With Columbia’s funding in flux, South Bronx Unite may have to look elsewhere for funds
The future of the Clean Air Program, a collaboration between South Bronx Unite and Columbia University to monitor air quality in the South Bronx, is in question following deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. The loss of funding imperils the South Bronx air quality monitoring project and many other efforts.
The program, which began monitoring air quality in the fall of 2023, has previously received funding through grants from New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation. South Bronx Unite, the local nonprofit which spearheads the project, moved to expand through federal grants from the NIH and EPA. Sweeping spending cuts by the Trump administration have put the future of these agencies in jeopardy.
There are currently 40 air quality monitors spread out across the Bronx, all but four of them in South Bronx Community Districts 1 and 2.
The Department of Government Efficiency has cut tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of budget at over a dozen federal agencies, including over 250 research grants at NIH. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced in February that he planned to reduce the agency’s budget by 65%. These cuts leave potential funding for the air quality monitoring program on shaky ground.
“Everything has been stalled,” said Mychal Johnson, founding member and advisory board member of South Bronx Unite. Johnson and his partners at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health applied for the NIH grant to help Mott Haven students do research on the project at Columbia over the summer, Johnson said. Thanks to South Bronx Unite, Mott Haven high school students have worked alongside Columbia research scientists for the past two summers. According to Johnson, there’s no word whether these grants even exist anymore.
“One site says that we should have received information that it was canceled and another site doesn’t say that it has been,” said Johnson. “We were told the grants would be canceled because of the push from the administration on anything seemingly connected to environmental justice or diversity, equity and inclusion.”
But righting historic wrongs was at the heart of the Columbia – South Bronx United collaboration.
“These students must have the opportunities that anyone else would have,” said Johnson. “We just know our community desperately needs our students to have these opportunities that this grant would continue to afford them. It’s something we’ll have to continue to address.”
Steven Chillrud, Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, has done research with the project for years. He emphasized the importance of keeping this project running.
“The South Bronx is an area with many environmental stressors,” said Chillrud. “They have some of the highest asthma rates in the nation. There are high concentrations of point sources for pollution in that area as well.”
Approximately 1 in 4 children in Mott Haven-Port Morris suffer from asthma, according to data compiled by South Bronx Unite. The South Bronx also sees more respiratory-related hospitalizations and emergency room visits than anywhere else in New York City.
“There was no air quality monitoring before,” said Chillrud. “It’s funding that made it possible.”
The project has already yielded real outcomes: In 2020 and 2021, South Bronx Unite and Columbia published peer-reviewed journal articles on pollution levels in the South Bronx using a prior set of air monitors installed by Columbia for those studies. Johnson and Chillrud had intended to continue that research using the air quality monitors that SBU installed in 2023.
Johnson said that South Bronx Unite is meeting to discuss the next steps, which may include significant revisions to the proposal for Mott Haven students to do research at Columbia this summer. Meanwhile, he said, he wants to see action against these cuts.
“Hopefully our elected officials will keep pushing back on these narratives that anything around climate change or environmental justice are bad or misleading in terms of its true impact,” Johnson said. “I think the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing with this administration, but we’re going to make sure we’re diligent. If we need to submit a new draft, we’ll do so.”
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