Trump budget again targets regional water cleanup programs
Source: Associated Press
Trump budget again targets regional water cleanup programs
By JOHN FLESHER
Just now
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — For a second consecutive year, President Donald Trump is trying to drastically reduce or eliminate federal support of cleanups for iconic U.S. waterways including the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay.
Trump’s proposed 2019 budget for the Environmental Protection Agency released Monday would cut funding by 90 percent for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative — an Obama-era plan for dealing with pervasive pollution in the world’s biggest surface freshwater system — and a similar program for Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary.
It would remove all EPA funding of cleanup programs for the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Champlain, Long Island Sound, San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound and South Florida, including the Everglades and Keys. The administration’s EPA spending plan said the agency would “encourage state, tribal and local entities to continue to make progress” in those places.
The administration sought to zero out spending on the regional water initiatives in its first budget a year ago, describing them as “primarily local efforts” and contending state and local governments were capable of paying for them.
-snip-
Read more: https://apnews.com/14261a936b2d42d7a305a21fe5606fc7/Trump-budget-again-targets-regional-water-cleanup-programs
