County and Partners to Receive $1M Grant to Build Community Climate Resilience in Cuyama Valley

The County of Santa Barbara, in partnership with community-based organizations Blue Sky Center and Quail Springs, along with Community Environmental Council, has been awarded a 1 million dollar grant from the California Strategic Growth Council’s Transformative Climate Communities program to bolster community climate resilience in the Cuyama Valley.

The grant will fund a variety of activities to prepare the region for future implementation funding, including:

• County Community Services Department and Blue Sky Center will identify common household improvements to increase energy efficiency, resilience and home comfort that can be implemented communitywide overcoming significant barriers to secure contracted work in a rural area.
• County Public Works Department will design and engineer pedestrian and biking paths to improve community connectivity and safety.
• County Planning & Development Department will coordinate and implement policies and programs identified in the Environmental Justice Element.
• Blue Sky Center (BSC) will expand its community Victory Garden pilot projects to demonstrate the viability of the potential to increase food resilience and self-sufficiency. BSC will also update its outdated electrical infrastructure to enable a future microgrid and study the feasibility of a cold storage system to increase community capacity to store and access healthy food.
• Quail Springs will provide residents with greywater and backyard composting systems and offer educational and workforce opportunities to reduce water use and waste generation. Quail Springs will also implement a community survey on water quality issues to determine factors affecting consumer perceptions and behaviors.
• Community Environmental Council will organize and facilitate the Cuyama Community Resilience Committee to ensure equitable and inclusive processes for project management and productive outcomes.

“Being a remote and rural community, Cuyama Valley has already demonstrated resilience in the face of COVID, extreme weather, physical and digital isolation, and environmental degradation,” said Das Williams, First District Supervisor. “We are extremely grateful for the funding and excited about the opportunity to implement these transformative projects.”

The County submitted the “Resilient Cuyama Valley” grant proposal to advance community priorities identified through extensive outreach and engagement during the development of the Cuyama Valley Community Action Plan, the County’s Active Transportation Plan (adopted May 2023), the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment (completed in 2022), and forthcoming Climate Change Adaptation Plan and Environmental Justice Element.