Santa Barbara County Environmental Efforts Receive the Gift of Green This Holiday Season

With the holidays in full swing, communities across Santa Barbara County just received the gift of green, with grants to fund nearly $17 million in climate-resilient projects and agricultural land conservation, as well as $1 million in recycling infrastructure. 

Santa Barbara Assemblymember Gregg Hart says the state investments will help the region achieve California’s goal of conserving 30 percent of state lands and coastal waters by 2030 and “foster sustainability on the Central Coast.”

Agricultural Conservation 

The biggest sums came through the state’s Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program, a mouthful that aims to protect agricultural lands from development. This year also marks the first time that funds will support California tribes with land acquisitions. 

The Northern Chumash Tribal Council received almost $6 million to purchase a 310-acre ranch that sits on tribal-affiliated coastal land near Lompoc. Once returned to them, the tribe plans to restore and cultivate the land, focusing on traditional foods, medicines, and cultural resources, such as fish habitat, beaver wetlands, oak woodlands, purple needle and rye grasses, and an abundance of endemic wildflowers.

Additionally, $250k was granted for a Tribal Land Trust and Program Management Plan, supporting conservation projects to protect habitats, propagate native species, and preserve open spaces, aligning with the Land Back movement to return the ancestral land of Indigenous Peoples to the original inhabitants.

Nearly $8 million in grants will go to the California Rangeland Trust and Land Trust for Santa Barbara County to fund easements on ranchland in Santa Barbara County, which will protect thousands of acres near Orcutt and along the Gaviota Coast, including natural water sources, grazing areas, livestock, and existing residential housing.

Climate Resiliency and Recycling 

Both the North and South County locations of the Foodbank of Santa Barbara received $500,000 from the California Climate Investments’s Organics Grant Program to install in-vessel composters at their warehouses, which CalRecycle projects will divert over 600 tons of waste from landfills over the next ten years. 

“Organic waste recycling is part of California’s climate fight as we move toward circular, local systems that continuously recycle what we used to throw away,” CalRecycle Director Rachel Machi Wagoner said.

A little over $1 million will be used by the county to fund various “Resilient Cuyama Valley” projects to enhance access to public services, such as clean energy, water, and wastewater services, and “promote community engagement, workforce education, and displacement avoidance” around climate resiliency, according to the grant proposal.

The grant is part of the Transformative Climate Communities Program, which aims to enable the communities that are most vulnerable to pollution to pursue goals and strategies to address local emissions.

“Combined, the 11 Transformative Climate Communities projects from this funding round will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 36,647 metric tons,” according to Governor Gavin Newsom’s office, which is “equivalent to taking 8,155 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles off the road for one year.”