By KEVIN WALKER

Michigan Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Under President Trump’s latest budget proposal released earlier this month, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) would be cut by 90 percent.

Late last year legislators agreed to fund the GLRI, a program that has paid for thousands of environmental projects in the Great Lakes region since 2010. The program was funded for approximately $300 million for 2018, on par with what the GLRI has received in recent years.

The federal government is currently operating on a short-term budget deal set to expire March 23 and GLRI projects are funded by a continuing resolution. However, Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2019 – which runs from Oct. 1, 2018-Sept. 30, 2019 – would cut all but $30 million from the program. This is the same proposal as last year’s White House budget proposal, which was ultimately rejected.

The Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition group, based in Ann Arbor, urged Congress to reject the President’s latest budget proposal, calling it insufficient to restore and protect the Great Lakes and “to meet the needs of the 30 million people who depend on the lakes” for drinking water, jobs and their way of life.

“We’re counting on Congress to keep federal Great Lakes restoration efforts on track and to put forward a robustly funded, bipartisan infrastructure package that provides financial relief to local communities, and ensures that every person has access to clean, safe and affordable drinking water,” said Todd Ambs, campaign director at Healing Our Waters.

“Cutting funding now will only delay projects, making them more complicated and more expensive to complete.”

U.S. Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.), whose 10th District reaches the shores of Lake Huron, criticized the Great Lakes portion of the budget proposal. In a statement dated Feb. 13, he described having sent a letter to the budget director in November calling for full funding of the GLRI, meaning $300 million.

“As I did in 2017, I will work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle” to fully fund the program, Mitchell said.

Other legislators from Michigan calling for full funding of the GLRI include Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Republican Reps. Fred Upton and Bill Huizenga.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also called for full funding of the GLRI. In a Feb. 12 statement, he said he “successfully helped lead the effort to restore full funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative after both Republican and Democratic administrations have proposed cuts to the program, and I will do so again this year.”

According to information from the EPA, the GLRI funded 3,455 environmental projects in the Great Lakes region between 2010-16. The cost of these projects came to about $1.7 billion. The EPA was responsible for most of the projects, at 921; however, 14 other federal agencies also administered projects funded by GLRI.

Those included, for example, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which administered 248 projects costing about $139 million. Projects funded since 2016 have brought the total amount of funding up to $2.5 billion, Ambs said.

The GLRI helps to fund efforts to monitor and control Asian carp, which threaten to infest Great Lakes waters; to help clean up the Western Lake Erie Basin, which has seen an increase in harmful algal blooms in recent years; and many other projects.