The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which, among its work, keeps the air you breathe and water you drink clean, would see the biggest cut — 31 percent — of any federal agency in the White House’s proposed 2018 budget, according to a Reuters story. EPA’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative would be especially hard hit. It faces a 97-percent cut in the proposed budget.
How would those cuts, if approved, hit home? Jeff Reutter, special adviser to Ohio State’s Ohio Sea Grant program, said in a recent issue of Cleveland Scene, “If we lose the EPA, we lose Lake Erie.”
The lake, among other things, provides drinking water for 3 million Ohioans.