Making a Visible Difference in Communities: Washington
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Bremerton, WA
The primary concern in Bremerton is economic development, particularly addressing urban blight in the downtown core and creating jobs. EPA worked with the city to ensure economic development is environmentally sustainable. An infill development workshop was planned to help generate local support for investment in one area, and the city and the school district collaborated to provide data for a Brownfields assessment of a vacant high school with contamination, with the goal of transforming the property into an asset for the community. Other efforts included working with the city on climate risk, sustainability and Superfund assessments.
Washington Tribes
EPA worked with tribes in the Pacific Northwest to reduce childhood asthma and improve residential indoor air quality. Using new opportunities under Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act to reimburse the costs of healthy homes/pediatric asthma interventions, EPA helped:
- develop infrastructure and capacity to deliver in-home asthma care for native children
- improve indoor air quality
- evaluate health outcomes/cost impacts
- support federal interagency efforts
- design and share replicable healthcare payment policies for advancing and funding in-home asthma care nationwide