rain gardens and native greenery; to incentivize cargo bikes and create bicycle repair stations as a way to reduce vehicle emissions; to create rain gardens as a way to capture and clean stormwater.

Bottom line: Day One — in partnership with ActiveSGV, the Asian Youth Center, Tree People and Sustainable Claremont, among others — planned to use that $20 million to combat climate change, create cleaner air and increase engagement with communities.

Other nonprofits were caught up in a similar cycle. Grow2Zero FARMS, a Long Beach nonprofit founded in 2021 by Judi Gregory and Leif Kemp saw their proposed $250,000 grant denied.

The nonprofit uses urban farming as a way to make healthy food accessible and affordable in underserved Southern California communities. The organization “rescues” food from businesses and combines that with farm-grown food to help feed people in need in communities that need the help.

The grant was intended to establish an urban farming cooperative with partners in Long Beach, which would serve as a blueprint for a self-sustaining food system to serve the area, said Erin Harris, who directs the group’s Farm and Garden program.

In essence, Harris said, they would create “an incubator to efficiently grow and sell rescued food, and to sell to Long Beach institutions.” They would pay interns who would run the food business and who would gain valuable work experience.

Last month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told a congressional committee that the grants overall were “plagued by conflicts of interest and unqualified recipients.”

Earlier, in a March news release about the cuts, Zeldin said: “It is our commitment at EPA to be exceptional stewards of tax dollars.”

Other nixed grants, according to the list from Schiff’s office, included nearly $18.6 million for Pueblo Unido CDC, a nonprofit focused on social issues affecting Eastern Coachella Valley farmworkers; $500,000 for Grades of Green, an El Segundo-based group that helps students lead environmental changes; and $500,000 for the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, founded in 2002 to address park inequities throughout Los Angeles.

Some nonprofits said they’re still working through what the loss of their grant money — already tied to plans and visions and work — means for them.

“It was going to help us do preventative work,” said Zamani, the executive director of Day One in the San Gabriel Valley.

“What’s political about planting trees and having refillable water stations?”

A political buzzsaw

Nearly 800 grants were awarded during the Biden administration under a 2022 cimate law that directed the EPA to spend $3 billion on grants to help low-income and minority communities improve their air and water and protect against climate change. The law allocated another $20 billion for what was called a green bank program to finance clean energy and climate-friendly projects nationwide.

But funding for both projects was abruptly terminated by President Donald Trump’s administration, which has blitzed through federal spending, grants and other projects in its second term in the White House.

Democrats have denounced the funding pullback as illegal and unconstitutional.

“EPA’s unlawful, arbitrary and capricious terminations of (environmental justice) grant programs eliminate commonsense, nonpartisan federal programs that clean the air and water and protect Americans from natural disasters,” wrote a group of Democratic senators, including California’s Schiff and Alex Padilla, in a March letter to the EPA. “Beyond obvious issues with conflating ‘DEI’ and ‘environmental justice,’ these EPA grants help ensure that all people — regardless of immutable traits — enjoy a healthy environment.”

It all came to a head during a recent heated exchange in the Capitol, a hearing that highlighted the sharp partisan differences over the funding.

Zeldin, a former Republican Congress member from New York, said his tenure will turbocharge the American economy while ensuring clean air and water. Democrats, though, alleged he is endangering the lives of millions of Americans and abandoning the agency’s dual mission to protect the environment and human health.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, too, criticized Zeldin over the funding freezes. She said cuts to grants meant for rural communities in Alaska were “somewhat indiscriminate.”

Zeldin, meanwhile, suggested some grants could be restored if language about environmental justice and diversity is removed, in accordance with an executive order from Trump. That executive order, signed early in Trump’s second administration, sought to put an end to diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the U.S. government.

Zeldin, during that hearing, did not specifically respond to a question of whether “biodiversity” specifically is considered taboo under that executive order. And it was not immediately clear how nonprofits that saw their environmental justice grants stripped could “fix” the language and see that money restored.

For now, that money cannot be counted on, leaders of local nonprofits said.

“My concern currently, at this moment, is that federal grants that we have typically relied on to become available year after year — the types of funds we have had typically — will simply not be offered for the next several years,” said Harris of Grow2Zero FARMS.

For the moment, Harris said her group will focus on the programs that they’re already engaged in.

As to the future, she admitted to being “a little nervous.”

Reflecting on the early days of the Trump administration — the aggressive cutting of federal programs and money by Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency — she said: “We were really concerned that, for a day or two, we would literally have to stop projects.”

Day One is still trying to convince the EPA to reconsider its decision.

But, for now, the lost money translates into un-created jobs. Executive Director Zamani said the grant would have allowed the organization to hire 20 employees.

“That’s gone now,” she said. She added her organization still has funding available for other, unrelated programs, but the cuts are creating a layer of uncertainty for an organization that received 98% of its funding from federal and state grants.

The new cycle, she added, is forcing her nonprofit to “be creative” and to start looking at foundations and the state for other benefactors.

She said she’s thankful the organization didn’t hire 20 people immediately, only to tell them they would be laid off.

Amid the uncertainty, Zamani is trying to look forward.

“We’ve gone through many things,” she said. “We’ll be ok.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.