Pres. Trump's budget calls for cuts to cleanup funding for waterways, including Lake Michigan

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — President Donald Trump is trying again to slash federal cleanup funding for major U.S. waterways, including the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay.

The president's 2020 budget released Monday, March 11 calls for spending $30 million on the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a program intended to remove toxic pollution, fight invasive species and deal with other longstanding environmental problems in the eight-state region. That's a 90 percent cut from the $300 million the program has gotten in most years since it began in 2010.

The budget also proposes a 90 percent cut cleanup efforts in the Chesapeake Bay and would eliminate restoration funding for the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Champlain, Long Island Sound, South Florida, San Francisco Bay and Puget Sound.

President Trump sought similar cutbacks in his previous budgets but Congress rejected them.