The Trump administration canceled a $20 million Environmental Protection Agency grant for a wind energy project in Kotzebue, Alaska, in May 2025. More than a year later, the project remains paused, according to Grist’s reporting.
Kotzebue is a small city on a gravel spit north of the Arctic Circle, reachable only by air and sea. Ice keeps freight barges away for most of the year, so the city receives a year’s worth of diesel in a three-month window. Diesel supplies 75 percent of the community’s power, and residents put about 20 percent of their income toward it. That is more than three times the average energy burden for low-income households nationwide.
Chad Nordlum, energy project manager for the Native Village of Kotzebue, told Grist that the community is “pretty much at the mercy of world markets.” He pointed to the Iran war, saying “the diesel prices are very high and we’re locked in to much higher prices than we’ve had in the past.” His answer was local generation. “What we can do is produce our own energy,” he said.
The grant that was supposed to change that
Nordlum was excited about the EPA grant for good reason. It was announced in 2024 as part of a $150 million allocation for tribal infrastructure in Alaska. By his estimate, the wind project would have cut the community’s reliance on diesel to about 40 to 50 percent. It would also have given the tribe more control over energy and economic decisions.
That did not happen. The administration canceled the grant, and the project has been on hold since.
Hundreds of millions, pulled from Indian Country
Kotzebue’s grant was one of hundreds of millions of dollars that the Department of Government Efficiency pulled from Indian Country. Grist summarizes two new reports from the Brookings Institution. One finds that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act killed many of the funding streams created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The other finds that DOGE eliminated another $468 million. About half of that was earmarked for environmental and natural resources, and 11 percent targeted agriculture.
Those projects included climate resiliency plans, renewable energy projects, and jobs programs. The agriculture share matters to farm readers because it shows the cuts reached beyond energy and into the programs that help rural producers plan for shocks.
Rob Maxim, a Mashpee Wampanoag fellow at Brookings Metro, told Grist that the cuts are part of an older pattern. “The actions that the Trump administration is taking are particularly significant, but it’s not totally out of trend with previous administrations,” he said. He added that “what we wanted to show was that actually this underinvestment is kind of the default for the U.S. rather than a blip.”
Grist also notes that the real outlier was the funding surge after the pandemic. Under the Biden administration, that money included over $700 million in climate, energy, and infrastructure funding for tribes. The Brookings authors are calling for policy changes that would ensure tribes receive funding regardless of political winds.
Why rural readers should care
Kotzebue is not a farm town, but its problem is one farmers recognize. A fuel bill can take a large share of household income, and when federal money for local energy and resilience disappears, communities are left buying fuel at whatever the world market charges.
The bigger question is which federal programs are still there when the next shock arrives, and which ones were canceled before anyone could use them. Kotzebue had an awarded grant and a plan. It has a paused project and a diesel bill.
For more on federal gaps in climate and pest work at USDA, read our look at the GAO’s findings. For the rest of our coverage on contamination, water and soil, follow the poisoned ground beat.
