The city of Benton Harbor has been awarded a $20 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Inflation Reduction Act Community Change Grants Program.
Benton Harbor Mayor Marcus Muhammad tells us the grant is intended to encourage community resiliency through the use of clean energy, provide residents with aid following disasters, and create community resilience hubs. One of them will be the Bobo Brazil Community Center.
“It’ll give us an opportunity to upgrade the Bobo Brazil Community Center with energy efficiency improvements, storage, backup power, and two bi-directional EV chargers, the centerpiece of a pilot microgrid to increase community energy resilience,” Muhammad said.
The city has previously received a $1 million HUD grant to fix up the currently-closed Bobo Brazil Center. Muhammad says this additional funding is like getting the facility a new heart.
The EPA says Benton Harbor and partners will also use the grant to transform a large house into a hub that serves as an accelerator for community electrification efforts. Muhammad says those partners include the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission, which helped the city get the grant.
“So they apply for it with the authorization of the city because it’s the kind of grant where the city can go after it, or a non-profit group, or they can work together on it. That’s essentially what we did.”
Finally, the grant will offer energy efficiency and electrification upgrades for low-income households, churches, and other public buildings while establishing an apprenticeship program in the field of weatherization and green energy.
Muhammad says the federal award is huge for the community. He was in Washington, D.C. Monday to represent the city of Benton Harbor at an EPA celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act. It was signed by President Gerald Ford on December 16, 1974.
