By Dan Almasi, Nick Fass and Andrew Kuczkowski
Bengal News West Reporters
In the wake of potential national environmental budget cuts, local environmental advocacy groups are ramping up efforts to bring such issues to light.
“We
are directly lobbying our federal reps for the Great Lakes Restoration
Initiative,” said Chris Murawski, director of community engagement at Buffalo
Niagara Riverkeeper. “We have been keeping with our supporters through social
media and our email list. We basically want people to speak out to their local
elected officials. It’s a bipartisan issue; everybody needs clean water.”
The
Trump administration’s approach to the environment is felt on a national level,
but ripples through Buffalo, which is hosting this year’s People’s Solidarity
Climate Movement march at 1:30 p.m., April 29. It will begin at Niagara Square
in downtown Buffalo and will head to Lower Terrace then to Canalside and back
to Niagara Square.
The
WNY Peace Center heads the People’s
Solidarity Climate Movement to combat these government actions.
“We
really want to activate people, which I know a lot of people are concerned
locally and, really, everywhere,” said Vicki Ross, executive director of the WNY Peace Center. “Because there are
such really draconian measures suggested that are quite the opposite of what we
need.”
Trump
once tweeted, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese
in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
That
translated to the administration’s budget proposal in which the Environmental
Protection Agency’s budget was cut 24 percent, while its staffing was cut by 20
percent. This impacts local funding of organizations like the Great Lakes
Restoration Initiative and the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation.
