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Park City Community Foundation names eight recipients for second round of Climate Fund grants

SUVs are lined up at Recycle Utah's recycling bins. Recycling is one environmentally friendly tip that will help people make a difference in creating a happier and healthier planet.
Park Record file photo

For information about the Park City Climate Fund, visit parkcitycf.org.

The Park City Community Foundation announced a new round of eight climate change projects that are being funded with grants totaling $210,000.

The Park City Climate Fund grant recipients this time are Ecology Bridge, EATS Park City, Mountain Towns 2030, Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, Recycle Utah, Summit Land Conservancy, the Sorenson Impact Center, and a partnership between Wild Utah Project and Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter.

This is the second wave of Park City Climate Fund grant distributions since February, said Katie Wright, Park City Community Foundation executive director.



“We have projects that focus on land use, creating soils that better sequester carbon, and we also have applicants that are policy oriented,” she said. “The purpose of the fund is to provide resources to innovative ideas to reverse global climate change on a local level. And the idea is that some of these projects would be replicated in other mountain towns in other communities.”

The purpose of the fund is to provide resources to innovative ideas to reverse global climate change on a local level…” Katie Wright, Park City CommunityFoundation executive director

The projects and the amount of grant money are as follows from a list provided by the Park City Community Foundation:



Mountain Towns 2030, $50,000

The grant will help accelerate progress toward a carbon neutral 2030 by implementing full-time oversight for the impactful climate solutions specific to Park City and help translate the results into easily digestible information for other mountain towns.

Wild Utah Project and the Swaner Preserve and EcoCenter, $48,0000

This grant will increase carbon sequestration in Park City’s open spaces by restoring degraded streams and wetlands and install 100, volunteer-constructed dams modeled after beaver dams.

Recycle Utah, $25,000

Recycle Utah will use this grant to broaden its community engagement program with the goal of listening, learning and better serving Park City’s Latinx community members and eco-champions.

Summit Land Conservancy, $25,000

The nonprofit plans to use the grant to continue its McPolin Farmlands pilot project. The project will measure carbon sequestration levels resulting from regenerative agriculture techniques, known to be effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Planned Parenthood of Utah, $18,000

Planned Parenthood of Utah will invest the grant to create an Environmental Justice Fellow position that will design a framework for a youth environmental justice coalition that will align with the 2022 Net Zero Summit.

Sorenson Impact Center, $15,000

This grant will help Sorenson Impact Center better position itself during the upcoming legislative session to lobby for the passage of a state chartered, nonprofit financial institution that utilizes its capital to invest in clean energy projects. It would operate similar to Clean Energy Fund models successfully pioneered in other states, including Colorado and Washington.

Ecology Bridge, $15,000

This grant will help Ecology Bridge gain more traction with a unique, community-wide competition to remove large areas of garlic mustard weed, a noxious weed that renders toxic conditions in the soil. By eliminating the plant, local soils can return to healthier levels of microbial activity, leading to higher levels of water retention and carbon sequestration.

EATS Park City, $14,000

Through this grant EATS Park City will undertake its One Meal A Day Challenge, an initiative that will collect data on the local community’s food consumption habits. This data can demonstrate relative progress toward benchmark goals of thoughtful, climate friendly consumption behaviors and practices throughout the community.

Wright is grateful for donors of the $210,000 that made the second wave of grants for the fund possible.

“It’s important in this time when we know that the coronavirus pandemic has placed strain on everyone, yet climate change remains a very urgent challenge we have to work on,” she said. “Many of our donors have made multi-year commitments, and these are people who are passionate about supporting this work.”

Park City Community Foundation established the Park City Climate Fund in the fall of 2019 at the Mountain Towns 2030 inaugural conference.

Mountain Towns 2030 is an organization that is working with mountain communities such as Park City to reduce their carbon emissions to net-zero by the year 2030, according to Wright.

“We knew when we started this fund that we would find a lot of innovation and ideas, and that people needed support to bring those ideas into action,” she said. “The Park City Community Foundation’s mission is to tackle our pressing needs, and climate change is one of them. We are happy to partner with innovative organizations and generous donors to make this work happen. We’re thankful to the community for stepping up and stepping in.”


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