Targeting Grant Efforts to Communities with Environmental Justice Concerns

photo of webpage showing pollution prevention environmental justice facility mapping tool

Project Brief

The Challenge

To support its environmental justice goals and the Biden Administration’s Justice40 Initiative, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Pollution Prevention (P2) Program required that applicants for fiscal year 2022 and 2023 pollution prevention grants focus part of their grant-funded efforts on communities with environmental justice concerns. Anticipating that potential applicants would require assistance targeting their efforts, the P2 Program asked ERG to develop a tool to support applicants with this task.  


ERG's Solution

ERG developed a map-driven visualization tool to help prospective P2 grant applicants, grantees, and interested stakeholders geographically target facilities in or adjacent to underserved communities within the framework of the P2 Program’s five industrial sector-based National Emphasis Areas. The tool allows users to identify industrial facilities that may be contributing to pollution levels in a selected area, including communities with environmental justice concerns. The tool compiles data from five EPA systems and layers in demographics and provides an intuitive interface allowing users to explore an area and capture integrated results all in one place.


Client

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency