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 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.