Alright now this is getting personal. We take our water seriously here in Washington State. From the mountains through the streams and rivers to the Sound and out to the the Mother Ocean, the Pacific, we are all connected, ecologically, commercially, and personally by beautiful blue and green water. This is our home and when it suffers we suffer.
We are taking a double hit. While we mostly think of NOAA as the weather people they are additionally the climate people doing oceanographic climate research and provide funding for coastal resilience programs that will be especially important to us in the coming years.
Not mention is the Army Corp of Engineers and Navigation Aids section of the Coast Guard that maintains the navigability of the waterways for both commercial and recreational traffic. With these across the board unprioritized cuts it is also likely to suffer. National Fish and Wildlife Service and the Coast Guard’s coastal waters commercial fishing protective patrols ditto.
Both articles are worth the read. The KUOW story is Puget Sound specific. The EPA story covers the impending disaster for all of us.
EPA-KUOW Public Radio
The Trump administration has proposed cutting federal funding for restoring Puget Sound by 93 percent.
"Hundreds of millions dollars every year go from EPA to the states for water quality infrastructure," Dennis McLerran, the regional head of the EPA in the Obama administration, said. "And if that is cut back, you will see efforts to protect public health cut back."
Programs to clean up major water bodies were hard hit: The Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay would also lose more than 90 percent of their EPA funding; cleanup funds for San Francisco Bay and Long Island Sound would be eliminated.
EPA- WaPo
The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas.
NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.
It is good to keep in mind that the president proposes but the Congress disposes but under the current regime I can take little comfort in that. So far these are proposals but there’s a wall to build and a Navy to construct and mucho bad hombres to catch and it’s for damn sure that the 1% club isn’t going to pay for it. We are so screwed.