Monday, March 6, 2017

Trump slashes Great Lakes budget

United States President Donald Trump is slashing the federal budget for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative from $300 to $10 million per year.

It’s a small fraction of the $15 billion a year municipalities are spending on cleaning up the Great Lakes, but sends a devastating message, said David Ulrich, executive director of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

He speaks for 125 cities on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border and said “cuts of this magnitude would be devastating to the efforts of our two countries over the past five decades to restore the resource.”

Farmers are the target of current cleanup efforts for Lake Erie. They are supposed to cut phosphorous runoff into waterways by 40 per cent.