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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Advocates Call for Full Funding for Great Lakes Restoration

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Friday, March 10, 2017   

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Environmental groups are urging Congress to keep funding efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.

Numbers leaked to the news media last week indicate the White House may propose cutting the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, or GLRI, by as much as 97 percent, from $300 million to just $10 million.

Todd Ambs, campaign director at the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, says cuts of that size would stop restoration efforts in their tracks.

"Restoration efforts that are not only of tremendous benefit to the environment of the Great Lakes, but are a direct economic boost to the region as well," he stresses.

Ambs adds that proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and a recent executive order instructing agencies to scale back clean water protections pose further threats to the lakes.

Joy Mulinex, co-chair at the Coalition points out there are dozens of designated "areas of concern" contaminated with toxic industrial pollution in the region.

Before the GLRI, only one of those areas had been delisted in more than 20 years.

"In the seven years since the GLRI, three other sites have been delisted,” she points out. “There are eight sites that have had all of their management actions undertaken. And that would not have happened without this program."

Mulinex says about 150,000 acres of wetlands also have been restored, and more than 160,000 pounds of phosphorus a year have been kept from reaching the Great Lakes.

Final White House budget numbers are due out next week. But Chad Lord, policy director for the Great Lakes Coalition, notes it is Congress that controls the purse strings.

He says advocates for the Great Lakes will be in Washington, urging lawmakers to act.

"We'll ask them to appropriate $300 million again for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, to increase funding for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, and to defend core Great Lakes programs, at the EPA and other agencies," he states.

Mulinex adds that, in each of the past three years, Republicans and Democrats in Congress have joined together to block proposed cuts to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.





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