Northwest Environmental Justice Center 2025 Update
By Lynny Brown, Co-Director of the Northwest Environmental Justice Center
The NWEJC 2-Year Celebration, July 2025
On May 2, 2025, Willamette Partnership was one of hundreds of organizations, Tribes, and municipalities that had their funding terminated by the EPA. In 2023, alongside PSU’s Institute for Tribal Government, Rural Community Assistance Corporation, and over 20 partners, we launched the Northwest Environmental Justice Center. This regional network of technical assistance providers, community organizers, and cohort trainers was brought together to support communities with their critical environmental issues like clean water, wildfire resilience, and safe homes. Our anticipated five year timeline and $10M funding was abruptly cut before our second year was complete, impacting not only us here at Willamette Partnership, but our entire extended network across the Northwest.
While this is an immense loss, we hold on to the infrastructure, relationships, skills, and desire to work alongside communities that have solutions to their local environmental health issues. As we reflect on our work together, there is so much to celebrate and a dizzying amount of outcomes reached and milestones met despite only being in year two of a five year project.
Here are some key highlights:
Our initial goal was to support 50 funding applications for $50M over five years. In less than two years, we’ve surpassed that—submitting 100 applications for $100M total, and $90M awarded.
We responded to 235 technical assistance requests (woah!), connected with over 3,000 people through outreach events, and developed 9 meaningful cohorts, summits, and trainings.
Our success is driven by a diverse network of technical assistance providers, state organizers, and cohort leaders across Region 10: 23 in total! Their dedication made this work possible.
Celebrating the NWEJC: 2-Year Zine
We’re remarkably grateful for our non-federal partners that have stepped in to provide emergency funding to keep our staff intact as we navigate and plan next steps. Special thanks to Meyer Memorial Trust, the Healy Foundation, Collins Foundation, Roundhouse Foundation, Ford Family Foundation, Energy Foundation, Kelley Family Foundation, and FE2 Foundation!
While this emergency funding will keep us open for a few months, it is also a small fraction of the nearly $6.6 million we had left in our award to move environmental justice forward over the next three years. We’re actively seeking funding partners to help us continue our work to support EJ communities throughout Oregon and the region—let us know if you’d like to be a part of the next phase of our work!
Amidst uncertain funding, we and our partners are continuing to move work forward. Since our award termination:
Portland State University published new data that catalogues the patterns in federal grant and loan spending from 2010 to now
Rural Community Assistance Corporation shared findings their Interior Alaska Community & Environmental Summit
In collaboration with Washington’s Department of Commerce, we created Turning Your Community Idea Into a Grant Application webinars in English y Español.
Finally, we are closely monitoring a class action lawsuit that could reinstate our funding. On June 25, Earthjustice, Southern Environmental Law Center, Public Rights Project, and Lawyers for Good Government filed a lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of grant recipients to challenge EPA’s blanket termination of the Environmental and Climate Justice Program grants, which include some or all of the grants awarded under the following EPA programs:
Community Change Grants Program (CCG)
Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers Program (TCTACs)
Thriving Communities Grantmaking Program (TCGM)
Government-to-Government Program (G2G)
Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement Program (CPS)
We will continue to share regular updates as we receive them. Thank you for your continued partnership, support, and energy over the last couple of years. Stay tuned.
