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EPA Awards CARE Grant to Pueblo Environmental Protection Project

11/30/2006 -  

Nov. 30, 2006 — In its continued effort to sustain environmental progress at the community level, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has awarded a $91,021 Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) grant to Citizens for Clean Air in Pueblo (CCAP).

The CARE Program is a community-based, community-driven program that builds partnerships to help communities understand and reduce toxic risks from numerous sources. The program awards two types of CARE cooperative agreements.

The smaller Level I cooperative agreements are approximately $90,000 each and will help communities organize and create collaborative partnerships dedicated to reducing toxics in their local environments.

Level II awards are larger—approximately $275,000—and are designed to support communities that have already established broad-based partnerships and have identified the priority toxic risks in the community.

Level II communities are further along in the CARE process and are prepared to measure results, implement the risk reduction activities, and become self-sustaining.

The EPA noted that Pueblo's economy is historically based on heavy industry, with its citizens bearing a large portion of Colorado's output of lead, mercury and other toxic pollutants. The city's industrial-area neighborhoods lie adjacent to a steel mill and a coal-fired power plant, which collectively emit a high percentage of the state's output of airborne toxic substances.

The partnership formed for this CARE project includes a cross-section of the Pueblo community. EPA says the grant will aid the partnership in developing an inventory of toxic exposures to Pueblo's citizens and determine which of these should head the priority list for reduction.

“CARE is collaboration in action,” said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. “By uniting and working together, we can set priorities and address important environmental and public health issues.”

EPA awarded a total of $2.7 million in CARE grants to 17 communities across the country. The CARE Program is a community-based, community-driven program that builds partnerships to help communities understand and reduce toxic risks from numerous sources. Award recipients will address a wide variety of environmental health issues in both rural and urban areas.