Trump’s EPA cuts threaten programs that clean up Chicago, Great Lakes

March 17--State officials in Indiana planned to give BP's Whiting refinery permission to churn more toxic chemicals into the air until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overruled them and forced one of the biggest polluters in the Chicago area to clean up its act.

When the H. Kramer and Co. smelter denied it was responsible for high levels of lead found in the Pilsen neighborhood, EPA scientists built a case by matching heavy metals emitted by the company to contaminants detected in residential yards. After a decadelong legal battle, Kramer is paying to clean up the neighborhood starting next month.

Lake Michigan and the Chicago River are significantly cleaner than they were nearly a half-century ago, when images of burning rivers and lakes teeming with noxious algae galvanized the nation and led Congress to approve the Clean Water Act.

By almost every measure, the air, water and land in the Chicago area are in better shape than they were when President Richard Nixon created the EPA in 1970. But the budget unveiled Thursday by President Donald Trump would limit the government's ability to address ongoing threats to people and wildlife, including hormone-disrupting chemicals in drinking water, invasive species that imperil the Great Lakes, and dirty diesel engines that contribute to lung-damaging smog.

Trump would lay off 1 of every 5 EPA employees and reduce the agency's spending by 31 percent to $5.7 billion, its lowest level in 40 years when adjusted for inflation. The cuts would total $2.6 billion nationwide, an amount equivalent to cost overruns for the aircraft carrier that Trump visited last month to announce a $54 billion spending boost for the Pentagon.

Dramatically reducing EPA spending would enable the agency "to focus on its highest national priorities," according a document posted online by the White House. While officials said line-by-line budget details will be released later, documents that have trickled out of the EPA in recent weeks show virtually every agency program would take a hit.

Some programs would be eliminated entirely, including a $300 million fund for Great Lakes restoration and a similar program for Chesapeake Bay.

"This is a total abandonment of responsibility to protect what we all hold dear, including the Great Lakes, a vital national and international resource," said David Ullrich, a former EPA official who heads the nonprofit Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a coalition of local officials that has helped build bipartisan support for the program Trump wants to eliminate.

Spending isn't the only way Trump is planning to radically transform the EPA.

The agency's new administrator, Scott Pruitt, abolished an environmental enforcement division while serving as Oklahoma attorney general and led or took part in 14 lawsuits that challenged federal clean air and water regulations. At the EPA he already has moved to roll back rules intended to reduce pollution from power plants, coal mines and automobiles.

Pruitt also has said he plans to cede more authority to the states to decide which environment and public health initiatives should be a priority. At the same time, the White House is proposing to cut grants that finance state environmental programs by 45 percent.

One of the reasons Nixon created the EPA was that many federal officials had concluded states were incapable of holding polluters accountable or were unwilling to do so.

Much of the agency's early work was focused on the Great Lakes, the source of drinking water for more than 30 million people in the U.S. and Canada. But though the agency had significant public and political support, some polluters fiercely resisted efforts to clean up human waste, grease and other pollutants that fouled waterways and the soot and smog that blanketed cities.

It took the EPA until 1977, five years after the Clean Water Act took effect, to secure a court decision forcing the U.S. Steel Gary Works to reduce the amount of industrial waste it dumped into Lake Michigan and the Grand Calumet River. The steel mill is still the biggest polluter in the Lake Michigan basin, and as recently as 2007 the EPA intervened to prevent Indiana from scrapping or relaxing limits in the facility's water pollution permit.

Federal money and legal pressure also are largely responsible for reducing the amount of sewage that cities once routinely pumped into the Great Lakes, and for cleaning up the Chicago River to the point where the city has built an elaborate Riverwalk downtown and commissioned boathouses designed by celebrated architects.

The EPA also has forced polluters to clean up toxic waste through the Superfund law, which gave the agency authority to seek restitution from corporations. Local sites targeted through the program include Kerr-McGee in West Chicago, where radioactive waste once contaminated surrounding neighborhoods and the DuPage River, and Celotex in Little Village, a former shingle factory responsible for cancer-causing waste that seeped into nearby yards.

"If anything good can come out of the Trump budget, it is reminding people about the reasons why the EPA was created in the first place," said Eric Schaeffer, who resigned in protest as the agency's top enforcement official during the George W. Bush administration and now heads the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project. "People don't want to go to the bad old days."

There still are 26 other sites on the Great Lakes alone with ongoing Superfund cleanups, including Waukegan Harbor and the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal. Beaches are still occasionally closed after sewage overflows, a sign that efforts to improve treatment plants and divert storm runoff are, at best, incomplete.

Funding for the Superfund program and EPA enforcement division would be cut by roughly a third in the Trump budget, which among other things could stall the cleanup of lead-contaminated yards in East Chicago, Ind., and make it more difficult for the EPA to seek reimbursement from companies responsible for the pollution.

The Republican-controlled Congress has voted dozens of times since 2011 to strip the EPA of its powers. But lawmakers largely left intact President Barack Obama's spending requests for the EPA and in some cases approved more spending for agency programs.

Some fellow Republicans have questioned the scope of the budget cuts outlined by the Trump administration. Lawmakers from both parties have vowed to fight to restore the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which during the past decade has funded dozens of projects intended to improve water quality, prevent and control invasive species, protect natural areas and address environmental threats.

William Ruckleshaus, the EPA's first administrator under Nixon, cautioned last week that severe cuts to the EPA budget could trigger a "race to the bottom" where states with weak environmental programs attempt to lure polluting industries away from other states. Writing in The New York Times, Ruckleshaus noted that President Ronald Reagan had asked him to return in 1983 after scandals forced the president's first EPA administrator to resign and the public was increasingly alarmed about a 25 percent cut to the agency's budget.

"The public will tolerate changes that allow the agency to meet its mandated goals more efficiently and effectively," Ruckleshaus wrote. "They will not tolerate changes that threaten their health or the precious environment. These are lessons President Reagan learned in 1983. We would all do well to heed them."

[email protected]

___

(c)2017 the Chicago Tribune

Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.