Agency officials were able to protect some of the administration’s top priorities, such as providing more money to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. It provided an additional $4.3 million to the Chesapeake Bay program while cutting every other regional cleanup, including in the Great Lakes and Puget Sound. It allotted nearly $4.6 million to research of endocrine disrupters, chemicals that have entered American waterways and pose a potential public health threat.
“We’re using the funds to proceed on some of the key things we’re trying to do,” Perciasepe said, adding that the EPA has identified 2011 as a critical year for finalizing Chesapeake Bay cleanup plans.
Graphic
Environmental cutbacks in the budget deal.
But Republicans succeeded in blocking more than $8.5 million the EPA would have provided to help states cope with new rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and refineries.
Simpson said he and other Republicans are going to look at whether they can target reductions at the EPA headquarters for the next fiscal year, perhaps by limiting the number of full-time-equivalent positions at the agency. By doing so, he said, it might curb the EPA’s efforts to impose mandatory limits on greenhouse gases and other forms of pollution: “Many of us believe the EPA has gone beyond what Congress has wanted or authorized it to do,” he said.
In the meantime, state and local officials who oversee the nation’s air and water quality — most of whom were already dealing with smaller state budgets — are struggling to cope with the sudden dip in federal funding.
Walter Gills, program manager for Virginia’s clean-water revolving loan fund, said the state learned so late it was losing $10 million for low-interest loans that it had to find money elsewhere and will cut the program much deeper next year.
“We just couldn’t pull the plug,” Gills said. He added that since EPA’s budget will probably shrink again in the next appropriations cycle, “it could actually be a double whammy next year.”
In Oregon, Ginsburg said, his agency has postponed hiring an environmental engineer and is reducing its pollution monitoring work.
Just as his agency is being asked by the federal government to enforce new smog, soot and greenhouse gas rules, it is facing a cut in federal assistance to execute the task.
“We’re just a microcosm of what’s going on around the country. The same thing is going on in every state,” Ginsburg said. “It’s just adding up to a crisis mode.”
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