Funding: Total: $600,000. Maximum award: $600,000.
Dates: Application Submission Deadline: September 21, 2020
Summary:
The EPA’s Office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization (OBLR) is soliciting applications for funding under Section 104(k)(7) of CERCLA, which authorizes funding to eligible entities to provide training, research, and technical assistance to facilitate the inventory of brownfield sites, site assessments, remediation of brownfield sites, community involvement, or site preparation. Grants awarded under this solicitation will help communities, organizations, government agencies, nonprofits, and individuals by providing technical assistance on the integration of environmental justice and equitable development when developing solutions to brownfields cleanup and revitalization challenges.
Project Topic Areas:
The EPA anticipates awarding one grant in the subject area below. Applicants may propose additional or similar activities that achieve the objectives outlined below. Applicants that propose projects in a different subject area will not receive funding consideration. Applicants may only submit one application. Applicants may receive only one award under this competition. The EPA anticipates that one applicant will be chosen from the pool of applicants that successfully address the technical areas described below and who meet the threshold and ranking criteria.
Technical Assistance to Help Communities Integrate Environmental Justice and Equitable Development Approaches into Brownfield Activities:
EPA is seeking to fund an eligible organization to provide direct technical assistance to brownfields communities nationwide who wish to develop clear and effective strategies that ensure low-income and minority residents participate in and directly benefit from brownfields revitalization in their communities. Technical assistance must include assistance on how to increase the capacity of communities (including community organizations, institutions and development corporations) to integrate environmental justice and equitable development approaches in their brownfield redevelopment plans.
Focus areas should include providing “how-to” advice on incorporating equitable development strategies, approaches, regulations and policies into brownfield assessment, cleanup, reuse planning and revitalization. Technical assistance activities should be designed to coach and train brownfields communities on a variety of innovative and effective community engagement approaches. Applicants should explain their approach for delivering technical assistance engagements with varying depths of involvement and timeframes. In the event of social distancing or other restrictions as a result of COVID-19, applicants must provide a backup plan for delivering all in-person technical assistance activities. The goal of the technical assistance should be to encourage long-term community participation and build local capacity among residents, organizations, government agencies and institutions so they can lead efforts that advance equitable development and address environmental justice impacts as part of revitalization and reuse of brownfield sites. Special emphasis should be on equipping multigenerational members of low-income or minority communities to participate in and lead these efforts at the local or regional level.
Technical assistance activities should also integrate sustainability principles (e.g., minimize waste, recycle and reuse training materials) and support effective engagement across organizations with similar goals (e.g., helping local governments and one or more nonprofits work together to achieve equitable development outcomes at brownfields). This support includes advice to communities on how to measure and communicate progress in meeting equitable development and environmental justice goals to the affected community, how to communicate success and value of these approaches to elected leaders and funders, and how to spur and maintain involvement of local leaders and residents.
To encourage communities’ active implementation and progress towards incorporating equitable development at brownfields, the EPA encourages digestible, creative and highly visual guides or videos and judicial use of webinars. Guides/videos may be a product of technical assistance engagements or may be developed to assist in delivering technical assistance. Guides should include a variety of specific community engagement activities that focus on environmental justice and equitable development for brownfields. Guides should also include “how to” information and general cost approximations for equitable development/environmental justice strategies that will help a community, organization, government, or institution appropriately budget its time and resources. The successful applicant should collect examples and results of equitable development and environmental justice implementation strategies that support brownfields redevelopment, identify those that are most transferrable, and develop a visual library of approaches.
In addition, the successful applicant should also regularly communicate with EPA Regional Programs and other EPA Brownfields Technical Assistance Providers to coordinate its technical assistance activities. EPA Regional Programs may invite the successful applicant to attend workshops as appropriate (such as workshops for regional Brownfields Assessment, Cleanup and Multipurpose grantees) to discuss how to include environmental justice and equitable development-focused community engagement in grantee workplans and budgets.
Funding:
The estimated total funding available for this grant is approximately $600,000. The EPA anticipates awarding one grant, subject to the availability of funds, quality of applications, and other applicable considerations. Cooperative agreements awarded will be funded incrementally on an annual basis. Additional funds may be added in each subsequent year of the agreement, subject to satisfactory performance and the availability of funds. Matching funds are not required under this competition. Voluntary cost share is a form of leveraging.
Project Requirements:
Only those applications that specifically address and pass each of the threshold criteria will be evaluated against the ranking criteria that ensure applicants are eligible to receive this grant. Threshold criteria are evaluated on a pass or fail basis.
- Applicant Eligibility
- Project Eligibility
- Substantial Conformity
- Submission of Applications
- Backup Plan for COVID-19 Restrictions
Eligible uses of grant funds include direct costs necessary to provide brownfields technical assistance identified in the approved workplan. This includes eligible programmatic costs necessary to perform your project, such as: costs for personnel, technical experts, materials, supplies, room rentals, travel, and transportation expenses.
EPA requires that applicants adequately describe environmental outputs and outcomes to be achieved under assistance agreements. Applicants must include specific statements describing the environmental results of the proposed project in terms of well-defined outputs and, to the maximum extent practicable, well-defined outcomes that will demonstrate how the project will contribute to the goal and objective. Applicants are required to describe how funding will help EPA achieve environmental outputs and outcomes in their responses to the ranking criteria. Outputs and outcomes specific to each project will be identified as deliverables in the negotiated workplan if the application is selected for award. Recipients will be expected to report progress toward the attainment of expected project outputs and outcomes during the project performance period.
Eligible Applicants:
Groups or governments through cities, counties, tribes, states, and nonprofits are eligible to apply.