Obama unveils proposed $10.5B budget for EPA

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Obama unveils proposed $10.5B budget for EPA

(http://www.pwmag.com/industry-news-email.asp?sectionID=760 & articleID=892348)

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Source: PUBLIC WORKS News Service

Publication date: March 1, 2009

By Water Tech Online

While President Obama on February 26 unveiled his proposed $10.5 billion

2010 budget for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), first lady

Obama was visiting the federal agency.

Obama's proposal is a nearly 50 percent increase over what President Bush

requested last year and is considered the largest in the agency's 39-year

history. The new request is separate from water-related monies contained in the

recently enacted economic stimulus package.

In his budget request, Obama is seeking $3.9 billion for improving the

nation's sewage treatment plants and drinking water systems as well as for

projects to protect sources of drinking water, according to a February 26

Associated

Press (AP) report.

Reuters reported that according to budget documents, the $3.9 billion would

go to the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and the Drinking Water State

Revolving Fund in an " historic increase " that would fund more than 1,700 water

projects in states, Native American tribes and territories. That funding would

be in addition to the $4 billion that is slated to go to those funds through

the stimulus package.

Obama also requested a new $475 million, multi-agency Great Lakes Initiative

that would fund EPA efforts to coordinate with federal partners, states,

tribes, localities and other entities to protect, maintain and restore the

chemical, biological and physical integrity of the lakes, the EPA announced in

a

February 26 press release on the proposed budget.

While Obama unveiled the budget, the first lady told hundreds of EPA

employees during her February 26 visit that they were in the forefront of the

Obama

administration's efforts to clean up polluted communities and combat climate

change.

" You ensure that the water we drink is safe, that the air we breathe is

clean, and that the polluted fields and abandoned factories in our

neighborhoods

all over this nation are cleaned up and restored, " she is quoted as saying in

a February 26 New York Times political and government blog.

Beth Hall, who works in the EPA's groundwater and drinking water office, is

quoted in the blog as saying, " We are just thrilled to be working for an

administration that respects the work we do, environmental work, but public

service more specifically. "

Sharon

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