President Biden may have had Jonestown, Md., in mind when he created his landmark Justice40 initiative. Launched in 2021, Justice40 aims to deliver 40% of federal climate and clean energy investments to “disadvantaged” communities.

You could say that Jonestown fits the bill. Founded by free African Americans in the mid-19th century, this unincorporated village on Maryland’s rural eastern shore has long been overlooked for investment. “When federal funding comes down, it goes to the counties, and then it goes to the towns,” says Shirley Lake, a Jonestown resident. “The places that are labeled villages are left behind.”

But Jonestown is not wholly disadvantaged; it is home to many engaged residents, including Lake, who serve as “community ambassadors.” Working with a regional coalition called Envision the Choptank, the ambassadors recently helped leverage $390,000 to address long-standing flooding issues in the community. The story of their accomplishment shows how other communities—and governments—can make good on the still-elusive promise of Justice40.

Crossing boundaries, making connections

Jonestown is one of many small towns along the Choptank River, which traverses three counties and nearly a dozen jurisdictions on its way to the Chesapeake Bay. Crossing multiple jurisdictions complicates efforts to address issues like flooding and water quality in this boundary-spanning watershed. Few of the smaller towns and villages along the Choptank have paid staff, and even many of the larger ones lack in-house expertise on water-related issues.

Envision the Choptank was founded in 2015 to help solve that problem. The organization is a coalition of nonprofits, government agencies, scientists and community groups that work across boundaries to protect and restore the Choptank’s health. For residents of Jonestown and similar towns, Envision offers a kind of “one-stop shopping” experience—a single entity through which they can access many different agencies and funding streams.

Envision works to improve water quality and habitat, says partnership coordinator Joanna Ogburn, “and to do both of those things in a way that really meets the needs of surrounding communities.” That last part is important, Ogburn says, because “traditionally, the environmental movement hasn’t done a great job of making sure that the resources and power we have access to gets to disenfranchised communities.”

Paulette Greene would agree. Greene, who runs an organic farm near Jonestown on land that was once a station on the Underground Railroad, serves on Envision’s steering committee and on the board of the Jonestown Community Development Corporation (CDC).

In those roles, Greene connected Envision to Jonestown. She brought Envision staff to a community meeting held in a local park where they listened to residents’ concerns. “We learned that water quality is not top-of-mind for a lot of folks,” says Ogburn, “because they’re dealing with a lot of other challenges.” Accordingly, Envision helped the community tackle those other challenges—participating in “cleanup days” and other events—before turning to water-related issues. That was essential to building trust in a community that is wary of outside organizations due to decades of neglect and underinvestment.

Envision also cultivated trust by partnering with community ambassadors. These included Lake, Greene and Vernon Murray, who heads the Jonestown CDC—who all share a passion for helping their community. In their newly formalized role, the ambassadors gathered information about local issues and concerns. For example, stormwater had been a problem in Jonestown for decades. “After heavy rains, water collected under people’s homes,” says Lake, and “significant areas of their properties and the community park were unusable at those times.” So, Lake showed community members how to use the MyCoast app to document flooding in real time, helping neixghbors take photos of the problem and uploading them into the app.

Armed with proof of the problem, the ambassadors worked with Envision to apply for, and win, federal Clean Water Act funds (under Section 319) administered by the state of Maryland. The application netted a $390,000 grant to Caroline County, earmarked for flood prevention in Jonestown. The grant will support rain gardens, native plantings, and other stormwater management strategies on private properties and in the community park. By retaining stormwater runoff and planting vegetation to uptake nutrients, these improvements will also reduce pollution in the Choptank River and the Chesapeake Bay.

Opening the can

Jonestown shows how the Biden administration’s Justice40 initiative can succeed, but the town’s experience has not been universal. Last fall, the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), Climate Xchange and Beech Hill Research published a report entitled Delivering on Justice40, which offers perspectives on the initiative’s rollout from state agency staff. Many of those interviewed (anonymously) for the report said that too many communities lack the capacity—staff, time, and resources—to take advantage of Justice40 funding. As one staffer observed, “We’re taking all of the funding and resources that those above us want us to give these communities, and we’re sealing it in a can, we’re handing them the can, but we’re not giving them a can opener.”

For Envision, you could say the “can opener” is Amanda Pollack of the nonprofit Center for Watershed Protection (CWP), who serves as a “technical assistance circuit rider.” In that role, Pollack and CWP work to identify communities’ needs and match them with available funding opportunities. Originally funded with philanthropic support, the circuit rider position has received five years of U.S. EPA Section 319 funding to build the capacity of local jurisdictions, such as Caroline County, at no cost to their residents.

It helps that Pollack is no stranger to the Choptank watershed. She previously served as the city engineer for Salisbury, Md., where she became well-versed in the Eastern Shore’s ecology, infrastructure, and culture. That knowledge enables Pollack to wear many hats: she assesses projects; helps write grant proposals and manages grants; prepares requests for proposals (RFPs) and oversees bid processes. And she knows how to navigate bureaucracies: when flooding washed out a road in a nearby area, Pollack was able to assist with an emergency declaration, bypassing the months-long procurement process.

Another key to success is the relatively long-term funding Envision secured for the circuit rider position. That’s important, says Pollack, because “jurisdictions need to know that technical assistance and capacity is available for the duration of the project.” Also, longer-term funding helps build the infrastructure of relationships and trust. “It’s not just, ‘we’re here for one project and we’re out,’” Pollack says.

Envision’s circuit rider also helps make the grantmaking process more equitable. Often, when states are charged with disbursing federal funds, jurisdictions with more staff and capacity are first in line, and communities like Jonestown are left behind. In part, that’s because state agencies have capacity constraints, says Kristen Soares, state climate policy network manager at Climate XChange: “A lot of state offices are finding it hard to get the funding out the door, let alone make sure it’s an equitable process.” But the circuit rider works to empower communities that have engaged citizens and great ideas but little technical capacity.

For Jonestown’s community ambassadors, working with Pollack on the grant application helped cultivate new capacities and connections. “I had no experience in grant writing,” says Lake. “But we were at the table, and we provided feedback on the grant proposal. And out of that process, we learned about grant writing and everything that goes into it.”

For Greene, representation is key: “We’re not generally at the table when these allocations come down, and we cannot speak first handedly about what is needed in our community. The purpose of the community ambassadors is to make sure we’re at the table, that nobody else is speaking for us.”

Justice40 is an ambitious effort to deliver federal funding to the communities that need it most. Its first years have shown the promise and the pitfalls of that important effort. Federal agencies’ Environmental Justice scorecards show a range of actions they’ve taken toward equitable funding.

But there is still a long way to go. “Staying true to the mission of Justice40 means empowering local actors to really be involved in the creation of their own future,” says Soares. “That’s very different from what a lot of community engagement has looked like in the past.”

For Greene, real success would mean retiring the labels that are often applied to her community: “disadvantaged,” “under-invested,” “underrepresented.” She says, “My hope—and my work—goes into getting rid of these terms, getting us on a footing where we are not lesser-than, where we are simply engaging as citizens.”

Lessons learned

Support local partnerships. Federal and state agencies can build local capacity by investing in partnerships, like Envision the Choptank, that link disinvested communities to resources and technical assistance. It’s important to build on preexisting networks and trusted relationships; that’s doubly true in communities with good reasons to be leery of existing power structures. A trusted, local circuit rider is a great way to boost capacity and foster collaboration among communities.

Share information—and funding—across boundaries. Addressing a boundary-spanning problem like water quality requires coordinated action at multiple scales. That may include regional projects that span multiple jurisdictions and offer opportunities for communities to learn from each other. Overburdened state agency staff can also benefit from information-sharing opportunities; staffers appreciate forums that facilitate state-to-state connections and sharing of best practices and experiences.

Make it easier for communities to engage. Community engagement is key to the success of Justice40; it ensures that projects reflect the priorities and needs of residents. But engagement is time-consuming work, which should be recognized—and compensated—as such. It’s important to provide stipends for community ambassadors charged with gathering information about local priorities. Moreover, prevent “engagement fatigue” by holding meetings where community members are already gathering, and providing amenities like food, child care and transportation that ease the burden of attendance.

Provide flexible and timely funding. Federal funding must adapt to the realities of engaging with under-resourced communities. That means allowing grant funds to be used for stipends, food, child care and other efforts to boost community participation. And because federal grants can be challenging for small jurisdictions to manage, it’s helpful to allow other entities—including nonprofit coalitions—to receive those grants. The federal government must also work to reduce funding delays that force grantees to spend down their money while waiting for reimbursement. Finally, today, numerous federal programs (e.g., at Grants.gov) include criteria to identify or prioritize projects located in, or benefiting, disadvantaged communities—and states can also use this criteria to award federal formula grants.

Stay in it for the long haul. Building trust requires a consistent presence in the community. That means investing in local and regional organizations that provide an enduring infrastructure of relationships and support. It also requires funding on the front- and back-end of a given project: the former allows time for meaningful community engagement; the latter provides for monitoring and maintenance of the completed project.

Laurie Mazur is the editor of Island Press, which is supported by The Kresge Foundation and The JPB Foundation. This article was first published by American City & County.