USDA cuts $1M grant for Nashville urban canopy program; Nonprofit says move will hurt tree farms
by Cassandra Stephenson, Tennessee Lookout
February 26, 2025
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s termination of federal funding for a program seeking to restore urban tree canopies in low-income areas will leave one Nashville-based nonprofit and the tree farmers that supply them high and dry, the nonprofit says.
The Cumberland River Compact was set to receive about $1 million from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to plant around 5,000 trees in the Nashville area. The organization engaged tree nurseries in McMinnville early so those farmers could start growing the trees that would be purchased with the infusion of federal funds.
Now, those funds aren’t coming.
“We would have used that to buy trees from McMinnville, to pay our staff, to maintain our vehicles at local garages. So it’s just a subtraction of (that) money from our local economy,” Cumberland River Compact Executive Director Mekayle Houghton said.
And it’s unclear whether the Cumberland River Compact or the farmers will be reimbursed for the work they did under previously valid grant contracts.
The USDA began a “comprehensive review of contracts, personnel, and employee trainings and (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs” following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to a department news release.
In the first two weeks under new U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, the USDA has been instructed to “rescind all Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) programs and celebrations,” a USDA news release states. The department also terminated 78 contracts totaling $132 million, and placed more than 1,000 contracts under review “to optimize the USDA workforce and stop wasteful spending” using findings from the newly-branded Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
We would have used that to buy trees from McMinnville, to pay our staff, to maintain our vehicles at local garages. So it’s just a subtraction of (that) money from our local economy.
– MeKayle Houghton, Cumberland River Compact
The department has yet to respond to a public records request for the details of all 78 terminated contracts, and has not provided further details of DOGE’s specific findings. The limits of the department’s authority and the Trump administration’s ability to claw back already-designated funds are being tested in court.
Cumberland River Compact Executive Director Mekayle Houghton said the organization received two termination letters for the urban canopy program last week from national funders that sub-grant federal dollars out to programs like theirs.
One letter instructed a cease in all project activities because “the USDA Forest Service has determined that our award no longer effectuates agency priorities regarding diversity, equity and inclusion programs and activities,” Houghton said.
The termination was effective immediately.
In the absence of any clarification from the USDA, the organization is left to believe the program was cut because planting trees in low-income communities is considered a DEI initiative.
The Cumberland River Compact’s urban canopy restoration program – called “Root Nashville” – receives the majority of its funding from local sources, and has planted more than 50,000 trees in the Davidson County area since 2018. Neighborhoods that were historically redlined or have higher poverty rates are “almost always going to have low tree canopy as well,” Houghton said.
These grants are processed as reimbursements, meaning nonprofits do the work and then submit reimbursement requests to funding organizations that distribute federal money. Now that the USDA has, in effect, turned off the spigot, organizations like the Cumberland River Compact are left wondering if they will ever be paid for work already completed under valid grant contracts before the Trump administration began suspending and terminating funds.
“Now we’ve been caught short because we received this (termination) notice on projects that we’ve been planning for a long time, and so we have to tell the nurseries in McMinnville, ‘All those trees that you were growing for us this year, we can’t buy them,’” she said.
Rollins released about $20 million in suspended Inflation Reduction Act funds for contracts “already made directly to farmers” on Feb. 20. This includes funds for the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, the Conservation Stewardship Program, and the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program.
The USDA did not answer specific questions about reimbursement plans, how termination decisions are made or why funding was cut for the urban canopy program.
“Per the President’s executive orders, USDA has been in the process of reviewing Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funds,” a USDA spokesperson stated in an email to Tennessee Lookout. “Now that Secretary Rollins is confirmed, she will have the opportunity to assess these reviews and to make determinations as soon as possible.”
Other programs suspended
The Cumberland River Compact also runs other programs that serve the entire Cumberland River basin, and funding for projects in that broader region has also been suspended pending USDA review.
One of the programs in limbo provides classes for farmers, helping them improve grazing practices to support healthier soil and put protections in place to prevent farm chemicals from running into freshwater streams.
Houghton said she’s worried that program’s suspension will also turn into a termination, specifically because they encourage “underserved” farmers to participate. The USDA’s definition for underserved farmers includes beginning farmers, veterans, Black farmers and women. More than 80 farmers from counties all over the state and from all different backgrounds attended the Compact’s last grazing school class, Cumberland River Compact Communications Director Meagan Hall said.
“The small streams that flow across their farms, (the farmers are) preventing chemicals from flowing into those small streams, and those small streams become the drinking water sources for everybody else,” Houghton said.
Northwest of Knoxville near the Tennessee and Kentucky border, a Mine Land Reforestation program is also suspended.
Mining companies often left the land without trees and covered in low, invasive scrub plants when they finished with it, Houghton said. Under this program, the organization restores the soil and plants 700 trees per acre to help restore habitat to southern Appalachian forest species and clean the water in the area.
The program is in its second year, having planted between 100 and 150 acres per year with federal funding and funding from other sources. Parts of the program fueled by federal money are now on indefinite pause.
“It’s Tennessee and Kentucky rural Appalachian counties that the (coal mining companies) left, and part of what we did was buy the trees from nurseries in that region, hire, and contract with companies from that region to do the restoration work,” Houghton said. “So that was a big focus of our grant, too: putting that money back into those rural counties that are on the governor’s list of distressed counties.”
Houghton said the real-world result of funding suspension and termination will be much broader than targeted savings.
“A lot of the progress that we were starting to make toward cleaner water, we’ll see backsliding on that, and we’ll see our waters are getting more polluted with more unknown chemicals … and we’ll see greater toxicity in our environment over the long term,” she said. “But I think over the short term, that money is being removed from our economy because nonprofits don’t hold onto money. Nonprofits spend money, and so all of that, it’s not just targeting the environmentalists who may believe in climate change. It’s targeting the business people who we buy from.”
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The move, part of a broader USDA review of contracts under Secretary Brooke Rollins, halts planned projects and puts local economies at risk. The nonprofit, which has planted over 50,000 trees since 2018, is uncertain about reimbursement for work already done, as well as the future of other environmental programs.
