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Letter to the Editor: Bipartisan Commitment Needed for Clean Environment

I am writing to ask readers to strongly oppose the huge 31 percent, $2.6 billion reduction to Environmental Protection Agency’s budget proposed by President Trump.

The cuts include elimination of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and climate change research, data collection and programs. They severely reduce clean water and air programs, and by eliminating 3,200 jobs, will impair the agency’s ability to enforce existing environmental laws.

Wisconsinites did not vote for dirtier air and less safe drinking water than we have now. This is particularly true given the ozone problem Door County faces, the drinking water crisis in Kewaunee County and Southern Door and the Green Bay dead zone.

Pollution is not contained by state boundaries. Effective environmental protection is not possible without federal regulation. Gutting the EPA will harm the health and economic well-being of virtually everyone in the country, now and long into the future.

There are no natural resources more important to Wisconsin than the Great Lakes and their watersheds. Wisconsin cannot protect Lake Michigan from an invasion of Asian carp or replace Great Lakes Restoration funding. The health of our lakes and ground water will clearly suffer.

Impairing enforcement the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts will benefit polluters and hurt everyone else. Polluters will know that funding for effective enforcement is not available. Bad actors should not gain a competitive advantage due to an EPA unable to enforce the law.

EPA Administrator Pruitt rejects science-based regulation and the President believes climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. These views are terribly embarrassing given the overwhelmingly large scientific consensus that climate change is happening and driven by burning fossil fuels.

Virtually every other nation in the world, and every major corporation, accept the science and are taking action to reduce their carbon emissions as a matter of prudent risk management and moral responsibility. From Rex Tillerson to George Shultz, Henry Paulsen, Michael Bloomberg, Colin Powell and the Pentagon, the business and defense communities recognize the economic and security threats of climate change and the need to act. The Pentagon has warned that unless climate change is mitigated, increasingly severe weather and drought will harm crops and deplete ground water, leading to international conflict over scarce resources.

A budget that ignores climate change will imperil human health. As Jonathan Patz, the head of the Global Health Institute at the UW-Madison, has pointed out moving away from burning coal to greater reliance on wind and solar energy will significantly reduce the incidence of asthma, other lung ailments and heart disease. The health care savings will far exceed the costs of transition.

We need to return to a bipartisan commitment to a clean environment, to the days when Gaylord Nelson proposed and Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, despite claims from opponents that our economy would crater. It didn’t.

Please demand that Congress reject Mr. Trump’s proposal and instead approve an EPA budget that supports science-based regulation and vigorous enforcement of the law.

Roy Thilly

Baileys Harbor, Wis.