An abandoned oil well pipe stands in the Allegheny National Forest near Marienville, Pennsylvania (Chris Goodney/Bloomberg via Getty Images).
Unionville-Chadds Ford School District in southeastern Pennsylvania was looking forward to new electric school buses, thanks to a combination of federal and state funding.
The district, which is located in both Chester and Delaware counties, received a $1 million federal rebate grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and another $300,000 grant from the state. So last November, they placed an order for five EVs to replace their diesel ones. The new vehicles would not only be cheaper upfront with the help of the grant funding, but maintenance costs in the long run were expected to be less.
But when federal funds were frozen last month, the school board was unsure what to do. They had already placed a purchase order and the buses were being made. That meant, even if the funds didn’t come through, the district may still have to fork over at least part of the payment. The board also had to put conversations about a $200,000 project to build out charging stations on the backburner, because it may not be able to afford electric buses at all.
That’s according to the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District Director of Facilities James Whitesel, who said everything remains on hold.
Decisions need to be made so that the buses can be ready for the next school year, and a delayed vote on whether to fund the electric chargers is now scheduled for March.
“While we remain hopeful the situation will resolve itself favorably, we are facing a time constraint,” Whitesel said at a press conference hosted by the Ohio River Valley Institute on Wednesday. “Due to the necessity of replacing buses and the time required for electrical infrastructure installation, we must make a decision soon.”
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Funding to purchase electric school buses is just one example of a program in Pennsylvania that was placed in jeopardy when President Donald Trump ordered a sweeping freeze in federal spending. Many of the programs that lost access to those dollars were performing environmental and energy-based projects.
Though Gov. Josh Shapiro said this week that he reached an agreement with the Trump administration to unfreeze more than $2 billion of funding that was intended for Pennsylvania, uncertainty remains.
“While many state-administered programs have been restored, some local governments and organizations are still waiting for their promised federal support,” said Joanne Kilgour, executive director of the Ohio River Valley Institute. “This continued uncertainty is unacceptable”
Kilgour said numerous programs had to be placed on hold, including environmental cleanup efforts, solar projects, and programs to help homeowners retrofit to reduce electric bills.
“This funding freeze impacted crucial programs,” Kilgour said. “These are not just line items in a budget.”
Ted Boettner, a senior researcher with the group, said the brief freeze could imperil ongoing efforts to plug abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania. At least 27,000 documented abandoned wells exist in the state, along with an estimated 340,000 undocumented ones. They can cause damage and pollution to nearby farmlands and water sources, and lower nearby property values if left unplugged.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, passed by Congress in 2021, provided hundreds of millions of dollars for Pennsylvania alone to plug such wells. But, the funding was paused following Trump’s executive order.
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The state had already spent tens of millions of dollars plugging wells. The work is done in partnership with for-profit contractors, often hiring locals in areas hit hard by the decline of oil and gas production.
“These are jobs our communities and workers desperately need, and this is an industry that has a very bright future in the state that needs to be supported,” Boettner said. “So pulling the rug out from people working in this industry, and creating this uncertainty, has given pause to whether this funding will continue in the future.”
Boettner said the brief freeze in funding, along with uncertainty over whether funds could be cut off again in the future, has upended a sense of stability that many private contractors look for when taking government-funded contracts. The huge influx of federal funds for plugging wells meant many smaller outfits could feel safe investing in gear and personnel. But if that funding may be cut off in the future, it changes the calculus.
“We have made tremendous progress over the last couple years and we have so much more to do,” Boettner said. “We just can’t freeze out our local businesses and workers or stop making our state healthier.”
Bobby Hughes, executive director at the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Research, said the funding impacted mine reclamation work as well.
He said efforts to clean up abandoned mines, as well as nearby streams and water sources, is funded by the state and federal government. When the freeze hit, projects in Schuylkill and Luzerne counties were put in jeopardy.
In Luzerne County, he was involved in an initiative to develop a commercial warehouse distribution center on reclaimed land. And in Schuylkill County, he was doing research on converting a minepool into a geothermal site and moving mine discharge from a watershed elsewhere.
“We don’t want to fall behind and we’re not in a position to get involved in any kind of litigation,” Hughes said. “We don’t have the funds to be able to do that.”
In addition, most federal money received by Hughes is as a reimbursement for work already done. So if those dollars are cut off, it can spell trouble for ongoing and future projects.
“The pollution is readily seen, and the scars on the land are there,” Hughes said. “And those are the things that we’re trying to clean up to benefit quality of life for the folks that we’re working with in our region.”
Other programs hit by the funding freeze include home-energy efficiency programs for low-income households. The Solar for All program, for example, is funded entirely by the federal government through the Inflation Reduction Act, and estimated to provide solar power and decreased electric costs for 14,000 households over five years.