ROANOKE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – The grant was slated to pay for energy-efficient housing, child-care center improvements and identifying safe locations for when natural disasters strike, among other projects.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has notified the University of Virginia that it is terminating a $19.9 million grant that would have funded eight Southwest Virginia projects.

The grant would have helped pay for, among other things, energy-efficient workforce housing in Buchanan County, a community center in Dickenson County, energy-efficiency improvements for child-care centers in eight localities and research to identify locations for telehealth hubs that could double as safe places during natural disasters.

It was awarded in January, before President Donald Trump took office, to a network of organizations led by UVa’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

On Thursday, the EPA told UVa that it is canceling the grant for the slate of projects, collectively called the Appalachian Environmental Resilience Community Change Grants Program.

“Our bipartisan coalition, as well as the communities we serve, are deeply disappointed,” Christine Mahoney, the Batten school’s chief innovation officer and a professor of public policy and politics, said in an email to Cardinal News.

The EPA provides 30 days for an appeal, and Mahoney said the school is considering it.

Other projects that were set to be supported by the grant include research on the environmental health and biodiversity of the Clinch River Valley; research on using brownfields for renewable energy generation; a renewable-energy jobs training program; and climate-resilience strategic planning for 10 communities.

The money was to come from an EPA program funded by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The program’s focus is to “implement climate resiliency and clean energy transition efforts,” according to UVa.

In its termination letter to UVa, the EPA said, “The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities.”

Mahoney disagreed. She said the Trump administration has said it supports rural communities, growing domestic energy and helping flood-ravaged areas, and she said that the UVa-led coalition’s work would fit those priorities.

“The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment. Our proposed work does just that,” Mahoney said.

The EPA’s decision comes after a period of uncertainty over the grant’s future.

In March, Trump’s EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, said that the agency would cancel more than 400 grants totaling $1.7 billion that it considered “wasteful federal spending,” but did not detail which grants would get the axe.

Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works then released a list that they said comprised the impacted grants as they protested the cancellations. The UVa grant was on that list.

Zeldin’s grant cancellations are part of a larger Trump administration effort to shrink or eliminate many federal programs. That effort has been spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by Elon Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and a senior advisor to Trump.

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, said in a statement that while he understands Trump’s desire to reduce spending, he is “disappointed that the funds for these programs in Dickenson and Buchanan Counties were eliminated.”

“I will work with the Counties and the Administration to determine if we can find other sources of money to help with these initiatives,” he said.

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said in a statement to Cardinal News that Trump and DOGE are “taking a wrecking ball to our government and illegally slashing funds for the University of Virginia, Buchanan County, the Clinch River Valley, and other members of the coalition.

“I urge EPA to reinstate this grant made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act that will support important economic development and environmental conservation projects across Southwest Virginia,” Kaine said.

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said he was “incredibly disappointed” that funding for housing, workforce training and more had been axed.

“This decision is yet another act of cruelty by this administration that leaves Southwest Virginia more vulnerable,” he said in a statement.