Thomasville, Georgia, has a water problem. Its treatment system is far out of date, posing serious health and environmental risks.
“We have wastewater infrastructure that is old,” said Sheryl Sealy, the assistant city manager for this city of 18,881 near the Florida border, about 45 minutes from Tallahassee. “It’s critical that we do the work to replace this.”
But it’s expensive to replace. The system is especially bad in underserved parts of the city, Sealy said.
In September, Thomasville applied to get some help from the federal government, and just under four months later, the city and its partners were awarded a nearly $20 million Community Change grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make the long-overdue wastewater improvements, build a resilience hub and health clinic, and upgrade homes in several historic neighborhoods.
“The grant itself was really a godsend for us,” Sealy said.
In early April, as the EPA canceled grants for similar projects across the country, federal officials assured Thomasville that their funding was on track. Then on May 1, the city received a termination notice.
“We felt, you know, a little taken off guard when the bottom did let out for us,” said Sealy.
Thomasville isn’t alone.
Under the Trump administration, the EPA has canceled or interrupted hundreds of grants aimed at improving health and severe weather preparedness because the agency “determined that the grant applications no longer support administration priorities,” according to an emailed statement to Grist.
The cuts are part of a broader gutting of federal programs aimed at furthering environmental justice, an umbrella term for the effort to help communities that have been hardest hit by pollution and other environmental issues, which often include low-income communities and communities of color.
In Thomasville’s case, the city has a history of heavy industry that has led to poor air quality. Air pollution, health concerns, and high poverty qualified the surrounding county for the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative, which prioritized funding for disadvantaged communities. Thomasville has some of the highest exposure risks in Georgia to toxic air pollutants that can cause respiratory, reproductive, and developmental health problems, according to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Vulnerability Index. The city’s wastewater woes don’t only mean the potential for sewage backups in homes and spills into local waterways but also the risk of upper respiratory problems, according to Zealan Hoover, a former Biden administration EPA official who is now advising the advocacy groups Environmental Protection Network and Lawyers for Good Government.
“These projects were selected because they have a really clear path to alleviating the health challenges facing this community,” he said.
Critics argue there’s a disconnect between the Trump administration’s attack on the concept of environmental justice and the realities of what the funds are paying for.
“What is it about building a new health clinic and upgrading wastewater infrastructure … that’s inconsistent with administration policy?” Democratic Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff asked EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin at a recent hearing.
Zeldin repeatedly responded by discussing the agency’s review process intended to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders, particularly those related to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, but Ossoff cut him off, pushing for a specific answer about Thomasville’s grant. “Is a new health clinic for Thomasville, Georgia, woke?” he asked.
Thomasville’s Sealy said she understands that the federal government has to make hard funding decisions — that’s true locally too — but losing this grant has left her city in the lurch. In addition to the planned work on the wastewater collection system, the city needs to update its treatment plant to meet EPA standards. That overhaul will likely cost $60 million to $70 million, she said.
“How do you fund that?” Sealy asked. “You can’t fund that on the backs of the people who pay our rates.”
The funding cuts have left cities across Georgia — including Athens, Norcross, and Savannah — as well as nonprofit groups, in a state of uncertainty: some grants terminated, some suspended then reinstated, some still unclear. This puts city officials in an impossible position, unable to wait or to move forward, according to Athens-Clarke County Sustainability Director Mike Wharton.
“Do you commit to new programs? Do you commit to services?” he said. “Here you are sitting in limbo for months.”
Like Thomasville, Athens was also awarded a nearly $20 million Community Change grant. The city was going to use the money for backup generators, solar power, and battery storage at its public safety complex — ensuring 911, police, the jail, a domestic violence shelter, and other services could all operate during a power outage. That grant has been terminated.
The problem, Wharton said, goes beyond that money not coming in; the city had already spent time, resources, and money to get the grant.
“We spent $60,000 in local funding hiring people to write the grants,” he said. “Over a period of 14 months we invested over 700 hours of local personnel time. So we diverted our services to focus on these things.”
These frustrations are playing out for grant recipients throughout the state and country, according to Hoover. He said it’s not just confusing — it’s expensive.
“They are causing project costs to skyrocket because they keep freezing and unfreezing and refreezing projects,” he said. “One of the big drivers of cost overruns in any infrastructure project, public or private, is having to demobilize and remobilize your teams.”
Thomasville and Athens officials both said they’re appealing their grant terminations, which require them to submit a formal letter outlining the reasons for their appeal and requesting the agency reconsider the decision. They’re also reaching out to their elected officials, hoping that pressure from their senators and members of Congress can get them the federal money they were promised.
Other cities and nonprofits, as well as a group of Democratic state attorneys general, have sued, arguing that terminating their grants without following proper procedures is illegal. But that’s a difficult step for many localities to take.
“Suing the federal government to assert your legal rights is very daunting, even if the law is on your side,” Hoover said.