EPA awards MSU grant for pollution prevention

On Monday, Sept. 26, Jennie Romer, the deputy assistant administrator of the EPA, presented MSU with a nearly $350,000 grant for pollution prevention. This grant stacks on top of a previous, large EPA Pollution Prevention grant awarded to MSU in 2020 — together totaling around $852,000 in the last two years.

Together, MSU will use these grants to pay for pollution prevention programming focused on tribal communities that will incorporate the traditional natural knowledge of Indigenous peoples into pollution prevention.

According to Montana Pollution Prevention Program Director Jenny Grossenbacher, this EPA grant came as part of a more significant pollution prevention grant from 2020. “We were also awarded the EPA’s Pollution Prevention grant… an even larger ($502k) two-year grant. This additional grant will fund a Student Internship program and a Sustainable Brewery Certification program.”

This grant created another opportunity for connecting with Montana’s tribes as well as an opportunity to showcase programs focused on sustainability at MSU, Romer said.

“The grant will pay for pollution prevention programming, focused on tribal communities that will better incorporate traditional ecological knowledge of Indigenous peoples into policy and decision making,” Grossenbacher said.

“The $350,000 grant will also fund two new components of the Montana Pollution Prevention Program’s EcoStar award program, which will honor small businesses across Montana for their pollution prevention efforts in reducing water and energy consumption, hazardous waste and CO2 emissions,” Grossenbacher said.

The EcoStar Program rewards Montana small businesses and organizations that have taken the initiative to reduce solid and hazardous waste, conserve energy and water, and improve air quality.

According to Grossenbacher, the grant came as part of the Pollution Prevention Grant cycle, a “two-year grant cycle with the expectation that a new competitive grant RFA (request for application) will be issued to continue grant programs funded under this current grant.”

Lisa Lone Fight, a Ph.D. student at MSU, will lead the Tribal Traditional Ecological Knowledge portion of the grant. One of Lone Fights’ first tasks will be to create a statewide Intertribal Advisory Council to help her with her process of creating a holistic, place-based pollution prevention framework for use on tribal lands.

The Intertribal Advisory Council would be an advisory board, consisting of multiple tribal representatives, tasked with helping Lone Fight work with those tribes to combat pollution while incorporating traditional ecological knowledge.

MSU and its Montana Pollution Prevention Program will reapply for both grants in two years.