U. Arizona Receives $10 Million From EPA to Fund New ‘Environmental Justice Center’

U. Arizona Receives $10 Million From EPA to Fund New ‘Environmental Justice Center’

How many full-ride scholarships could have been created with an award of this size?

Campus Reform reports:

UArizona gets $10 million from EPA for ‘Environmental Justice Center’ to ‘build a more equitable world’

The University of Arizona has received a $10 million award from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fund a new environmental justice center.

EPA’s award will support the Western Environmental Science Technical Assistance Center for Environmental Justice (WEST EJ) for five years. The WEST EJ Center “will help communities achieve environmental and energy justice by serving as a one-stop shop for hands-on technical assistance, multifaceted training, and other eligible forms of assistance, resources and support,” the university said in a press release.

“Our public health and environmental researchers here at the University of Arizona are among the best in the country, and I’m proud to see their expertise and experience recognized in this Environmental Justice Center grant from the EPA,” UArizona President Robert C. Robbins, MD said in a statement.

“Dr. Paloma Beamer has shown exceptional leadership in environmental justice, and this new funding, combined with our existing relationships and knowledge, is going to enable us to work with communities to build a more equitable world,” Robbins added.

Following a “hub-and-spoke model”, the WEST EJ Center will be a “central hub composed of several units within the University of Arizona.” Those units include the “Indigenous Resilience Center,” “Participatory Evaluation Institute,” “Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center,” and “Western Region Public Health Training Center.”

Paloma Beamer, professor in the College of Public Health at the University of Arizona Health Sciences, led the environmental justice initiative to “overcome barriers.”

“The EPA’s promise of clean air, land and water has not reached many historically marginalized communities due to a complex interaction of physical, social and economic factors,” the statement read. “The WEST EJ Center brings together a diverse coalition with longstanding relationships and extensive expertise working with communities to overcome these barriers.”

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.