RIVERSIDE -- Riverside County supervisors today unanimously approved a resolution urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to modify its policies to allow the city of Coachella and other small communities to maintain their "rural" designation -- or otherwise lose out on millions in federal funding.

The USDA is removing a number of locations from its list of "Rural Development Eligible Areas" after an analysis of the 2010 census showed they no longer qualified to be on it.

According to federal law, communities that receive the designation cannot have a population greater than 20,000. Coachella's population is double that.

Board of Supervisors Chairman John Benoit, whose Fourth District encompasses the Coachella Valley, drafted a resolution seeking reconsideration of how the rural designation is applied, noting that Coachella has received a total $200 million for a range of USDA-approved projects, including wastewater Advertisement

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In the last five years, the USDA has also awarded Coachella $28 million in support of affordable housing programs. Those grants would not have been provided without the community's "rural" status.

The USDA will issue its new list of eligible areas on March 27. As it stands now, Coachella and 900 other communities throughout the country will be excluded, according to Benoit.

"Expanding the definition of 'rural' is appropriate to capture the distinctive nature of 'rural areas,"' the chairman wrote. "The USDA rural definition should not be focused solely on population numbers."

He argued that criteria should include "the agricultural character of a community ... income levels of those families earning less than 50 percent of the area median income, unemployment (and) overcrowding."

The resolution asked area congressional representatives to get involved and help remedy the situation.