Thomasville, Georgia, has a water problem. Its treatment system is far out of date, posing serious health and environmental risks, and this issue is not helped by recent EPA grant cuts.

“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 in the issues stemming from the recent EPA grant cuts.

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.

Read the full article about EPA grant cuts by Emily Jones at Grist.