Washington Watch: Trump Budget Would Slash EPA
The ugly impacts of the proposed Trump Budget on environmental protection continued to come into sharper focus last week.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who followed last year’s presidential contest debates to learn that the proposed Trump budget would be catastrophic to the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to function. The EPA would lay off a full 25 percent of its national workforce and scrap 56 programs, including pesticide safety, stormwater runoff control, environmental cooperation with Canada and Mexico, Great Lakes and coastal estuary protection programs, and (of course) energy-efficiency and other climate protection programs.
National League of Conservation Voters (LCV) vice president Tiernan Sittenfeld called the budget a “poison pill” and declared, “Make no mistake; this rigged budget would mean more lead in our drinking water, more mercury in our air, and more destruction of our public lands and wildlife while rewarding Big Oil and other corporate polluters.”
