Hundreds of communities across the nation will percentage greater than $1 billion in federal cash to lend a hand them plant and care for timber below a federal program this is meant to reduce extreme heat, receive advantages well being and toughen get entry to to nature
BySCOTT MCFETRIDGE Associated Press
September 14, 2023, 5:00 AM
FILE – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaks all the way through a news convention, Thursday, June 29, 2023, in Des Moines, Iowa. Hundreds of communities across the nation will obtain greater than $1 billion in federal cash to lend a hand them plant and care for timber below a federal program this is meant to reduce extreme heat, receive advantages well being and toughen get entry to to nature. Vilsack will announce the $1.13 billion in investment for 385 initiatives at an match Thursday, Sept. 14, 2023, morning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
The Associated Press
DES MOINES, Iowa — Hundreds of communities across the nation will percentage greater than $1 billion in federal cash to lend a hand them plant and care for timber below a federal program this is meant to reduce extreme heat, receive advantages well being and toughen get entry to to nature.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will announce the $1.13 billion in investment for 385 initiatives at an match Thursday morning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The tree plantings efforts will likely be all in favour of marginalized spaces in all 50 states in addition to Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and a few tribal countries.
“We believe we can create more resilient communities in terms of the impacts of climate,” Vilsack instructed newshounds in previewing his announcement. “We think we can mitigate extreme heat incidents and events in many of the cities.”
In saying the grants in Cedar Rapids, Vilsack will highlight the japanese Iowa town of 135,000 those that misplaced hundreds of timber all the way through an extreme windstorm all the way through the summer season of 2020. Cedar Rapids has made the recovery of its tree cover a concern since that hurricane, known as a derecho, and can obtain $6 million in investment thru the brand new grants.
Other grant recipients come with one of the vital country’s greatest cities, similar to New York, Houston and Los Angeles, and far smaller communities, similar to Tarpon Springs, Florida, and Hutchinson, Kansas.
Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, deliberate to sign up for Vilsack on the Iowa match. She instructed newshounds previous that many communities have lacked get entry to to nature and that all of the tree grants would get advantages marginalized and underrepresented communities.
“Everyone should have access to nature,” Mallory mentioned. “Urban forests can really play a key role in ensuring both that access but also increasing the climate resilience of communities, helping reduce extreme heat and making communities more livable.”
The federal cash comes from the Inflation Reduction Act.
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