COASTAL REVIEW ONLINE MEDIA COLLABORATION

This is the second installment in a continuing series on making the North Carolina coast more resilient to the effects of climate change, a special reporting project that is part of the Pulitzer Center's nationwide Connected Coastlines initiative.

EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA - Craig Allen's memory is a little hazy on the finer details of the coastal storm that pushed the waters of Scotts Creek into his grandmother's backyard in James City.

He can't pinpoint the precise year and time the hurricane rolled in - sometime in the early 1970s when he was in elementary school. He doesn't recall the storm's name.

But he vividly remembers that it was the first time in his life water flowed over the banks of Scotts Creek and crept alarmingly close to his grandmother's house on Kennedy Drive.

"Every year since then it's getting worse," Allen said. "There's some trees in the water now that when I was a kid they weren't in the (Neuse) river."

Allen also recalls that during Hurricane Florence in September 2018, residents had to be rescued by boat when Scotts Creek flooded the neighborhood.

James City, a community on the peninsula at the confluence of the Trent and Neuse rivers in Craven County, is in a floodplain.

That designation is part of why this community, which has a storied Black history, is one of several throughout North Carolina that has been identified by the state as a "potential" environmental justice community. The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality has created maps that identify potentially underserved populations, ones that meet certain racial and economic criteria.

The state's June 2020 Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan identifies these communities as either having a population that consists of more than 50% nonwhites or a population of nonwhites of at least 10% higher than the county or state share. And, those with a population that experiences a poverty rate of more than 20% and households with poverty at least 5% higher than the county or state share.

The maps are designed to be a tool for local governments and organizations to use, if they choose, as a means in helping for the future, explained Renee Kramer, NCDEQ's Title VI and environmental justice coordinator.

"Of course, there's not one right or wrong way to use the mapping system," Kramer said. "We really felt like we could help communities to provide a tool that has this data so that community members and, or, local governments can see what is in their community right now and help plan and envision what they want their community to be in the future. This is a screening tool. It's not the end-all, be-all."

The maps were created through a culmination of information pulled from various government agencies then layered to illustrate a community's compounding vulnerabilities.

The first layer is collected from across NCDEQ's divisions identifying where and which type of government-issued permits, such as air quality and wastewater permits, exist. The second layer establishes socioeconomic and demographic characteristics collected from the Census Bureau. The third piece includes a community's health characteristics gathered from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services and county health departments.

"You can't really plan for these real-life scenarios without taking into consideration the reality of the folks living on the ground," Kramer said.

What is the transportation availability in that community? What's the average income? Are there a high number of non-English speaking residents within that population?

"One thing that we have added from our data version 1.0 that is currently out is the flood layer," Kramer said. "I think that would be a very powerful layer to consider to turn on if you're talking about climate change and resiliency."

James City is a prime example of a community with compounding vulnerabilities in our changing climate. It is a historically Black settlement that lies within a floodplain.

A section entitled "Climate and Environmental Justice" in the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan states, "Barriers to property ownership have resulted in a number of climate resilience concerns specific to African American homeowners and historic African American communities. A disproportionate share of African Americans live in low-lying areas in the Southeast, which are more susceptible to drainage and flooding problems."

Located across the Trent River from New Bern, U.S. Highway 70 now divides this unincorporated community named in honor of the Rev. Horace James, a Union Army chaplain who was charged with managing the Trent River Settlement, a haven for former slaves and their families during the Civil War in 1863.

"In 1863 if any African-American could make it to that camp, they were considered free," Allen said. "As long as we stayed there, we had a right to stay there."

By 1865, nearly 3,000 Black men, women and children lived in the settlement. During Reconstruction, James City transformed into an independent community of free Black people.

Roughly 10 years after the settlement was created, the land's white owners began hiking rent of Black residents in an effort to evict them from the property. The owners turned down an offer of $2,000 to buy the land.

In 1892, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of the property owners in a lawsuit brought on by Black residents.

The ruling prompted some Black families to pack up and move. Others, however, were determined to stay.

For Allen, James City embodies a sense of place, pride and resilience in the face of overwhelming odds. Community leaders are in talks to incorporate.

"To go back, it's home," said Allen, who lives in New Bern. "Home is home regardless of what people say. It's funny that it's called a flood zone and other neighborhoods are called waterfront. If all the Black people moved out right now then it would be a resort community because it's surrounded by water."

Chapter 4 of the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan pointedly discusses the connection Black property owners have to historically Black communities: "Given the barriers to property ownership among African-Americans, land often holds particularly high historical and cultural value for Black households. In some cases, land has been in the same family for many generations. The decision to consider a buyout, if offered one by a state or local program, is particularly fraught for these homeowners."

Naeema Muhammad is organizing director of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network and a member of the NCDEQ Secretary's Environmental Justice and Equity Board.

She knows firsthand the challenges residents of environmental-justice communities face.

"It's about the sentimental and emotional ties and values that people are connected to in their homes and why should I have to give up my home and my family connection to my land to satisfy somebody else," Muhammad said. "You will hear people around the state say, 'Well, why don't they just move?' If it was that easy then maybe people would. You hear their stories and you hear the passion that they're speaking from. You see and hear their connection to the places they're at. You know, everything is not always about money. It's about the emotional ties that they have."

Elsie Herring does not want to leave the land that's been in her family for generations.

She's living on a portion of the land her grandfather purchased in Duplin County in the late 1800s. He bought the first 150-acre tract in 1891. Before the turn of the century, he had purchased three more tracts. All told, he owned more than 60 acres.

"This has been home for my family since then," Herring said.

She and her 14 siblings were born in a house the family built in 1921.

By the time she was a teenager nearing high school graduation, jobs in and around the homestead were scarce for Blacks, she said.

She moved to New York where she lived and worked 27 years before returning to Duplin County in 1993 to care for her then-ailing mother and a brother.

The return home has been bittersweet because, for more than two decades, Herring, 72, has been fighting the pork industry. She is part of a number of nuisance lawsuits filed against the pork industry in recent years. In the case in which she was involved, an appellate court ruled in favor of the families - mostly Black landowners in rural areas of eastern North Carolina - where industrial hog farms operate.

Herring said she and her family have suffered years of intimidation and threats and dealing with the indescribable smell of hog waste sprayed onto fields next to, and oftentimes directly, on her mother's land and house.

She alleges that her family's land deeds were illegally changed for the benefit of the pork industry.

She witnessed hundreds of dead hog carcasses washed out by Hurricane Floyd in September 1999 and remembers the stench of death.

"There were dead pigs everywhere," Herring said. "They even brought an incinerator down the road to burn the carcasses and that made it even worse. I'm very concerned about climate change. After Floyd, there was always the threat of another hurricane coming by worse than Floyd. (Hurricane) Matthew was bad, but none of them were like (Hurricane) Florence."

Hurricane Florence's record-breaking rainfall in September 2018 flooded Rock Fish Creek to the point the family wondered if they would have to evacuate their home.

"My mother lived on this land for 99 years and she said the water had never been an issue coming up that high," Herring said. "It was an excessive amount of water. We had a strange feeling for the first time that we may need to leave for higher ground. What happens when another one comes? These (hog) facilities are still sitting there. These lagoons are still sitting there. They're still just sitting there in a floodplain. We're already dealing with enough pollution. Not only are we dealing with the pigs and their waste, we're dealing with the chicken houses. Those two combinations right there are a recipe for disaster."

She remains hopeful, despite a new fight, this one against a proposed facility in Duplin County that would capture biogas from hog waste lagoons at 19 industrial hog operations in that county and neighboring Sampson County.

The project would cap open-air lagoons to capture biogas, which would be transported through some 30 miles of pipeline to an upgrading facility, then injected into an existing natural gas pipeline.

Herring is one of a number of critics of the project who argue it does not address significant air pollution from the 19 operations that would be included or possible groundwater contamination.

"It's not being treated," she said. "It's just being converted. We already have enough poisonous gas in our environment."

Muhammad said communities like Herrings, overburdened with environmental hazards, are "like ticking time bombs" in a changing climate.

"These environmental justice communities are really just in harm's way and it grows each hour because we can see how the weather can be 90 degrees in the morning and drop to 40 and 50 at night," she said. "Any overflow of rain creates a major problem for these communities. One of the things we've seen during flooding (from hurricanes), you had a tremendous number of people who didn't have a way to get out of harm's way. They didn't have cars. They didn't have public transportation."

She has read the Climate Risk Assessment and Resilience Plan. She's familiar with Chapter 4.

"I read that plan and I thought, 'You're saying all this, but you're still issuing bad permits,'" Muhammad said.

"We have a long way to go. There have been some gains made, but not a tremendous amount. It's not because of the will of the people. It's because our local, state and federal governments don't have the will to ring in these dirty industries," she said. "If you are serious about protecting these communities, why are you going to keep dumping these same things in these places. You're saying you're going to do better and try to protect these communities but you're not showing that. It's wordy stuff that sounds good on paper. We're not giving up that's for sure."

Neither is Elsie Herring.

"I would love to see change in my lifetime, but I don't believe anything the industry says," she said. "You can't let man's behavior take your joy away because if you do you may as well be dead. There's no time to get tired when your job's not complete and this job is not complete because the industry is a bad neighbor. This land means everything to me. We lived off this land. We were born and raised here. It's a beautiful place. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to stay on it until I die."

Next in the series: Resilience as opportunity

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This story was produced with original reporting from Trista Talton for the Coastal Review Online, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.


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By Kristoffer Tigue, Dennis Pillion, Dylan Baddour and Marianne Lavelle for Inside Climate News.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

When a rare tornado swept through the north side of Minneapolis, Michelle Neal scrambled for cover at a fast-food restaurant. "It was unreal-we could have died," she told Minnesota Public Radio. "McDonald's saved me."

It's the kind of scenario that Julia Nerbonne, executive director of Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, wants to make sure communities are better prepared for as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather. The faith-based nonprofit hopes to transform churches and other congregations into emergency shelters with solar power and battery storage to withstand power outages-especially in historically disadvantaged communities, like north Minneapolis, which have long been overburdened by pollution and underinvestment.

"We want to have a building," she said, "in which they can have a cooling place, in which they can refrigerate their medication-a place where they can be with the community in the midst of a crisis."

Around the country, nonprofits and other community organizations like Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light were hoping these sorts of projects would receive funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has $3 billion to spend on environmental justice community grants through Sept. 30, 2026. But the Biden administration has only been able to award about half the money so far, and experts say the unspent 50 percent can most likely be clawed back by President-elect Donald Trump-a blow to communities of color and poor rural communities that had long waited for help like this.

Among the threatened initiatives is the EPA's Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program, which dedicated $600 million in block grants for projects aimed at tackling climate and environmental justice issues in disadvantaged communities. The money has been hailed by advocates as one of the most important federal investments ever made in closing the nation's long-standing socioeconomic and racial gaps.

The Biden administration has so far awarded nearly $266 million, according to an EPA database, leaving more than half-or just over $334 million-vulnerable to reversal efforts from Trump officials or Republican lawmakers. "EPA continues to work through its rigorous process to obligate the funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, including the Thriving Communities Grantmakers program," said Nick Conger, the EPA's communications director.

Last week, the EPA opened up the first round of applications for the Thriving Communities program, giving hopeful applicants like Nerbonne less than two months to navigate the complicated federal grantmaking process before Trump is sworn in. In fact, several EPA regions have yet to open their application processes, leaving some groups worried they won't be able to complete their applications on time.

"It just seems like an incredibly missed opportunity. I'd feel disappointed about that," Nerbonne said, when asked how she would feel if the program's funding was rescinded under Trump. "Congregations aren't talking about politics. They're ready to get to work serving their community and they're tired of politics, especially after this election."

Republicans Target Environmental Justice Funding

The IRA's idea for addressing historic environmental injustice through a community grant program was taken from the sprawling Environmental Justice for All legislation originally introduced in 2020 by Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz) and the late Rep. A. Donald McEachin (D-Va.).

"We approached it with the fundamental belief that communities know what communities need best," said Grijalva in an email.

But Congressional Republicans have been vocal about their intention to cut or limit the environmental justice grant program, characterizing it as a form of cronyism, providing support to political allies of Democrats and opponents of fossil fuels.

"The EPA is awarding taxpayer dollars to special interest groups committed to a radical energy agenda," wrote U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) in a House Energy and Commerce Committee report, released just before Election Day. "Enriching nonprofit organizations to spread radical, left-leaning ideology is an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars. These programs demand rigorous scrutiny and meticulous oversight."

Trump himself suggested in a 2023 campaign video that he could "simply choke off the money" allocated under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Typically, Congress would have to pass new "rescission" legislation to take away unspent money that Congress previously appropriated. Republicans could use the appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2025, which began in October and now appears likely to be in the hands of the newly elected Congress and Trump, to do so. But in order to avoid the threat of a filibuster in the Senate, they instead could use a budget reconciliation bill that only needs a simple majority-the approach Democrats used to pass the IRA. Republicans are aiming to embark on a reconciliation bill soon after taking office in order to extend and expand Trump's 2017 tax cuts.

Ending environmental justice grantmaking is also part of the vision laid out in Project 2025, the policy roadmap that conservative groups drew up for Trump's second term. Although Trump professed no familiarity with Project 2025 during the campaign, he has named authors of the plan to key positions in his new administration, including tapping Russell Vought, his former budget chief, to head the Office of Management and Budget again. Project 2025 called for pausing and reviewing all environmental justice grants in light of the Supreme Court's recent decisions against affirmative action.

The Thriving Communities grant program has become a particular target of Republicans, who singled out one of its recipients and accused it of being "radical" and "anti-American." The Climate Justice Alliance, a California-based organization, is one of 11 regional grantmaker organizations that were initially awarded $50 million each from the Thriving Communities program. Those groups would then disseminate $40 million of their funds as subgrants to community organizations in their regions.

The Climate Justice Alliance is the only regional grantmaker that has not received any of its funding, sparking speculation that GOP rancor could be to blame. In May, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the highest ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the group for its support of Palestinians in Gaza and its opposition to Israel, calling its members "radical," "anti-American," and "antisemitic."

Conger, the EPA spokesperson, said the "EPA continues to review the grant for the Climate Justice Alliance," but provided no further details.

KD Chavez, the Climate Justice Alliance's executive director, said that the group's pro-Gaza advocacy is constitutionally protected speech that is separate from the work it would fund under the Thriving Communities program. "This grant money would only be used as intended by Congress, going towards things like air quality and asthma, water quality and lead, asbestos contamination," she said.

If the group's political views are the reason for the holdup in funding, Chavez said it could put at risk any social justice or progressive work that receives federal funding. "This could really be setting up a horrific First Amendment precedent moving forward for any type of organization across civil society," Chavez said.

Other groups involved in the EPA grant program pushed back against the GOP attacks as well. In addition to the 11 regional grantmaker organizations, another 18 institutions were chosen to act as technical assistance centers-known officially as Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers, or TCTACs-to help community organizations navigate the often complicated federal grant application process.

Bonnie Keeler, a University of Minnesota public affairs associate professor who runs the Midwest region's TCTAC, said it's a misrepresentation of her center's work to say it channels federal funding to "left-leaning activist or extremist organizations," adding that the program deserves broad bipartisan support.

"The TCTACs do not advance a particular policy agenda, we respond to requests for assistance wherever they come from," Keeler said. "To date, we have responded to over 400 requests for technical assistance from urban, rural and tribal communities seeking assistance with everything from energy efficiency goals, to cleaning up brownfields, to managing hazardous waste, to reducing indoor air pollution."

How Far Will Trump Go?

In the early 1970s, then-President Richard Nixon had a problem. A Democratic-controlled Congress wanted to fund highway improvements, drug rehabilitation and a number of other initiatives that the Republican president believed were "undisciplined" and "fiscally irresponsible."

So Nixon decided to withhold funds in the budget that he didn't agree with, sparking a constitutional struggle that resulted in the passage of the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. That law, which is still in effect today, prohibits a president or other government officials from refusing to release congressionally appropriated funds and essentially substituting their own funding decisions for those of Congress.

The legislation also defines when federal funding has been "obligated," a legal term for when a contract has been signed between a federal agency and the recipient of federal funds, such as an organization applying for a grant, said Jeremy Kalin, a finance attorney for the law firm Avisen Legal. That means the $266 million dedicated to environmental justice under the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed in 2022, and already obligated is protected from being rescinded, Kalin said.

But legal experts, including Kalin, aren't sure if Trump and his officials will respect that federal law and refrain from trying to seize or rescind obligated funds, pointing to statements made by Trump and Vought.

Vought and members of right-wing think tanks he is associated with have argued that the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 is unconstitutional, saying that Article II of the Constitution, which obligates the president to "faithfully execute" the law, also allows a president to forbid enforcement of the law.

Trump appears to agree with that interpretation. In a statement announcing Vought's nomination last week, Trump bragged about Vought's experience as a deregulator, saying, "Russ knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government."

"Russell Vought," Kalin said, "may stretch the bounds of the Impoundment Control Act ... and just force people to stop it through the courts."

If that's the case, Kalin said, some funds-even those protected as "obligated" funds under the Impoundment Control Act-may be subject to reversals by the Trump administration, and only funds that get fully dispersed to organizations before Trump takes office may be safe from those efforts.

Trump has already tested this theory. During his first term in office, he withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine while pressuring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open a corruption investigation into Joe Biden and his family. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, or GAO, later ruled that Trump's actions violated the Impoundment Control Act.

Trump will have an opportunity to appoint a new head of GAO next year when the 15-year term of the current Comptroller General ends, giving him a chance to choose who will have direct oversight of any decisions he makes to withhold funding.

If Trump decides to withhold funds, it will most certainly trigger legal fights that could go all the way to the Supreme Court. The high court has never directly weighed in on the subject, however, but the court's conservative majority has indicated it is willing to take an expansive view on presidential power.

"Time Is Just Not on the Side of the Grantees"

The short amount of time, roughly seven weeks, before Trump takes office, could also be discouraging some community groups from applying for federal environmental justice grants at all. In some cases, nonprofits see it as a reason to rely less on federal support to do their work.

Caleb Roberts applied for a $1.5 million grant earlier in November from another IRA-funded environmental justice program. He hoped to use the money to hire more employees at his nonprofit, Dallas-based Downwinders at Risk, to conduct door-to-door screenings to check residents' homes for conditions that cause asthma. But now he's unsure he'll ever see that money.

"We think we'll definitely run into some funding issues," he said. "Starting day one after inauguration, those things are probably under fire."

Another nonprofit, Alabama-based We Matter Community Association, said it plans to apply for a Thriving Communities grant to purchase 1,200 acres of land in the city of Prichard, on which it plans to build community amenities, including a community center, athletic fields, commercial space and affordable housing. But Carletta Davis, the group's president, said the organization will likely rely less on federal support in the future.

"[The election] is the reason why We Matter is really solely focused on trying to create a way to sustain itself without having to go through governmental grants," she said. "I think that our model is probably going to be the model going forward for EJ organizations."

Some organizations aren't sure if applying for a federal environmental justice grant is worth the effort at all. Applications for the Thriving Communities grant program, the largest single program of federal environmental justice block grants, haven't even opened in the EPA-designated area that includes Texas and Louisiana, home to the nation's largest petrochemical complexes and environmental justice communities.

"At this time, the groups we know of that may be interested still need more time to understand the grant program and whether they will apply," said Vanessa Toro Barragán, a senior program officer at the Houston-based Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, which isn't involved with the grant program.

But time may not be a luxury community groups can afford at the moment, should Trump officials and Republican lawmakers follow through with their threats.

Employees of organizations that work closely with the Thriving Communities program, also expressed concern that community groups would struggle to complete a complicated federal grant application before Trump takes office in just seven weeks, agreeing to comment anonymously to safeguard their prospects as potential grantees.

"Time is just not on the side of the grantees," one employee told Inside Climate News.

Still, organizations involved with the federal grant programs are encouraging community groups to apply and hope to see a big turnout.

"The fact is that this program, it still exists, and it doesn't make sense to turn away from an opportunity that is still there while it is still there," said Chandra Taylor-Sawyer, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, one of the partner organizations helping to recruit applicants to the Thriving Communities program.

Keeler, who runs the Midwest technical assistance center at the University of Minnesota, expressed a similar sentiment. "The future of these programs is uncertain," she said. "That said, all we can do is continue the work we've started. We get new requests for support every week and we'll keep responding to those requests for technical assistance as long as we are able."


Kristoffer Tigue, Dennis Pillion, Dylan Baddour and Marianne Lavelle wrote this article for Inside Climate News.


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A new report says fossil-fuel lobbyists in two states with strong transparency and disclosure laws are not making full disclosures - including in Maryland.

Maryland ranks seventh in the country and gets a grade of C-plus in the report from a group called F Minus - which tracks fossil-fuel lobbying efforts across the U.S.

James Browning, executive director of F Minus, said Maryland has strong laws requiring lobbyists to disclose their salaries and the bills they're working on.

But its audit found these disclosures are being made less than 50% of the time. Browning said some lobbyists also appear to have major conflicts of interest.

"What we also found is this rampant culture of lobbyists being sort of double agents for oil and gas companies," said Browning, "at the same time they're working for climate-conscious institutions."

Browning pointed to Johns Hopkins University's lobbying firm actively opposing a climate bill on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute. The lobbying firm didn't disclose that conflict.

Browning said the audit from F Minus has been sent to the state's ethics commission. He said he hopes that will spur additional audits on lobbying practices in the state.

He added that new policies on reporting would help keep their activities during legislative sessions transparent.

"There has to be a reality check in the middle of Maryland's three-month session - let's say at the end of February - where everyone has to disclose what they're doing," said Browning. "The way the law is written now, lobbyists can wait until May. The session is over in April."

Twenty-seven states received failing grades in the report for the overall lack of transparency in their lobbyist disclosure laws.



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A county high in the Colorado Rockies is working to include its underserved residents in plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the primary driver of climate change.

Nina Waters, a Summit County commissioner, said its new Climate Equity Plan is an opportunity for all residents to help keep the area economically viable. Summit County is a prime winter sports destination and Waters argued a warming planet puts all of that at risk. Even man-made snow cannot be created when temperatures hit 40 degrees.

"We have four world-class (ski) resorts here in Summit County," Waters pointed out. "As the planet heats up, we're going to have drier winters, less snow, and that will have really serious economic impacts to our community."

Officials tapped nonprofits and community leaders to engage low-income and minority residents who were left out of a 2019 Summit Community Climate Action Plan. Using online surveys, focus groups and individual interviews, new mitigation strategies emerged around energy use, transportation and waste reduction, along with ways to lower barriers to allow more residents to participate in solutions.

Waters pointed to a recent EV Ride and Drive event created specifically for the county's 15% Latino population. Residents were able to test drive new electric vehicles and the entire event was conducted in Spanish.

"We've prioritized ensuring that our large Spanish-speaking population can have access to that information in their native language," Waters noted.

Summit County and the towns of Breckenridge, Dillon, Frisco and Silverthorne aim to reduce fossil-fuel emissions by 50% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. Waters stressed free public transportation is critical for residents who cannot afford electric vehicles. A new initiative added smaller vehicles to the county's bus fleet to make it easier for more people to leave their gas-powered cars at home.

"A lot of our residents do not have access to a vehicle or they share a vehicle," Waters explained. "The micro-transit is really catered toward getting folks from that main bus hub station to their place of residence."


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