A Milwaukee church had planned to plant 16 native trees to help cool down the Harambee neighborhood. But its plan is now on hold as the Trump administration reviews funds for climate projects.
Solomon Community Temple United Methodist Church, which is heavily invested in protecting the environment, received $28,000 to plant and care for the trees over several years.
Here’s what to know about the church’s efforts and why the funds are frozen.
Why did Solomon Community Temple want to plant trees?
Trees provide benefits to the environment and to health, like filtering out air pollution, storing carbon dioxide and taking water into their root systems to reduce flooding. Tree cover also provides shade, keeping things cool during the summer heat. That helps combat the urban heat island effect, where an abundance of manmade surfaces like parking lots, sidewalks and streets absorb and hold onto heat and produce temperatures several degrees hotter.
More urban green space has even been tied to improved mental health, more active lifestyles and reduced crime and violence.
But not all neighborhoods have the same amount of tree cover. A 2021 study from the Nature Conservancy found that lower-income blocks had less tree cover than higher-income blocks in 92% of the cities surveyed. And people of color are more likely to live in areas with more concrete and fewer trees because of discriminatory practices like redlining.
The Harambee neighborhood has far fewer trees than other Milwaukee neighborhoods, and lots of impervious surfaces, said Katharine Goray, the church’s chair of projects and outreach ministries.
“If every church or nonprofit or house of faith were even to plant a couple trees … it would make Harambee much more livable and healthy,” she said.
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Where did the grant money come from?
The money came from former President Joe Biden’s sweeping climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. Faith in Place, a Chicago nonprofit, received $1.9 million to distribute tree-planting grants to about 60 community groups across Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, including Solomon Community Temple.
The funds were part of a $1.5 billion investment in urban tree-planting that the Biden administration announced in 2023 through the U.S. Forest Service, a division of the Department of Agriculture. It was part of Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which mandated 40% of the benefits of certain environmental programs go to disadvantaged communities. President Donald Trump ended the Justice40 initiative in his purge of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts from the federal government.
Why was the money halted?
Trump froze Inflation Reduction Act funds upon taking office and ordered agencies to review whether they align with his administration’s priorities.
What’s happening next?
On March 13, Faith in Place joined onto a lawsuit against the Trump administration by Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law group, arguing that the administration is illegally withholding funds from the Inflation Reduction Act that have already been appropriated by Congress.
Kira Dault, communications director for Faith in Place, said April 18 that the organization asked for an advance payment from the Forest Service for 25% of the funds for grantees who wanted to proceed with their projects. A majority of the grantees, including Solomon Community Temple, wanted to do so, even though whether they’ll get any money at all is still uncertain.
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“The goal is to provide funding for them to at least get trees in the ground,” Dault said.
Goray said a few people have reached out after reading the Journal Sentinel story and offered to volunteer or donate money for the trees, which she called “very encouraging.”
Madeline Heim is a Report for America corps reporter who writes about environmental issues in the Mississippi River watershed and across Wisconsin. Contact her at 920-996-7266 or mheim@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee church’s tree-planting project halted by Trump: What to know