Rough Waters Report: EPA Cuts Could Jeopardize Montana Waterways

This will affect superfund cleanup in all states


Flathead Beacon? @FlatheadBeacon 18h18 hours ago

‘Rough Waters’ Report: EPA Cuts Could Jeopardize Montana Waterways

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‘Rough Waters’ Report: EPA Cuts Could Jeopardize Montana Waterways
Proposed budget cuts could stall Superfund work, undo conservation efforts

By Tristan Scott // Oct 23, 2017

Columbia Falls Aluminum Company along the Middle Fork Flathead River. Beacon File Photo
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A new report by local conservation groups details how the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could cost the state more than $3 million in federal grant funding and hobble ongoing efforts to clean up and protect Montana’s waterways.

In calling for several billion dollars in cuts to the EPA, the president’s proposed budget could hamper scientific research, slow efforts to prevent pollution in local rivers, hold fewer polluters accountable, and stall work to clean up contaminated sites on the National Priorities List, or Superfund, according to the report, “Rough Waters Ahead,” written by the nonprofit Montana Research and Policy Center with support from Montana Trout Unlimited.

The Trump administration’s proposed fiscal year 2018 budget released in May cuts funding for the EPA by 31 percent, from $8.2 billion in fiscal year 2017 to $5.7 billion next year.
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“With 30 percent proposed cuts to the EPA, cleanup work at many or all of those sites could slow down or be put on pause indefinitely,” Brooks said

U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, said the Trump administration should be looking at efficiencies to reduce federal spending.

But in a letter to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Daines urged the agency to prioritize Superfund over other programs so as to not slow the pace of cleanup.

“Montana is home to nearly 20 National Priorities List Superfund sites, including the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company Plant, Libby Asbestos and Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area sites, the last of which includes the infamous Berkeley Pit,” Daines wrote. “According to a study prepared by the EPA, when cleanup is delayed for ten, fifteen, and even up to twenty years, the discounted present value of benefits of cleanup are mostly lost because sites are stigmatized and the homes in the surrounding communities are shunned.”

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, blasted the proposed cuts, telling Pruitt in June during a Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, on which he and Daines both sit, that the budget fails Montana communities that depend on the funding to mitigate corporate pollution.

“You told me that you are going to punish bad actors. It is your job to hold these bad actors accountable and make sure they come to the table with a wallet that has money in it, and the EPA must oversee the cleanup,” Tester said at the time....................................