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Saturday, March 4th, 2017

President Trump’s budget would slash protections for the Great Lakes by 97 percent

Author:     Matthew Rozsa
Source:     Salon
Publication Date:     Friday, Mar 3, 2017 08:40 AM PST
Link: President Trump’s budget would slash protections for the Great Lakes by 97 percent
Stephan:   Lost in the fog of the Trump administration's mating ritual with Russia are the changes being made in regulations designed to protect America's waterways; their dismantlement  and the increase in environmental toxins that are sure to follow. Here is one aspect of what is happening.

Lake Erie feeder stream
Credit: AP/John Flesher

Even before President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this week to review a rule by President Barack Obama to protect small streams and wetlands, Trump had been targeting the EPA by weakening ecological protections, halting EPA grants and contracts, and appointing an EPA head who (like Trump himself) denied that man-made climate change is real. Trump justified those concerns by saying the agency was going to focus on “clean air and clean water.”

Now, though, it appears that Trump’s first 2018 budget proposal is going to suggest slashing funds to clean up pollution from the Great Lakes by 97 percent.

The target of Trump’s budget is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which is receiving $300 million in funding. That number would be reduced to a paltry $10 million as part of a larger effort to reduce the EPA’s overall budget by 25 percent. In a letter sent by the Great Lakes Task Force, it was explained to the Trump administration that GLRI is “the […]

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