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NCEI Announces Cancellation of 2010 State Innovation Grant Competition and Ending of the Program
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EPA has made the decision to end the State Innovation Grant Program. This decision is effective immediately and the planned 2010 competition will not take place. Resource constraints have severely limited the number of projects the program has been able to support in recent years. This continuing reality and the need to address emerging new priorities require that we discontinue the grant program.
The State Innovation Grant Program began in 2002 and has supported testing of innovative environmental permitting approaches in 40 projects totaling over $8M through seven rounds of competition. For example, State Innovation Grants have supported application of the Environmental Results Program approach, which has now been adopted by 18 states to improve performance in 11 small business sectors and is now supported by the State ERP Consortium. Other projects explored integrated permitting approaches, the realtionship between permitting and tools such as Environmental Management Systems and lean manufacturing, and other innovative ideas. Results from the first eight completed projects are described in EPA’s 2008 progress report, Supporting Environmental Innovation in the States: A Report on the Results From Projects Supported By the EPA State Innovation Grant Program (PDF) (52 pp, 1.21MB) and results from projects completed since then are described on the program Web site. EPA remains committed to creating opportunities for states to share results and experiences with one another and their EPA counterparts. To that end, we are pleased to confirm that in January we will commence planning for the next State-EPA Symposium to be held in the fall of 2010.
We understand that following our preliminary notice of our intent to go forward with the 2010 competition in the Federal Register on September 30, 2009, states have been engaged in the development of ideas and projects for the 2010 competition. We encourage state agencies to continue to work with EPA Regional and Program contacts to look for other opportunities to pursue their ideas.