By MONICA SAMAYOA/Oregon Public Broadcasting

Lane County officials say the Trump administration has cancelled a $19.6 million grant aimed at supporting residents during extreme weather events like wildfires and heat waves.

The Environmental Protection Agency notified Lane County on Friday that it was terminating its Community Change Grant.

“This EPA Assistance Agreement is terminated effective immediately on the grounds that the remaining portion of the Federal award will not accomplish the EPA funding priorities for achieving program goals,” the notification read.

In addition to complying with the Trump administration’s policies, the letter said, “it is vital that the Agency assess whether all grant payments are free from fraud, abuse, waste, and duplication, as well as to assess whether current grants are in the best interests of the United States.”

The cuts appear to be part of a broader pattern across federal agencies to limit support for disaster response and to target funding for programs that respond to climate change.

The Trump administration has also made cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including $141.1 million in promised FEMA payments to Oregon. U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, last week accused the administration of crippling the National Weather Service and threatening the nation’s ability to predict and respond to weather disasters. Cuts to hazard mitigation grants, meanwhile, have Oregon’s Department of Emergency Management staff concerned about disaster preparedness — and safe drinking water in small communities.

“This decision appears to be part of a broader, arbitrary review process that unjustly targeted programs vital to small, rural communities like ours,” Oakridge Mayor Bryan Cutchen said. “Our residents are now left without the resilience center that would have served as a critical lifeline during wildfires and smoke events.”

But the Trump administration froze all federal grants aimed at climate action, jeopardizing hundreds of millions of dollars already earmarked for Oregon. The state was awarded a total of four Community Change Grants.

In addition to Lane County, those recipients were:

$19.9 million for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde
$20 million Columbia Gorge Education Service District
$16.3 million City of Chiloquin

Lane County’s policy director Steve Adams said the county had already received $105,000 in reimbursements for work it had begun.

“The portal opened very briefly after a federal court ruled about two weeks ago requiring movement on the grants that have been frozen,” he said. “We were at that point able to access the funds and submit for reimbursement for costs that we had incurred.”

Adams said those costs included staff time aimed at trying to set up the fund as quickly as possible.

“We’ve been busy and, in good faith, in trying to set up a large grant. This is a three-year project that included construction in six different locations, multiple subcontractors and using federal funds,” he said. “So certainly with the large size of the grant, we had work to do to set everything up.”

According to Adams, the portal to access the federal funds was available for four days. After that, the county received the notification of termination.

The county is considering disputing the termination and has 30 days to do so.

“We’re profoundly disappointed with this outcome, and this is a really important grant for Lane County,” Adams said. “We’ve lost over 700 square miles of Lane County to wildfire in the last five years. We have a deep need for sheltered space that can be air conditioned, air filtered and even during winter storms — heated, and that’s what this grant would have provided for us in 6 distinct locations.”