For those who fight for environmental justice, recent changes made to federal policy rolls back efforts to protect residents in neighborhoods long burdened by industrial pollution, as well as stalls job creation.

For those who support the changes, the actions taken during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second administration are a needed way to protect taxpayers from wasteful spending programs pushed by the previous administration.

The Dallas Morning News examined the impact of policy changes and program eliminations by the Environmental Protection Agency. Two cases, in particular, have had an immediate effect in North Texas.

One program provided $7 billion to boost solar energy creation. The other provided $3 billion in community grants to combat various environmental issues, including air quality.

Environmental justice advocates say that, in the past, vulnerable communities viewed the federal government as an ally to overcome roadblocks with local and state governments to access resources.

Now, nonprofits and local governments in Texas and across the country are suing the EPA for terminating and clawing back money from programs that already awarded grants.

One of these was the Solar for All program, created by the former President Joe Biden’s administration under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The act allocated $27 billion for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to lower energy costs for families, create higher-paying jobs in communities that have been left behind, advance environmental justice and tackle the climate crisis.

The program was designed to channel $7 billion in competitive grants toward residential solar projects for low-income and disadvantaged households nationwide, including initiatives focused on workforce development and energy affordability.

In 2024, a coalition of nonprofits and government entities in Texas had won nearly $250 million in Solar for All funding. Dallas County was awarded $41 million.

In August 2025, the EPA announced it was canceling the program after Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, removing the agency’s authority to administer the program.

Early last year, the EPA announced the creation of the Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative.

A spokesperson for the EPA did not respond to questions about specific programs.

The spokesperson, who would not be identified, issued a statement via email noting problems identified by the Inspector General with oversight of grant funding. The spokesperson also said the Trump EPA, under Lee Zeldin, is helping North Texas communities through various programs and grants.

“The Trump EPA is committed to its core mission of protecting human health and the environment. Ensuring that the agency’s resources are actually being used to secure clean air, land and water for all Americans, not as handouts to the previous administration’s political benefactors, is key to fulfilling that mission.”

In December, the EPA approved a $315 million loan for the city of Fort Worth to upgrade wastewater collection and treatment under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program. Also, another $4.8 million loan from the Solid Waste Infrastructure for Recycling grant program.

The loan will fund the construction of the Mary’s Creek Water Reclamation Facility in Fort Worth, said Mary Gugliuzza, the city’s water department spokesperson.

The project, expected to start construction late this summer and be completed by late 2029, will accommodate growth on the city’s west side.

“It’s a win for our ratepayers because of the low interest rate,” Gugliuzza said. “It will save us some money on interest rates, and we can defer when we start repaying the loan until after the project is in service.”

The EPA said via email, the previous administration “was more focused on throwing money out the door than spending hard-earned American taxpayer dollars with integrity. The Solar for All program was operating with layers and layers of passthroughs, each taking their own cut of the money.”

For North Texans already engaged in solar workforce training, the sudden policy reversal has been disorienting.

Lack of green job opportunities

Green Careers Texas in Dallas worked with community organizations to help disrupt poverty by training North Texans for higher-wage careers in solar installation.

After nine years, the nonprofit organization decided to shut down following Solar for All’s termination.

Tracy Wallace, founder of Green Career Texas, said her organization was awarded about $440,000 over three years to train about 120 people.

Wallace, who also serves on the Dallas Environmental Commission, said her organization was too small to continue operating without the grant.

Jonathan Dwight Huell, 27, is one of those folks who benefited from the Green Career Texas program.

Dwight Huell, a former inmate, was connected to Green Career Texas after completing the Prison Entrepreneurship Program at James Lynaugh Unit in West Texas.

Before serving time, he held sporadic jobs. At one point, he worked in a warehouse, but never received any training.

Completing the solar installation training program allowed Dwight Huell to land a job in the green energy sector, to learn to be responsible and to work in something that made him proud.

“Going up and down the ladder and getting on top of that roof, you can see the whole view of the city sometimes — the sky, the wind blowing in your face,” Dwight Huell said. “I was actually having fun. I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, this is hard work.’ It was more like I was enjoying myself the whole time I was doing it, and still, I’m creating something, basically with my hands. You can feel proud about that.”

Prior to the training, participants were required to complete a 10-hour online course from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The hands-on training took place over the course of two days. Participants were taught about the basics of solar energy, installation techniques and safety measures. Once completed, they were paired with local contractors and other nonprofit organizations to find jobs.

Dwight Huell said as federal support dried up, opportunities have “thinned out,” and many initiatives have paused or disappeared. He is also worried about the lack of opportunities that others like him might no longer have access to.

“This is stuff you want to be able to pass down so that other people can catch on and try to shape their character into a better person in general; it’s more than just working a job,” Dwight Huell said. “This is gaining character. This is gaining a sense of self. That’s what I believe, because they’ve done it for me. It’s more than a job.”

Wallace said the program’s termination threatens clean energy jobs, energy cost savings and grid resilience for all Texans, but vulnerable communities are at a higher risk.

Jonathon Bazan, Dallas County assistant administrator, said via email Solar for All created a one-time opportunity for states and local governments to bring renewable energy to families who are typically left out of those investments, and the Commissioners Court stepped in to make sure communities did not miss it.

“While providing renewable energy solutions is not a core county function,” Bazan said, “this federal program was specifically designed to allow counties to help close that gap using federal dollars.”

Legal battle

The termination has also spawned legal challenges.

Harris County, recipient of one of the largest Solar for All awards and leader of the Texas Solar for All Coalition, which included Dallas County, Austin and other Texas municipalities, has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to restore its roughly $54 million grant, arguing the EPA lacked authority to scrap the funding after it was awarded.

Jonathan Fombonne, Harris County attorney, told The News the EPA used the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act as its justification to terminate the grant.

But Fombonne argues this is legally incorrect because the bill cancels future appropriations and future grants, but does not cancel grants that have already been awarded.

“Harris County led a coalition of different government entities around Texas in applying for this grant, and a lot of money was supposed to come, and a lot of work was done to prepare to receive that money and get these projects off the ground,” Fombonne said. “And so to have that yanked away like that was pretty dramatic.”

Harris County’s lawsuit against the EPA is currently in discovery. The county plans to seek summary judgment later this year after dropping its initial request for a preliminary injunction under an agreement that freezes the grant funds until a ruling is made.

These projects target communities that often face higher pollution burdens and less investment. Without the grant, those neighborhoods miss out on cleaner air, climate resilience and related health benefits, said Fombonne.

“We needed a coalition of both red and blue cities and counties in Texas and nonprofits, and all of us were counting on this money coming in to do the work that really our state government should also be supporting and just isn’t doing,” Fombonne said. “So we thought it was important, as the largest county in Texas, to do the work that our state isn’t doing.”

A dozen states filed a separate lawsuit against the EPA seeking to restore $7 billion in Solar for All grants. A federal judge ruled Jan. 13 that the Trump administration acted illegally when it canceled the clean energy grants for projects in states that voted for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

The EPA said via email, “The Solar for All program was operating with layers and layers of passthroughs, each taking their own cut of the money. The Inspector General’s office found that recipients of the program may even have been paid through multiple agreements for the same work.”

“Biden’s EPA obligated $7 billion before any standard operating procedures for the program were even developed, and no quality assurance measures were in place for 83% of the recipients — even as money was being shoveled over. The days of wasteful Biden-era boondoggles are over, and the Trump EPA is committed to being an exceptional steward of taxpayer dollars,” read the statement.

Public health

The fight over clean energy funding parallels another legal battle in North Texas focused on air quality monitoring.

Downwinders at Risk, an environmental advocacy group in Dallas, and other plaintiffs are suing the EPA over its termination of environmental justice grants that funded community air monitors.

Advocates say residents rely on these tools to track pollution near industrial facilities and engage in planning and enforcement.

Caleb Roberts, the director of Downwinders at Risk, said once again, the most vulnerable and polluted communities are left behind.

“Because we don’t have the avenues or the vehicle to get that hard data, residents are going to continue to be ignored by their city councils,” Roberts said. “They’re going to continue paying the price of living next to polluters who can get away with contaminating children and families.”

The suit alleges the EPA’s actions violated federal law by effectively undoing a congressional directive.

In 2022, the Biden administration launched a new national office within the EPA dedicated to advancing environmental justice and civil rights.

This office was tapped to oversee the implementation and delivery of the $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant created by the Inflation Reduction Act. The Trump administration shut down this EPA arm in March 2025.

The moves fell in line with Trump’s executive orders and directives to ban or dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government, placing staff on leave, terminating offices and targeting federal contractors and grantees.

The EPA said via email that it is investing in North Texas and noted its $500,000 grant to the city of Garland to assess and revitalize abandoned and derelict properties.

City of Garland officials say it applied for a competitive EPA assessment grant through a monthslong process that took about nine months from application to award, with work on the application beginning in late 2024 and the EPA announcing the $500,000 award on May 19, 2025.

Ayako Schuster, the director of the Economic Development Department in Garland, said the city had been notified of the award and is awaiting funding.

Schuster said the grant is strictly for environmental assessment, focused on industrial areas and downtown but available citywide, including for private property owners who request it, to determine whether sites are clean and eligible for development.

Schuster said using the EPA assessment funds helps identify environmental issues before redevelopment and reduces reliance on local taxpayer money for these studies.

But for communities such as West Dallas, Joppa in southern Dallas and Echo Heights in Fort Worth, advocates say hyperlocal air monitors not only supply data but also empower residents to understand and confront pollution threats affecting health outcomes such as asthma and cardiovascular disease.

Roberts and other local leaders had hoped to use a roughly $500,000 EPA award to expand SharedAirDFW, a community-designed monitoring network, into more neighborhoods where traditional federal air monitors are sparse.

The group planned to install approximately nine new air monitors across Dallas-Fort Worth.

One air monitor was going to be placed in Echo Heights, a predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhood in southeast Fort Worth.

Letitia Wilbourn, a longtime Echo Heights resident and leader of the Echo Heights Stop Six Environmental Coalition, said her community has historically been forgotten and exposed to cancer-causing chemicals and pollutants emitted by the almost 200 industrial businesses in the area, including trucking centers and natural gas drilling sites.

During what Wilbourn calls a “toxic tour,” she drove The News around her neighborhood to show the industrial plants and trucking companies. One of those companies is located right behind her house.

“We are tired of being overlooked,” Wilbourn said. “No matter how much we complain, we always get asked, ‘Where’s the data?’ We had planned to use these monitors to obtain and present data to the city council.”

Dallas-Fort Worth is among the most ozone-polluted metro areas in the U.S., according to the American Lung Association. In 2025, the D-FW area ranked No. 10 out of 228 metropolitan areas for the most high-ozone days — a setback from previous rankings, The News reported.

“We won’t be deterred by this,” Wilbourn said, “but it’s certainly set us back.”

The lawsuit argues that cutting the grant funds has left environmental advocates and local governments unable to carry out essential on-the-ground work. That includes installing monitors and engaging residents in pollution tracking.

These communities and organizations are seeking ongoing programs and grants to advocate for disadvantaged communities to have clean air, affordable energy and economic opportunity. Without a win in the courtroom, their only option to continue might be to wait for the next administration and see if it is more favorable to these policies.

But for some, like Wallace, who shut down Green Career Texas, this might not be an option in three years.