Grants Frozen, Communities Left Paying the Price

The Village of Sauget in St. Clair County, Illinois, has a unique and troubling history. Incorporated in 1926 by executives of the Monsanto Chemical Company, the town was originally named "Monsanto" and was founded with a specific purpose: to be a haven for industry.

With deliberately lax manufacturing and emissions laws, Sauget has hosted major polluters like ExxonMobil, Clayton Chemical, and Veolia North America. For the town's 134 residents—and the 700,000 people in the surrounding East St. Louis metro area—corporate needs have historically taken precedence over public health.

We were basically incorporated to be a sewer.

This sentiment, expressed by Mayor Rich Sauget in 2006, underscores the town's long-standing environmental challenges. Decades later, the community is still grappling with the consequences of this industrial legacy, particularly regarding air quality and respiratory health.

For years, residents have suspected that the Veolia Environmental Services incinerator, which burns hazardous waste including toxic substances like PFAS, is a primary source of pollution. Darnell Tingle, who leads United Congregations of Metro-East (UCM), notes that congregants at local churches often wonder if the facility is making them sick.

In 2023, UCM proposed a concrete solution to address these concerns. Their plan involved:

• Installing air quality monitoring stations on six local churches
• Financing the project with a $500,000 Community Change Grant
• Employing scientists to analyze the collected data

This initiative was part of a landmark program established during the Biden administration, designed to provide direct funding to frontline communities. However, the hope for answers was short-lived. In early 2025, the newly inaugurated Trump administration abruptly withdrew the funding.

Only two of the six planned monitors were installed before the grant was terminated. Consequently, Tingle's organization lacks the financial resources to pay scientists to analyze the data those monitors generate.

The termination of the Community Change Grant program extended far beyond Illinois. The Trump administration's EPA, led by Administrator Lee Zeldin, froze at least $1.6 billion in funding across 106 grants, from Alaska to Florida. The administration justified the freeze as a necessary step to end the "green new scam" and eliminate funding for the "globalist climate agenda."

The consequences have been stark for communities relying on these funds:

• Pocatello, Idaho: Unsewered neighborhoods continue to face nitrate contamination in their drinking water.
• South Bronx, New York: A plan to revitalize a dilapidated waterfront park was defunded, leaving the area vulnerable to extreme flooding.
• South Dakota: The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe's $19.9 million project to rebuild a bridge and install solar panels remains just a plan.

According to Zealan Hoover, former senior advisor to Biden’s EPA administrator, the direct-grant model was unique. While standard funding flows through states, direct grants are more responsive to specific community needs.

For many communities, they've been going through the stages of grief. First was disbelief, because they know the merits of these projects.

Without the monitoring data, the health risks in Sauget remain a matter of suspicion rather than proven fact. A longitudinal EPA study from the 1990s found high levels of lead, volatile organic compounds, and sulfur dioxide in the area—compounds known to increase the risk of cancer and respiratory illness.

Children in East St. Louis suffer from asthma at rates significantly higher than the national average. Yet, proving a direct link between the local incinerator and these health issues has been difficult.

In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) completed an air quality study in Sauget. The agency's conclusion was stark: due to inadequate data collection by the EPA, they could not determine the health impacts of the incinerator. Specifically, they were unable to conclude whether volatile organic compound levels were actively harming residents.

As a result, the community is left in a state of uncertainty—facing poor health outcomes without the concrete evidence needed to hold polluters accountable.

One year after the grant terminations, the fallout is still unfolding. The freeze on funding occurred without warning, sometimes in the middle of disbursement, leaving organizations with no recourse. In some cases, communities never saw a dime of the promised money.

The loss of the Office of Environmental Justice and the involvement of Elon Musk's now-decommissioned DOGE in freezing the funds have compounded the issue. Communities are now forced to find alternative solutions or abandon their projects entirely.

Some organizations have responded by suing the government or searching for other funds, but for many, the resources are simply not available. The abrupt reversal of federal support has left a void that local entities are ill-equipped to fill.

The situation in Kipnuk, Alaska, serves as a grim example. The EPA terminated a grant for flood prevention, and subsequently, the town was washed away in a flood. This sequence of events highlights the high stakes involved in these funding decisions.

The story of Sauget and the frozen grants illustrates a broader tension between environmental regulation and industrial interests. While the administration aimed to unleash energy production, the immediate effect was the withdrawal of support for communities already burdened by pollution.

For the residents of the East St. Louis metro area, the air remains thick with uncertainty. They have the monitors, but no means to interpret the data. They have the health issues, but no definitive link to the source.

As other communities across the nation face similar setbacks—from water sanitation to flood resilience—the legacy of these policy changes will likely be measured in years, not months. The question remains: who will pay the price for these unanswered questions?