Air Date: Week of May 23, 2025

Landforce crews pulled weeds and dug holes for new trees in April 2025 in front of the Braddock Civic Center near Pittsburgh. (Photo: Julie Grant, The Allegheny Front)

Last year, a nonprofit group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was awarded a large federal grant as part of a $2 billion climate justice program through the Inflation Reduction Act. But now that climate and environmental justice work are non grata at the federal government, their grant has evaporated. The Allegheny Front’s Julie Grant reports.

Transcript

O’NEILL: Last year, a nonprofit group in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was awarded a large federal grant as part of a $2 billion climate justice program through the Inflation Reduction Act. But now that climate and environmental justice work are non grata at the federal government, their grant has evaporated. The Allegheny Front’s Julie Grant reports.

GRANT: A crew of about fifteen workers has been digging holes on a warm spring day, to plant trees on the hillside in front of the Braddock Civic Center near Pittsburgh. They’re actually re-digging the holes - the last two times trees were planted here, they died.

MARKEE: So we've come here to kind of apply our professionalism and our expertise, get these ready…

GRANT: Rick Markee is a site supervisor for Landforce, a non-profit that trains people to do landscaping, tree pruning, trail construction, and other skilled outdoor jobs. Senior site supervisor Shawn Taylor sees many benefits from this work.

TAYLOR: It’s helping to keep the folks keep folks employed as well as giving a hand to communities, helping communities improve, whether it's air quality, shade, park areas.

GRANT: Landforce recruits from the Allegheny County jail, probation offices, community centers, and bus stops -- anywhere they can put a flyer. Teya Johnson is 23 years old, and is new to the Landforce crew. She was unemployed when she first saw the group’s flyer.

JOHNSON: It caught my eye, it was actually different. I never actually heard anything about Landforce ever in my life until I seen that. So it was actually pretty impressive for me.

GRANT: Even before land stewardship and landscaping skills, Johnson and her cohort spent their first month at Landforce learning everything from how to open a bank account to the habits they need to hold a job.

JOHNSON: The skills is not just for work. You know, you come outside every day, wake up, not just focusing on work. You have to focus on your mind too as well and inside your emotions to actually be great and have your A-game.

GRANT: Landforce hires a cohort of about 15 people a year in the Pittsburgh area, who’ve ranged in age from 18 to 63.

MANSPEIZER: So, Landforce combines workforce readiness and environmental stewardship.

GRANT: Landforce CEO Ilyssa Manspeizer says over nearly ten years, they’ve trained more than 200 people.

MANSPEIZER: We hire, train and hire people who are typically excluded from family sustaining jobs. We provide intensive training, we provide transitional employment and we provide support to future jobs for them.

GRANT: And Landforce had been slowly planning for its own growth. Last year, that effort got a kickstart: it was the lead organization awarded a $15 million community change grant through the Environmental Protection Agency. The grant was shared with a similar group called Power Corps in Philadelphia, along with several subawardees – those are other organizations that will help with their efforts.

MANSPEIZER: When I found out that we got the grant, I actually cried. Because I knew it would enable us to do such good work and to make the difference in so many people's lives.

GRANT: Landforce added staff members, and planned to increase the size of its yearly cohort. And with the help of that grant money, it started creating a whole new business for them to learn, one focused on reusing the wood its crews find around Allegheny County.

To do that, Landforce leased a warehouse on the east end of Pittsburgh in February for what they call The Mill. Ed Johnson is the director of wood re-use there.

JOHNSON: All of our material we recover out of the waste stream here within a 10 or 15-mile radius of the east end.

GRANT: Johnson says the high-quality lumber they collect and process can be used by furniture and cabinet makers, and the other wood will go toward palettes and other lower-grade products. But it’s the waste from that wood processing that’s the real star at The Mill: They’re making something called Biochar, it’s a carbon product made from wood chips that, when mixed into the soil, reduces lead and heavy metals.

COPELAND: ... which is very important because we have a lot of legacy heavy metals in our soil.

GRANT: Erin Copeland is the program team manager at the Allegheny County Conservation District, which is a sub-awardee on the EPA grant. They plan to help to get Landforce’s biochar to vacant lots and local farms.

COPELAND: And so the biochar once it's incorporated into the soil it doesn't allow for plant uptake of that lead anymore and so it really helps urban farmers who want to be growing food in the city.

GRANT: Early this year, using money from the grant, Landforce spent over a million dollars to buy equipment for the sawmill equipment (required to be made in the US), including a log splitter, various trucks, and the biochar kiln - But like many other federal grants, Manspeizer says there’s been chaos around their grant in recent months.

MANSPEIZER: That funding has been frozen, unfrozen, frozen, and remains frozen now.

GRANT: And then in late April, the grant money was unfrozen again. Within days, her group sent in a progress report that was due, showing that despite the on-again, off-again funding, they have been able to meet all of the grant metrics.

MANSPEIZER: Unfortunately, the very next day we got a termination notice from the federal government, from the EPA, that they were planning on terminating our grant.

GRANT: EPA confirmed this in an email, saying that the Landforce application no longer supports the administration priorities and the award has been cancelled. Manspeizer says this loss of funding is painful, but Landforce will survive.

MANSPEIZER: We may not be able to achieve everything that we wanted to achieve. That we had expected to in this great year that we have planned ahead, but we will make it to 2026.

GRANT: But they won’t be able to train as many people as they’d planned,- people like Teya Johnson…

JOHNSON: You know, you don't get that much of an opportunity to do better and achieve better things in your life.

O’NEILL: That’s Julie Grant reporting for the Allegheny Front. Landforce is currently working on an appeal of the EPA’s grant termination decision.

 

Links

The Allegheny Front | “EPA Terminates $15M Climate Justice Grant to Pittsburgh and Philly Non-Profits”

Learn more about Julie Grant