By Carlos Nogueras Ramos, Texas Tribune
ODESSA At age 13, Ramon Rodriguez stood on the Presidio City Council. He had a vision for his hometown, a hot, dry border community.
He called on the city council to create a department dedicated to environmental protection. The department plans to install composting bins around town and build greenhouses and nurseries to collect water. Parts of the town will become dedicated green spaces where building will be prohibited.
The City Council did not adopt his proposal due to budget constraints.
Rodriguez was undaunted by that decision in 2018, finding ways to implement his plan piecemeal. Then, late last year, Rodriguez learned the region had won a $13 million federal grant that she helped author.
“We need this, we should have this,” he said. “And now it’s becoming a reality. It’s a very beautiful moment.”
The grants are part of the Infrastructure Cuts Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. The legislation includes $2 billion for environmental and climate justice projects nationwide. Texas received about $53 million from the program, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Houston Health Department received $20 million as part of pollution reduction efforts. Air Alliance Houston, an environmental advocacy group, has been awarded $2.9 million to strengthen a program that tracks industrial permits filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Meanwhile, Waco and other nonprofits won $17.9 million to combat pollution and climate change, install electric vehicle charging stations and establish university programs.
The Big Bend Conservation Alliance, a regional organization overseeing the tri-county project, will manage the funds and use them to build infrastructure to combat heat waves and create green space.
They include dedicated green spaces along bike lanes and pedestrian paths, thousands of native trees for residents, community gardens, solar and battery power to enhance cooling in community centers, and power outages during power outages. We are planning to build an emergency cooling plan and a high school school atmosphere. A quality monitoring program and tool that warns drivers about local bridge traffic to ease congestion and avoid idling cars. The Conservation Alliance will also help the city build three detention ponds to alleviate flooding, a project the city has in its plans but doesn’t have the funds for.
Cristina Hernandez, co-director of the Conservation Alliance, said she worked with Rodriguez, a 19-year-old environmental activist, to select the programs she wanted to include in the proposal. In most cases, projects will support existing infrastructure.
Hernandez said the organization plans to begin construction by the end of January. The full-scale proposal is expected to be completed in about three years.
“We know that the city is already very elongated,” Hernandez said. “But this is really important work and it needs to be done.”
Presidio, a town of about 3,000 people, is a border community just steps from Ojinaga, Mexico. It is also located northwest of Big Bend National Park. According to the Texas Historical Society, people have lived there for hundreds of years. Some records date its origins back to the 15th century. It officially became a city in the 1980s.
The Presidio generates about $4 million in revenue from property taxes and from landfills it grants to other cities. Presidio Mayor John Ferguson said the city is expanding its budget to fund emergency services and the police department.
Many of the trails that become roads will need to be paved. Some parts of the city do not have sewage systems. Ferguson said the city functions like a colony, much like impoverished border communities with little or no urban infrastructure that are dominated by Hispanic residents.
“We’re doing the best we can, and it’s frustrating that we can’t do more,” Ferguson said, adding that the city would be reaching out to the Conservation Alliance.
Joni Carswell, president and CEO of Texan by Nature, a conservation nonprofit that supports projects like this across the state, said cities are strengthening their infrastructure to withstand high temperatures and protect water sources. said it is necessary to do so.
Conservation projects across the state have restored ecosystems such as longleaf pines and coastal redfish farms in East Texas and the Baffin Bay watershed 80 miles south of Corpus Christi.
In a report released last year, the organization found that nearly 200 Texas nonprofits spend $639 million on programs related to restoration, education, policy and conservation.
“The Presidio has an opportunity to demonstrate how a federal grant of this size can be beneficial, because there are small, rural communities across the state that need this type of funding,” Caldwell said. spoke.
Rodriguez first became passionate about the environment in elementary school when she learned about the town’s first recycling center. He created Project Homeleaf in the school cafeteria. The name came from the place he wanted to improve and the kind of change he wanted to see. The group, made up primarily of teenage volunteers, found areas with the least amount of shade and helped residents plant trees. They raised money by selling baked goods.
They were looking for people to volunteer at the town’s recycling center. This, along with a student group called the ‘Climate Crew’, taught elementary school students about environmental conservation.
Rodriguez began working for the Big Bend Conservation Alliance while in high school. One of the first projects he worked on with the group was to plant more trees. The group has also worked to eliminate light pollution, expand community gardens, and protect tribal lands. As of December, he is a program manager at the Conservation Alliance, overseeing many of the projects funded by the grant. This position is funded by funds obtained by the Conservation Alliance.
Rodriguez said she wants her hometown to have green roads, which will bring neighbors together.
“The Presidio won’t be the same in three years,” he says. “And in a very good way.”
Disclosure: Air Alliance Houston and the Texas Historical Society financially support the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by contributions from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. I’ve been doing it. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. See the complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in the Texas Tribune (https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/08/presidio-texas-13-million-federal-grant-envrionment/).
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