The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is hosting additional public meetings in Gary, where residents can voice their opinions on how funds for a new climate pollution reduction grant should be spent.
The Gary meeting will occur on Thursday, Feb. 1, in the Gary Public Library & Cultural Center community room.
Scott Deloney, branch chief of air programs with IDEM’s Office of Air Quality, said that Gary residents have held an active voice in the community involvement in this issue.
“During the first public input opportunity, we had one meeting that was in the Northwest Indiana region, and it had more constituents from Gary than any other community, and a number of them requested that we have another one in Gary,” Deloney said. “There was an outpour of interest in this particular topic from the Gary community.”
As previously reported by Capital B Gary, IDEM was awarded $3 million in initial planning funds to conduct a greenhouse gas emissions inventory and develop a Priority Climate Action Plan to provide to the EPA by March 2024. A Comprehensive Climate Action Plan is due in July 2025.
Climate action plans are particularly important for locals in Gary and Northwest Indiana, one of the most air-polluted regions in the country. According to an EPA Toxic Release Inventory report, about 26 million pounds of toxic chemicals were released into the air in 2019 in Indiana, and over 1.5 million pounds of that air pollution came from Lake County.
IDEM has been rolling out public meetings across the state to get feedback on how to best use funds awarded through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program. IDEM has previously conducted a series of four community engagement public meetings this fall in Portage, Indianapolis, Ferdinand, and Fort Wayne for local residents to share what they would like to see in their state’s priority climate action plan. The CPRG program also works in tandem with the Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to ensure 40% of the overall benefits of climate, clean energy, and other federal investments flow to disadvantaged communities that have been marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.
Looking ahead, after this first planning stage, the second phase — which includes applications for grant implementations — will be due April 1. Deloney said that IDEM has been receiving and will continue to collect project proposals to be included in their grant application for April. So far, about 150 project proposals have been made, and 25% are specific to Northwest Indiana, according to Deloney.
“Gary always makes a presence,” Deloney said. “I think that’s great, that there’s an interest in the community on what’s happening around them.”
The CPRG program provides $5 billion in grants to states, local governments, tribes, and territories to develop and implement ambitious plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other harmful air pollution. Gary residents can visit IDEM’s website to learn more about the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program and to stay up to date on the agency’s timeline and the next steps in the plan’s process. An agenda and details for viewing each meeting by livestream will also be added to IDEM’s website when available.