EPA Grants Were Set to Address Health Risks on the Hopi and Navajo Reservations, Until the Trump Administration Cut Them
Red Feather, which works to improve housing on the Navajo and Hopi reservations, is just one of hundreds of groups that have had grants meant to help disadvantaged communities terminated by the Trump administration.
TUBA CITY, Ariz.—When Carol Parrish built her first fire using her new wood-burning stove, tears streamed down her face.
“My prayers have been answered,” she remembers thinking. For years, Parrish’s home had been in a state of disrepair. Her previous stove, the only way she had to warm her home during the winter, was cracked in the back, allowing smoke to fill the home. Water leaked from the roof. Her windows were broken, covered with a wooden board. A member of the Navajo Nation, she tried for years to get help from the tribal government, but none ever came.
Parrish was just one of thousands of homeowners across the Hopi and Navajo nations in the Four Corners region living in unsafe housing conditions. For decades, families across the region have relied on older coal- or wood-burning stoves to heat their homes. But those stoves can emit high levels of particulate matter and smoke, a major cause of the two reservations’ high levels of respiratory illness, far exceeding the U.S. average.
In November, her stove, windows and roof were finally replaced and fixed, a beneficiary of surging federal funding from the Biden administration to Red Feather Development Group, a Flagstaff-based nonprofit. But now the funding to continue this work is in question as President Donald Trump and his administration slash funding across the government.
Red Feather is dedicated to improving housing conditions on the Hopi and Navajo nations in the Four Corners region. It has helped thousands of families with stove replacement, heat pump installation and weatherization assistance. The group has been doing this work for decades, but in recent years, it has seen a surge in work, in part due to increased funding from the federal government.
A big part of that funding, a $500,000 environmental justice grant Red Feather received from the Environmental Protection Agency, has now been terminated.
Red Feather is just one of hundreds of groups that have had grants meant to help disadvantaged communities canceled by the Trump administration. An Inside Climate News analysis, which relied on federal government spending data and federal court filings from the Trump administration, found the EPA’s grant terminations focused almost entirely on cutting spending on poor and minority communities, affecting 384 primary grants worth more than $2.4 billion.
“At the end of the day, we’re about solutions,” said Joe Seidenberg, Red Feather’s executive director. “And the solutions we’re advancing—clean heating, affordable energy, local workforce development—deliver real value, no matter who’s in office.”
The $500,000 EPA grant was an environmental justice collaborative problem-solving grant focused on promoting the safe use of firewood for house warming on the Hopi and Navajo reservations. That funding was to provide classes to community members on installing efficient and EPA-certified wood stoves and educate attendees on air quality issues. It was to give out $1,000 apiece to 70 households to help heat their homes and provide payroll to Red Feather to support the work.
The grant was one part of surging investment from the federal government. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Navajo Nation had one of the highest per-capita number of cases in the country. In large part, those infections and deaths stemmed from underlying chronic health issues and a historical lack of federal investment in the reservation.
Funding soon flowed into groups like Red Feather to address these health challenges, thanks to new laws such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Red Feather’s budget grew 300 percent, its staff increased from five full-time employees to 12, with roughly 75 percent of their budget coming from the federal government.
Red Feather received a first round of funding of $400,000 from the Department of Energy’s Building Upgrades Inspiring Local Transformation. That funding was unrestricted—meaning it could be used for anything, something nearly unheard of in the nonprofit world—and there were set to be three more rounds of that funding.
The EPA grant was the next major federal investment Red Feather was set to receive, and the nonprofit was optimistic it would continue to get other grants stemming from laws passed during the Biden administration.
No notice was ever given as to why exactly the EPA grant was terminated, Seidenberg said, but it appears since the grant was under an environmental justice initiative, the work was lumped in under diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that have been the subject of attack by the Trump administration.
“Diversity doesn’t need to be a politically loaded word, even though it’s become one,” he said. “We believe that building bridges is the only path forward, even when it feels like no bridges can be built in an increasingly divided world, we choose collaboration over conflict, healing over polarization. Our work is not about taking sides. It’s about standing with communities.”
Decades of federal underinvestment, rising energy costs and high unemployment rates combined with the remote geographies have left many Navajo and Hopi families unable to fix and upgrade their homes, Seidenberg said.
The two communities have high energy burdens, he explained at Red Feather’s Flagstaff office, referring to the amount of money a homeowner needs to pay to heat and cool a house.
For years, many Navajo and Hopi families relied on coal-burning stoves to generate heat in the winter; most homes had no cooling in the summer, when temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Families, however, were forced to shift from coal in 2019, when the Navajo Generating Station shut down. The plant gave out coal cards to families who would drive from across the region to get the coal needed for their stoves. But when coal became economically unviable, APS, the utility operating the power plant, closed it down in 2019.
“Environmental groups cheered. A lot of tribal members cheered,” Seidenberg said. “But not all.”
Hundreds of jobs were lost—as was a primary way families kept their homes warm in the winter. Many families have turned to burning wood in their stoves. But decades of burning coal in those wood stoves can be detrimental to the system. If rain got in and mixed with coal dust, it turned to sulfuric acid and corroded chimney pipes. The result was a worsening of an already hazardous situation, considering that a stove that hasn’t been certified as meeting EPA standards can emit as much pollution as seven diesel buses.
If families aren’t using stoves, they’re likely using propane or electric space heaters. Those heating methods—often the only available options for many families— can lead to air quality issues in households. Some families using propane don’t have outdoor ventilation for the heating, which can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. Electric space heaters are a leading cause of house fires.
EPA-certified wood stoves are cleaner and more energy efficient. They also provide jobs to supply wood, Seidenberg said. It’s helping to clear forests and reduce the threats of wildfires, he said, while also being American-made energy—a top priority of the Trump administration.
Federal Funding Major Aid to Community
Red Feather started in 1995, named after the first woman they helped: Katherine Red Feather. The organization started by building straw-bale houses for families in need. But for years, Red Feather was only able to build about two homes a year. The homes were highly subsidized, but still required a loan, a challenge for many families on the reservations.
Thousands of homes across the Hopi and Navajo nations were still in disrepair, leading the organization to shift focus to improving the status of existing homes. Many had leaking and damaged roofs, broken windows—both hurting a home’s energy efficiency, making it harder to cool or heat—and many homes had unhealthy heating methods and a complete lack of cooling for the summers.
The organization was able to scale up the number of families it could assist, while also creating classes to teach families do-it-yourself methods to fix issues at their homes.
Since 2021, when federal funding began to flow to Red Feather, the nonprofit has assisted more than 6,500 individuals across the Navajo and Hopi communities via various programs.
Over 300 stoves have been replaced with EPA-certified ones that burn cleaner and consume less fuel—a big benefit, given cords of wood can cost thousands of dollars over the course of a year. More than 1,000 individuals have had repairs made at their homes. And over 60 people have had heat pumps installed, a newer service Red Feather has begun to offer.
A Changing Community
Red Feather’s surging budget came at a time of change on the Navajo Nation.
In Tuba City, the Navajo Nation’s largest community and where Parrish lives, there is potential for development that didn’t exist before. This follows a decades-long period when there was almost no new building, a result of a federal policy called the Bennett Freeze. The freeze was put in place in 1966 over a land dispute between the Navajo and the Hopi and lasted until 2009.
But no money came with the end of the freeze, and tensions remained between the two tribal governments. To this day, only 24 percent of the houses in the Bennett freeze area are habitable, almost 60 percent do not have electricity and the majority do not have access to potable running water, according to the Navajo government.
Now, over a decade since the freeze ended, change is coming rapidly to this corner of the reservation, said Duane Tsinigine, a program coordinator with Red Feather living in Tuba City. New developments are coming into Tuba City and the surrounding areas, and houses are being updated, in large part due to Red Feather. He spends his days meeting with locals across the two reservations to evaluate their homes.
Locals like Carol Parrish typically hear about Red Feather through word of mouth. They submit applications to Red Feather, which are processed and evaluated to see who qualifies for help. From there, coordinators like Tsinigine visit their homes for an evaluation of the services needed.
“We were never taught what energy efficiency means,” said Tsinigine, referring to homeowners on the reservations. So he explains it the best he can: It means they’ll save money and their homes will be better off.
Parrish’s home now has windows that work, allowing sunlight to come in. She no longer has to put out a bucket to collect the rainwater that would leak from her roof. And, at 90 years old with asthma, she breathes easier thanks to her new stove.
Across the highway in Tuba City, on the Hopi side called Moenkopi, Susan Blackhair, a member of the Hopi Tribe, no longer has to rely on her old stove or propane heater to warm her home. Red Feather installed a heat pump, able to transfer hot air for cold air or vice versa. It’s much better, she says, and her home finally can get cool in the summer. At her home, Tsinigine told Blackfeather to get back in touch with Red Feather at the end of the year, where she could put in a new application to fix her windows.
The grant termination is disappointing, Seidenberg said, but it won’t stop Red Feather’s work. They have partnerships and funding from the two tribal governments, local counties and other philanthropic organizations, and their goal is to continue developing those relationships.
“Federal priorities shift as administrations change—that’s the nature of democracy,” Seidenberg said. “We’re not here to criticize those changes. Our focus is on finding the most constructive path forward, one that aligns with the goals of the moment and meets the real needs of tribal families.”
Cover photo: Red Feather staff (from left) Duane Tsinigine, Tavanne Sousa and Tyler Puente stand next to a heat pump installed with the nonprofit’s help at a home on the Hopi Reservation. Credit: Wyatt Myskow/Inside Climate News
