The Trump Administration budget calls for cutting EPA jobs by one fifth — from 15,000 to 12,000 — and slicing the agency’s annual budget from $8.2 billion a year to $6.1 billion, says The Washington Post.
“Grants to states, as well as its air and water programs, would be cut by 30 percent. The massive Chesapeake Bay cleanup project would receive only $5 million in the next fiscal year, down from its current $73 million,” says the Post. “In addition, 38 separate programs would be eliminated entirely. Grants to clean up brownfields, or abandoned industrial sites, would be gone. Also zeroed out: the radon program, climate change initiatives and funding for Alaskan native villages.”
“This budget is a fantasy if the administration believes it will preserve EPA’s mission to protect public health,” said Gina McCarthy, former EPA head from 2013 through the end of the Obama administration.
Christine Todd Whitman, who led the Environmental Protection Agency under George W. Bush, told NPR that if President Trump and EPA chief Scott Pruitt follow through with massive cuts to the agency they’ll see resistance from states that have come to expect support for environmental grants.
“…There are numerous programs supported by the EPA in grants that go directly to the states and the municipalities for clean air and for clean water to help them mitigate the issues that they have. They like those dollars. If you cut the agency by 20-24 percent, you’re going to see a reduction in those monies flowing out, and that’s going to cause a backlash amongst his (Trump’s) constituents,” said Whitman.
But even Pruitt, who sued the EPA 14 times during his time as attorney general of Oklahoma, has said he’s not on board with all the suggested cuts, specifically to funds directed at state programs like the water clean-up in Flint, Michigan. “I want you to know that with the White House and also with Congress, I am communicating a message that the Brownfields Program, the Superfund program, water infrastructure … are essential to protect,” Pruitt said in an interview, according to The New Republic.
During his campaign, President Trump vowed to reduce the EPA to “little tidbits,” getting rid of it in “almost any form.” Congress still has to approve the White House budget.