Wisconsin to get $1.4M in EPA air monitoring grants

Wisconsin is one of 37 states that will receive a total of $53.4 million in air monitoring grants from the federal government with a focus on underserved communities disproportionately affected by pollution.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday the money would go to 132 air monitoring projects through President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and American Rescue Plan. Three groups in the Badger State will get a combined total of $1.4 million to create networks of air quality monitoring stations in areas where pollution burdens peoples’ health the most.

The following are the three organizations to receive grants and what they will be used for.

• Proposed EPA funding of $500,000 for Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Inc. to make a network of air quality monitoring stations in Milwaukee for neighborhoods with high asthma rates, federal data showed. Neighbors will learn how to access air quality data, what the data means and action steps tied to data so residents can respond to asthma-related air quality risks.
• Proposed funding of $429,746 for Madison to install a network of air quality censors across the city to provide real-time particulate pollution data to the public. The city will find which neighborhood suffers the most pollution and work with them to protect their health.
• Proposed funding of $500,000 for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to find local hotspots and emission sources by monitoring different communities. The state will build on its own air monitoring systems to find areas where there are disparities and see what their options are to mitigate those disparities.

The project was funded with $30 million from the Inflation Reduction Act, which supplemented $20 million from the American Rescue Plan, federal officials said. The EPA supported 77 more projects, more than twice the number of projects initially proposed by non-government organizations, with the help of the plan.

“I’ve traveled across the country and visited communities who’ve suffered from unhealthy, polluted air for far too long. I pledged to change that by prioritizing underserved communities and ensuring they have the resources they need to confront longstanding pollution challenges,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said. “The air monitoring projects we are announcing today, which include the first EPA grants funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, will ensure dozens of overburdened communities have the tools they need to better understand air quality challenges in their neighborhoods and will help protect people from the dangers posed by air pollution.”

Congress passed the American Rescue Plan in spring of 2021, which gave the environmental agency a one-time sum of $100 million to address health outcome disparities from pollution and the pandemic, federal officials said. Half of that $100 million was dedicated to air quality monitoring.