As a single mother raising her son in Barrio Logan nearly 40 years ago, Diane Bolivar Armenta never knew when she might need to pick him up from school early and race him to the doctor.

He had asthma, and during the day he would often experience a tightness in his chest, blueness under his eyes and difficulty breathing.

So when she got the call from his teacher, Armenta would leave work, pick him up at school in Ocean Beach — she had enrolled him there so he could breathe cleaner air — and take him to a $75-per-session breathing treatment. Later, she would return to her job in the evening to finish her work.

“He grew up with the pollution in this area all his life,” she said. “The only time he was away from it and breathing different air was when he was out of here during that school day.”

The area still suffers some of the worst air quality in California, due to polluting industries, junkyards and sewage, and it’s historically seen some of the highest rates of asthma in the nation.

But in recent years, community efforts to alleviate the neighborhood’s pollution have given Armenta some hope.

Among those is an initiative from the Environmental Health Coalition and the San Diego Foundation, called “Rooted in Comunidad, Cultivating Equity,” to help fund climate-resilient projects in San Diego’s historically underfunded barrios, such as developing green spaces, electric transportation and community-led food production.

It’s one of several climate-focused programs in San Diego County that got grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year, awarded under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

But for the last few weeks, the funding for this project and thousands of others across the country was frozen — part of a move by the Trump administration to review climate and energy programs. Some local organizations said they were finally able to access the money late this week, but there’s still uncertainty over how long it could remain available.

A spokesperson for the San Diego Foundation said Friday that it was able to access its $20 million EPA grant after it was previously “suspended” on the online portal. But the organization says it’s working with its partners to identify additional sources of funding in case the federal grant stalls again.

In San Diego County, more than two dozen organizations have gotten EPA grants to fund efforts related to clean air and drinking water and green transportation — including the San Diego Unified School District, the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District and several tribal nations.

Some reported losing access to their funds beginning the week Trump took office, then regaining access in early February before losing it again. They were re-allowed access on Thursday.

“When you get federal funding … you have to stay on task and be compliant, and it’s really hard to do that when you’re not getting funding or you have no idea if you’ll see any of that funding,” said Lisa Cuestas, the chief executive officer of Casa Familiar, on Wednesday.

“It feels like we’re being set up to fail,” she added.

Casa Familiar received a $12.7 million EPA grant to address San Ysidro’s poor air quality, worsened by its proximity to border traffic — including through a low-cost, zero-emissions mobility project that would bring e-bikes, electric-vehicle sharing and shuttles to the community.

Despite having access to the funds for now, Cuestas isn’t confident that they will remain available.

Both the San Diego Foundation and Casa Familiar were awarded funding through the Community Change Grants Program, part of over $216 million allocated for California through the Inflation Reduction Act. Nationwide, the program provided nearly $1.6 billion for environmental and climate justice projects in disadvantaged communities.

That program is one of many that has felt the effects of the federal funding freeze. Since Trump’s first week in office, his administration has taken aim at both spent and unspent funds allocated for environmental projects, especially those under the Inflation Reduction Act, in an effort to halt the distribution of funding across the board.

Funding given out under the legislation comes from agencies including the EPA, Department of Transportation and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Two federal judges have ordered the Trump administration to end the freeze on the funding, which was authorized by Congress.

But in the meantime, grant recipients say they’re frustrated by the lack of communication from the EPA.

Cuestas says Casa Familiar’s EPA partners canceled meetings with her team and have given no information on how it should proceed with its projects — an experience echoed by other grant recipients.

She said the agency did not contact Casa Familiar when the funding became available on Thursday. Instead, a Casa Familiar employee has been checking the grant status twice a day.

In a statement on Friday, the EPA said that it “worked expeditiously to enable payment accounts for … grant recipients.”

The agency did not respond to specific questions from The San Diego Union-Tribune about the frozen funds or its communication with recipients.

The EPA grants function as reimbursements to backfill recipients’ spending; groups must first have money to spend and then file for reimbursement with the agency.

That’s left local groups concerned about holding the bag. They’re unsure how to proceed with their projects without assurance the funding will come through — but they say that the projects they’re working on are too important to wait.

The start date for many local EPA-funded projects was early January.

“We are moving full speed ahead,” said Job Nelson, the vice president of strategy and policy at the Port of San Diego, which received a nearly $59 million grant from the EPA for its efforts to electrify the port — including modernizing port terminals and reducing emissions when moving freight.

Replacing diesel-powered infrastructure with electric power is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And updates to port infrastructure could directly impact surrounding neighborhoods like Barrio Logan, which for years have felt disproportionately negative impacts from nearby industry, including poor air quality, noise and truck traffic.

Some of the $59 million grant — $400,000 — will go to the Environmental Health Coalition for community engagement efforts and to implement a workforce development program.

The coalition is also involved in its own projects, such as those in the “Rooted in Comunidad, Cultivating Equity” it’s working on with the San Diego Foundation.

The entire initiative includes about a dozen community-led projects, four of which were awarded EPA funding. The remaining projects, as well as some of the four receiving EPA funding, are also getting support from a $22 million state grant.

“The urgency has always been there,” said Amy Castañeda, the policy co-director of land and justice at the Environmental Health Coalition. “The community has been waiting a long time.”

Armenta is a testament to that waiting.

She’s lived in Barrio Logan her whole life — 73 years — and raised her son there.

She says it was a “horrible, fearful feeling” to know that her own neighborhood was part of the reason her son was sick — especially when she couldn’t afford to move.

One project under “Rooted in Comunidad, Cultivating Equity” and spearheaded by the Chicano Park Museum and Cultural Center — where Armenta is a board member — is Via Verde, a free, electric and bilingual shuttle service to serve Barrio Logan and Logan Heights.

The shuttle will pick up residents at home and take them whenever they need to go — church, the grocery store, the doctor. It will be charged at the museum through a solar storage station, another project that will get funding through “Rooted in Comunidad, Cultivating Equity.”

Other projects under the initiative include developments to the Boston Avenue Park, work on 25 homes to improve indoor air quality and the creation of a community resource center and garden.

There will also be workforce development plans from Urban Corps of San Diego County and what’s known as a displacement avoidance program — an effort aimed at fighting gentrification by providing resources like workshops on tenants’ rights and on how homeowners can avoid selling to developers.

“This gives us an opportunity to talk about investments that are going to create jobs, support local workers and establish potential careers in the green economy,” said Christiana DeBenedict, the director of environmental initiatives at the San Diego Foundation.

The foundation said it remains committed to following through on the programs, despite uncertainty surrounding the federal funding.