What losing federal funding looks like on the ground: An interview with David Diaz, Executive Director of Active San Gabriel Valley
With the new Federal Administration, environmental funding has been cancelled or held back from grantees across the nation. This has been particularly harmful as many organizations were encouraged to go after new federal funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that was earmarked for “disadvantaged communities” through President Biden’s Justice 40 Executive Order. On March 25th, 2025 – according to an email from the Environmental Protection Network – two internal US EPA documents were released, including a list of 400 grants that the EPA was planning to or actively considering terminating – despite, in some cases, such action violating terms and conditions on already-executed grant agreements.
One of the grants on that list includes Active San Gabriel Valley (ActiveSGV) as a grantee. ActiveSGV is a local environmental justice organization that helps to support a more sustainable, equitable, and livable San Gabriel Valley. The following is a transcript of a conversation between Active SGV’s Executive Director, David Diaz, and USC ERI staff Vanessa Carter Fahnestock and Austin Mendoza. We discuss the impact of recent uncertainties around federal funding on their work and planned investment in their region.
The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length. It took place on April 2, 2025.
Vanessa: Just to start, can you share with us what ActiveSGV was awarded through the EPA Community Change Grant?
David: Day One is the lead partner, but we’re a coalition of nonprofit organizations that serve the San Gabriel Valley. Together with our partners, we proposed a myriad of strategies that would bring environmental justice and public health outcomes to the San Gabriel Valley. Our team consists of several folks – Day One is the lead, ActiveSGV is the statutory lead, and we also have TreePeople, Sustainable Claremont, GRID Alternatives, the Council for Watershed Health, as well as the City of South El Monte that’s included as part of this project team, at least for implementation.
TreePeople was going to plant thousands of trees in the SGV. They would have also been able to distribute thousands of fruit trees to residents in the San Gabriel Valley. Sustainable Claremont are working on green schoolyards, so they had about 10 campuses that they were going to transform into green schoolyards. GRID Alternatives was going to lead our Clean Casas initiative that included rooftop solar, battery storage, cool roofs, and induction stove technology to switch out those toxic gas stovetops.
We, ActiveSGV, were going to continue expanding our electric bikeshare program. We currently operate the largest electric bikeshare program in the United States. It’s a monthly rental program, not a daily rental program, so you can check out a bike like you would a book at a library. And so, with the grant, we were going to expand it to offer 300 vouchers of $2,000 for folks to be able to purchase electric cargo bikes. And then, we were also going to install bicycle repair stations for things like putting air in your tire or fixing something simple on your bike. And then, ActiveSGV was going to be working on retrofitting 60 homes with rain gardens to capture stormwater and create multiple benefits.
Day One was going to work on meeting a very basic need for the community by installing clean water refill stations at public parks and school sites. They were also the ones leading a lot of the project administration and community engagement for the project. Last but not least, there was about $3 million in gap funding for the Merced Avenue Greenway Project, which is a 1.1-mile multiple-benefit greenway located in South El Monte. That’s the first at-grade bike path in the San Gabriel Valley.
So all these strategies together, coupled with really meaningful community engagement, was what we were funded for $20 million to do under the GREEN SGV Project – that stands for Green, Resilient, Energy-Efficient Neighborhoods.
Vanessa: What would have been the impact on your organization? What would this look like in terms of staffing up? What part of that $20 million was going to ActiveSGV itself, as originally intended?
David: For us, it was nearly $5 million over three years – but a lot of that money was going back out into the community. So again, with the electric cargo bike voucher program, we had scoped 300 of those $2,000 vouchers going back out to the community. All of the equipment for lawn conversions for rain gardens, those were going to go back out into the community.
We had already staffed up. We were one of the first organizations nationwide to submit an application, back in February 2024. And so we came out as one of the first rounds of awardees nationwide, and as one of a handful in California that was awarded. And so since November or December, we had been staffing and planning and going through the onboarding process with folks. And so, we have what we call our rain garden team, that’s about seven folks. And then we also have our GoSGV team, which is another five to seven folks that were going to be working on this for the next three years.
And so it has a big impact on the organization. Nonprofits do our best to be able to project cash flow and operating dollars so that you can staff accordingly. Because you want to avoid burning people out, you want to make sure you have proper capacity, you want to make sure that you’re managing and strategizing and aligning all of your other programs so that you can operate efficiently. So it has a tremendous impact.
It was like losing $2.5 million overnight, basically, for the projected year.
Vanessa: It takes an incredible amount of work to even consider putting forward an application for public dollars – hundreds of hours, sometimes. Do you know, roughly, how much effort it was for you just to get it all put together?
David: I mean, the actual grant application itself, I wouldn’t say it was hundreds of hours for any one individual. Maybe hundreds of hours in the collective. But we really thought of it as a result of decades’ worth of work for each respective organization to position ourselves to even be eligible, to have the capacity and bandwidth and expertise and partnerships in the community to be able to receive such an award that we felt comfortable that we could deliver.
So really, I think the award itself and what we were able to put forth speaks to the decades’ worth of work that each organization was putting forward.
Vanessa: So what’s the status right now?
David: We were one of the first applications and we had signed a funding contract. Immediately after January 20th – I want to say that was a Monday or Tuesday – our account was already suspended or frozen, unable to access dollars. And then there were things that were temporarily available for a few weeks. And so we had four to six weeks where it was actually open. And now for the last three weeks, it’s been suspended, so we haven’t been able to draw down. And there’s no reason that’s been provided for why that is.
And so, we’ve just been trying to stay in compliance while trying to manage it day-to-day, in terms of what we can do for the work. We are connected to cohorts of folks – the Environmental Protection Network, EJ Ready, and others – getting constant advice and counsel around what to do. And one of the things that keeps coming up is to just do the work. The work will be a testament of why the funding is needed – so continue to do the work.
But unless you’re a large nonprofit or you have some major endowment somewhere that can just front all the cash that’s required while you wait for reimbursement, it’s very hard to do that. And we’ve been reaching out to foundations and other partners, and more or less the sentiment is like, “Do you really expect us to trust the federal government?”
Austin: They don’t want to front you the money because they don’t trust the government will reimburse it?
David: Not in those words exactly, but that’s pretty much it. Because we’re looking at exploring getting general operating dollars, or recoverable grant programs. But environmental justice is classified as “DEI work.”
Some of our program partners have literally paused all work related to any federal funding completely, because again, they don’t trust the federal government, right? So are you going to put your organization in fiscal danger while hoping that the federal government comes through with a contractual agreement? Are you willing to tolerate that risk?
Austin: How is this uncertainty impacting residents’ political consciousness? Do community members know what’s happening with funding?
David: Oh yeah, we’ve put out a bunch of communication pieces. But it’s like compounding crises, right? So there’s not enough time or bandwidth for people to focus on this one thing. The San Gabriel Valley is majority-minority, 50% foreign-born in some communities. We have kids that are scared to go to school, we have parents that are scared to go anywhere in their community because of ICE and the fear of deportation.
So in the grand scheme of things, talking to them about our Community Change Grant where you can potentially get public health or environmental justice action in your community…against deportation, that’s a hard contrast in terms of prioritizing what’s happening. We have a lot of people that are in crisis right now. People are facing environmental injustices now, there’s real threats and violence that people are experiencing every single day. It’s not about later, it’s about now. And so that’s what we were hoping to deliver is some climate action now at the local level, for folks to get just the tiniest of respite – but it seems more difficult now.
We have a lot of people that are in crisis right now. People are facing environmental injustices now, there’s real threats and violence that people are experiencing every single day. It’s not about later, it’s about now. And so that’s what we were hoping to deliver is some climate action now at the local level, for folks to get just the tiniest of respite – but it seems more difficult now.
Vanessa: Is there anything that you want people to know that we didn’t ask about?
David: Yes. If people have time and bandwidth and you care about these issues, write to your Congress Members. If you think environmental justice and public health is still a priority, continue to call your Congress Member letting them know that nonprofits in their region are being affected.
And if you’re in a position to contribute financially to any of the organizations we discussed today, please do. We count on general operating support dollars to help us do what we do. We’re not here to enrich ourselves or make profit for anybody else, but to do good and to do well on behalf of the community that we serve.