The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality will receive $500,000 from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conduct air quality monitoring in the Cherokee community.
The project is among 132 air monitoring projects in 37 states receiving $53.4 million from the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan, a Nov. 3 EPA news release said.
“These grants will give communities in the southeast the tools they need to better understand air quality challenges in their neighborhoods,” EPA Region 4 Administrator Daniel Blackman said in the release. “EPA’s investment in ARP funding will not only advance the agency’s mobile air monitoring labs and air sensor loan programs but improve the agency’s ability to support communities in need of short-term monitoring and air quality information.”
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said he supports what the EPA is doing for Mississippi’s second district, according to the release.
“The $500,000 awarded to the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality will determine whether air quality problems exist, the associated level of risk to the community and opportunities to mitigate such risk, including the identification of possible sources of elevated concentrations,” Thompson said in the release. “The work that EPA is completing is remarkable and phenomenal. This investment will give the business the growth that is needed.”
