Save the Great lakes

The Trump administration’s plans to implement draconian cuts to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, including the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, is contrary to making America great again.

It represents reckless economic policy as well as a threat to national security.

The Great Lakes ecosystem accounts for 21% of global freshwater resources with six quadrillion gallons of water within its basin. Fresh water is essential to safe drinking water, assuring sanitary conditions, sustaining various industrial sectors production, providing bountiful recreational and tourist opportunities and assuring agricultural food security.

Imagine an oil reserve with this capacity. What measures would we adopt to protect it and preserve its integrity given the value of this type of asset? Add to the fact that fresh water represents only 3% of total water on the planet and the clarity for protecting such an investment becomes not only paramount but exigent. The Great Lakes is not unlike other critical infrastructure integral to the domestic economic, social and health security of our nation.

Decimating the budget of the initiative and by extension protection of Great Lakes fresh water from invasive species, pollution run-off and and other current threats to water quality also will have other dire consequences.

Failure to recognize the irreplaceable role of this resource from both environmental and economic perspectives is myopic and could be perceived as hypocrisy. This squarely flies in the face of creating job growth — an often prime and professed imperative of President Donald Trump himself. The Trump White House thinking on this issue needs to be recalibrated.

Paul A. Biedrzycki Milwaukee