On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded $10 million to Portland State University, Willamette Partnership and the Rural Community Assistance Corporation to lead the creation of a new center focused on environmental justice.
The Environmental and Energy Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center, also known as TCTAC, will support clean energy and climate resilience for underserved communities by providing leadership training and technical assistance, such as aiding in policy analysis, grant navigation and construction projects.
“This investment is a crucial step towards resourcing communities to tackle ongoing injustices,” Lynny Brown, health and environment partner with the Willamette Partnership said. “This is an opportunity to drive meaningful change and build a more just future for all who live, work, play and pray in our region.”
On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded $10 million to Portland State University, Willamette Partnership and the Rural Community Assistance Corporation to lead the creation of a new center focused on environmental justice.
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The center will be based at PSU’s Institute for Tribal Government and will be one of two in the Pacific Northwest aiding tribes and other underserved and rural communities in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. In total, the EPA has released $177 million to create 17 environmental justice technical assistance centers throughout the U.S.
The EPA also this week awarded $12 million dollars to the University of Washington to establish a second center in the Pacific Northwest with the same goals of providing assistance to communities disproportionately impacted by pollution and climate change.
“This resource and this investment is an acknowledgment that we are at a point where we need to be exploring a diversity of options and solutions to a complex interrelated problem,” Direlle Calica, director of PSU’s Institute for Tribal Government, said.
Calica hopes this new effort will result in greater collaboration and resource sharing to build climate resilience in the face of future threats.
“It affords the opportunity … to share information, to share what’s worked, what isn’t working and how can we sharpen some of the opportunities to address some of the challenges that we’re facing and will be facing,” she said.
Calica also thinks that this new initiative will allow voices on the frontlines of the climate crisis that have historically been ignored to finally be heard while developing solutions that work for them.
“We as frontline communities have not had a seat at the table,” she said. “Some of those communities that have the most acute and a clear level of knowledge and insight into the problem and potential solutions sometimes don’t make it to the table.”
Lynny Brown, Direlle Calica and Cheyenne Holiday, energy, climate and transportation manager with Verde PDX joined OPB’s Think Out Loud to discuss the new TCTAC centers. You can listen to the full conversation here:
