Communities in Arkansas’s three largest metropolitan areas are the recipients of a $100 million climate grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, funding that will be used to build or expand projects that the EPA predicts will reduce carbon emissions in the state by more than 1 million metric tons between 2025 and 2050.
The EPA announced Monday that it would distribute more than $4 billion to 25 recipients of the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program across 30 states. The funding will support community projects designed to reduce carbon emissions. Examples include urban forestry programs, solar installations and reducing methane emissions from landfills.
Metroplan, an association of local governments in Central Arkansas, applied to the grants program in partnership with the City of Fort Smith and the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission. It is the largest grant Metroplan has ever been awarded for economic development, Metroplan leadership told the Arkansas Times Monday.
The EPA applied a “rigorous, uniform evaluation criteria to select applications to receive grants” according to a representative from the agency. Organizations in every state applied for over $33 billion in funding, with only $4.3 billion available in the last round of funding.
The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants Program program is part of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, passed by Congress and signed by President Joe Biden in 2022. The bill dedicates hundreds of billions of dollars to renewable energy projects across the U.S.
IRA funding is distributed via loans and grant programs.
The Arkansas funding will be allocated to local communities in Central Arkansas and Northwest Arkansas as well as Fort Smith, the state’s third-largest population center.
In its grant application, Metroplan and its partners outlined several major goals. Those include developing more infrastructure such as bike paths. Metroplan, the City of Fort Smith, and the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission will allocate money to participating local governments to preserve or expand parks, forests and wetlands.
The coalition plans for $68 million of the funding to go toward preserving and constructing more ‘green networks,’ or natural areas designed to absorb carbon emissions and provide other uses to the public. The coalition’s grant application reflected priorities outlined in the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality’s energy and environment innovation plan.
“A green network would be along a critical corridor, such as a creek or a ridgeline, where it’s really important that we are able to maintain the natural environment there,” Metroplan Executive Director Casey Covington told the Arkansas Times. “We want to create vegetation there, or we want to maintain the vegetation that is there. It’s also a great place to put bicycle and pedestrian facilities.”
The City of Benton’s Saline River Greenway project is an example of a green network that Metroplan will fund, Covington said.
Of the total $100 million grant, $10 million will go toward developing transportation efficiency and another $17 million will be for improving building efficiency, according to the grant application.
Transportation and energy efficiency projects may include investing in electric vehicle fleets for local governments, EV charging stations and LED streetlights. Eighteen sites in Northwest Arkansas have been identified for green projects. In Fort Smith, some of the funding will be used to revitalize downtown alleyways to promote biking.
The inside of Metroplan’s office in Little Rock. (Phillip Powell/ Arkansas Times)
Over the next few years, businesses, nonprofits and local governments will be able to apply for funding from Metroplan not yet allocated to specific projects, Covington said.
Communities in Central Arkansas will receive $49 million, while $36 million is allocated for projects in Northwest Arkansas. Fort Smith will receive $14.5 million. The money is being dispersed based on population.
Metroplan, Fort Smith and the Northwest Arkansas Regional Planning Commission partnered with over 50 communities, agencies, and organizations to develop projects, according to a press release.
“If it wasn’t for quality of life, I don’t think we’d be doing this,” Covington said. “We live in the Natural State, so when we were putting this program together, we looked at it and recognized the tourism that is already occurring in the state in bringing people in. So it was really an easy sell when we started looking at these projects and it absolutely is going to impact quality of life.”
Arkansas economic development planners have been working to bolster the state’s tourism industry while promoting outdoor recreation as part of a broader effort to strengthen workforce development.
In 2020, for example, the Northwest Arkansas Council offered tech professionals and entrepreneurs $10,000 and a free mountain bike to relocate to the region.
In a press release, Metroplan praised the efforts of Arkansas lawmakers as essential to securing the investment. None of Arkansas’s four Republican House members or two Republican senators voted for the IRA in 2022. In an email to the Arkansas Times, Covington said that the congressional delegation “expressed support for our application.”
Later this week, Covington and Metroplan will meet with EPA officials to discuss implementation of the grant.
“At Metroplan, we are focused on transportation, we are focused on quality of life, and we’re focused on preserving the nature that we have here in Arkansas, and receiving this grant highlights all three of those,” Covington said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated Casey Covington’s name.