DULUTH, MINNESOTA- The St. Louis Estuary, which flows into Lake Superior, is the site of one of the largest cleanup projects around the Great Lakes. Much of the money for the project comes from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The Trump administration has proposed cutting $300 million from the initiative. Cuts of this size will put projects like the one at the St. Louis Estuary in danger, leaving our polluted waters to fester.
Dan Kraker at Wisconsin Public Radio reports:
Long-standing plans to clean up the headwaters of Lake Superior have been thrown into doubt by Trump administration budget priorities. Now, Minnesotans are wondering how to fill a multimillion-dollar hole.
Federal officials have been working for years to address a century’s worth of industrial pollution in more than 40 areas around the Great Lakes.
The St. Louis River estuary, which flows past Duluth, Minnesota, into Lake Superior, is the second largest of those projects. But the money has been zeroed out in the president’s 2018 budget plan. . .
It’s taken several years, but state regulators, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Steel have finalized a plan to clean up the sediment.
It calls for the EPA to cover a little over half of the $69 million price tag, with U.S. Steel picking up the rest.
But now the cleanup work is in jeopardy. President Trump’s proposed budget to Congress calls for cutting the $300 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
Read more at Wisconsin Public Radio.
