New York City marked Earth Day 2026 with a workforce program that ties climate resilience directly to economic mobility. On April 22, Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani and Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa F. Garcia announced a $4.5 million, three-year pilot with The Doe Fund that will train New Yorkers for green-economy careers while expanding the city’s stormwater infrastructure workforce. The initiative, called GROW (Green Readiness Opportunities for the Workforce), was unveiled at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy’s Lowlands Nursery in Brooklyn.
The program links two priorities the Mamdani administration has emphasized since taking office on January 1, 2026: workforce development for New Yorkers shut out of stable employment, and the climate adaptation build-out the city needs as flooding events grow more frequent across the five boroughs.
The Structure of the GROW Pilot
GROW is built around an 18-member crew trained in horticultural care and green infrastructure maintenance. Once deployed, the team will be responsible for maintaining 1,035 city-owned rain gardens in East New York, Brooklyn, and South Ozone Park, Queens. Those rain gardens are part of a citywide network of roughly 8,000 nature-based stormwater installations designed to absorb rainfall before it overwhelms the sewer system or pollutes local waterways.
The training itself blends three components: classroom instruction, hands-on fieldwork, and career development services aimed at helping participants move into long-term roles in the green-infrastructure sector. The Doe Fund manages the pilot, with operational support from Public Works Partners and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy.
A Workforce Built for New Yorkers Facing Barriers
A defining feature of GROW is its target population. The pilot is structured to recruit New Yorkers facing significant barriers to employment, including those with histories of incarceration, homelessness, or substance abuse. The Doe Fund has spent decades operating workforce programs for these populations through its long-running “Ready, Willing & Able” model, and GROW extends that approach into the climate sector.
Mayor Mamdani framed the program as an opening for residents historically excluded from public-sector career pipelines. He said the partnership opens the door for neighbors too often shut out of opportunities to lead the work of protecting their communities from climate change. Deputy Mayor for Operations Julie Kerson described the partnership as the kind of inclusive, climate-ready future the city requires, and tied the pilot to broader infrastructure planning underway across DEP and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Why Rain Gardens Are the Anchor
Rain gardens are shallow, planted depressions engineered to capture stormwater runoff from streets and sidewalks. Instead of flowing into the sewer system, where it can contribute to combined sewer overflows that release untreated wastewater into the harbor, water is absorbed into the soil and filtered by native plants. The DEP has been steadily expanding the city’s rain garden network for more than a decade, but maintenance has historically been a bottleneck. Plants need pruning, soil needs refreshing, and debris needs clearing for the systems to actually function.
By dedicating a trained crew to more than 1,000 rain gardens in two of the city’s most flood-prone neighborhoods, GROW addresses an operational gap that has limited the effectiveness of green infrastructure investments to date. East New York and South Ozone Park were both chosen for the pilot because of their flood exposure and the density of existing stormwater installations, which means the maintenance crew will be working at scale from day one.
A Coordinated Earth Day Rollout
The Doe Fund partnership did not arrive in isolation. The same day, Mayor Mamdani traveled to Woodside Houses in Queens to unveil NYCHA’s 2026 sustainability agenda, a five-year plan that includes installing 10,000 induction stoves to replace gas appliances, bringing electric heat pumps and cooling systems to 20,000 NYCHA apartments, and adding 150 electric vehicle parking stations across NYCHA properties.
Taken together, the two announcements outline an Earth Day strategy that links public housing decarbonization with workforce pipelines into the green economy. NYCHA CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt has separately emphasized plans to channel green-energy careers toward NYCHA residents, a thread that runs parallel to what GROW is doing on the stormwater side.
The Partners Behind the Program
The Doe Fund will manage day-to-day operations of the GROW crew, drawing on its decades of workforce development experience. Public Works Partners is providing programmatic and evaluation support, and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy is hosting much of the hands-on horticultural training at its Lowlands Nursery. The Department of Environmental Protection serves as the lead city agency, with Commissioner Lisa F. Garcia framing the pilot as part of DEP’s broader push to scale nature-based stormwater solutions and invest in the workforce that keeps them functional.
Doe Fund President and CEO Jennifer Mitchell, Andrea Parker of the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, and Council Member Julie Won were among the officials who joined the Earth Day announcement.
Where This Fits in the Broader Mamdani Agenda
The Mamdani administration has been steadily building out a portfolio of climate and economic-justice programs since taking office. GROW is one of the more concrete examples of how those two priorities are designed to reinforce each other.
On the climate side, the administration has emphasized a transition away from fossil fuels in city-owned buildings, expansion of green infrastructure, and electrification of NYCHA developments. On the economic side, programs like the revamped $80 million NYC Future Fund for small businesses and the recently launched Office of Deed Theft Prevention point to a workforce and economic-mobility agenda that runs parallel to the climate work. GROW sits at the intersection of both tracks.
What Comes Next
The pilot is structured as a three-year program, which gives the city and The Doe Fund a meaningful window to test whether the model works at scale. Key questions for the coming months include how many participants complete training, how many move into permanent green-economy roles after the pilot, and whether the maintenance work measurably improves the performance of rain gardens in East New York and South Ozone Park.
If the data lands, expect the model to expand. The city has 8,000 rain gardens and a growing pipeline of green infrastructure projects connected to federal and state stormwater agendas. A successful pilot would give the administration a template for building out a much larger green workforce in subsequent budget cycles. For now, 18 New Yorkers are stepping into careers tied to the city’s climate future, and a partnership between City Hall, DEP, and one of the country’s most established workforce nonprofits is being put to the test.
