(The Center Square) – Washington Policy Center published a report on this Earth Day showing that the vast majority of projects funded with Washington’s Climate Commitment Act money in 2025, did nothing to reduce pollution.
A portion of funding from Washington’s Climate Commitment Act (CCA) is used for grants awarded to advocates and communities for projects to improve health outcomes related to pollution reduction.
“I thought I would look at what those projects actually funded and did they improve air quality? And so last year, about $8.5 million dollars was granted to a variety of programs that were all under the heading of improving air quality in disadvantaged and overburdened communities,” Vice President for Research Todd Myers told The Center Square. “And what I found was that all but one of them-there were 21 projects-and all but one of them either did nothing to reduce air pollution in those communities or did something that is sort of nebulous and very small impact.”
Myers said two of the grant recipients only conducted community outreach, with no actual project reducing pollutants.
“The Urban League of Seattle got $411,000, only for community outreach. And in their own budget that they sent, 80% of the money went to their staff and 20% of the money went to overhead,” Myers said. “Another one that was just community outreach was from the Somali Independent Business Alliance. They got $170,000 again, just to do community outreach. Neither of those programs actually improved air quality in their communities for the people that they say are suffering with asthma and other problems. It was just all public meetings. And you see that again and again in these programs, which is that special interest groups are paid to do, quote, outreach and no improvement in the air quality actually occurs.”
The Center Square reached out to the Seattle Urban League and the Somali Business Alliance for comment. The Somali Business Alliance did not respond, but Michelle Merriweather, President & CEO of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, defended the program.
“The Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle received the Air Quality in Overburdened Communities Grant in 2023 because of our long-standing, trusted relationships with communities that have historically borne a disproportionate burden of environmental harm,” Merriweather wrote in an email statement. “Understanding that air pollution reduction is a long-term effort, we dedicated grant dollars to hire a Community Engagement Organizer of Environmental Justice to implement outreach and reduction strategies through June 2025. Because we effectively used the grant funding, the State of Washington Department of Ecology extended the grant for an additional year through June 2026. We remain committed to our mission and look forward to continuing to serve the Metro Seattle community with fidelity as we have for the past 95 years. We remain committed to our mission, accountable to our community, and focused on the work ahead.”
Supporters of the CCA, also known as the CO2 emissions tax, claim that revenue would help reduce air pollution.
Proponents of the CCA promised that the state “would spend $20 million per biennium to reduce health disparities in overburdened communities by improving health outcomes through the reduction or elimination of environmental harms and the promotion of environmental benefits.”
Myers said he found that wasn’t the case. A project in Moxee, southeast of Yakima that received CCA funding, just talked about climate issues.
“They reached out to Latin X groups and had public meetings to talk about the air quality problems,” he said. “And they created a community council for air quality and paid the members of the community council $2,000 each simply to sit on that community council, and talk about air quality problems. They never actually did anything to improve air quality. They simply paid people to participate.”
The Washington Department of Ecology responded to WPC’s report, initially critical of the numbers being reported, but then conceding the grant awards listed on its own website were not updated to reflect some recipients being discontinued, or receiving different award amounts.
Taylor Van Cise, air quality program communications manager at Ecology, said an award for Vancouver’s New World International is being removed from the list and some newer awards to Tribes have not been added to the award recipient list.
“This analysis includes inaccurate information from top to bottom,” he wrote in an email statement. The total grant distribution, the eligible activities, the analysis of pollution reduction, the assumption that pollution reduction estimates were ignored, the status of funded projects, even the total number of projects. The list of falsehoods is longer than the actual analysis. The Washington Policy Center is quoting draft applications instead of finalized contract agreements. We know this because that’s all they requested in their records request.”
Myers with WPC stands by the numbers that come right off Ecology’s own website.
“On average, 58 percent of funding for each project was spent on staffing, with several projects spending between 80 and 100 percent of the funding on staff,” he said. “Another 10% percent was spent on un-itemized ‘overhead.’ Additionally, none of the projects indicated they would collect environmental monitoring data that would be useful in assessing the impact of the project. Few of the projects are even projected to produce measurable results, meaning there is little to monitor.”
Van Cise told The Center Square they were working to update their website to reflect current data.
