"The top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sent a letter to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Tuesday, calling into question a dramatic decrease in grant funding awarded by the agency in the past year.

According to Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), his staff's review of publicly available data on EPA grant awards found that in 2017 the agency awarded $1.1 billion in the first three quarters, only a third of the $3.5 billion awarded in the same time frame the previous year.

In the letter sent to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Tuesday, Carper questioned the reason behind the agency's decrease in grant awards and asked what the agency was doing with the nearly $4 billion it was allotted through Congress to award to nonprofits and local governments."

Miranda Green reports for The Hill February 6, 2018. [2]