Slash & burn plan for EPA’s budget

The Trump administration wants to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by 25 percent, targeting climatechange programs and others designed to prevent air and water pollution.

President Trump — who once called global warming a hoax created by the Chinese — repeatedly vowed on the campaign trail to undo former President Barack Obama’s climate-change policies and to pull out of the Paris Agreement to mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions.

The 23-page 2018 budget proposal would cut the EPA’s budget to $6.1 billion and reduce staffing at the agency by 20 percent to 12,400, Reuters reported, citing sources.

The cash will be diverted to help pay for Trump’s proposed $54 billion hike in military spending — but the cuts could also gut the EPA’s enforcement of environmental rules.

Under the proposal, which was sent to the EPA this week, grants to states for toxic-lead cleanup would be cut 30 percent to $9.8 million, according to the source, who read the document to Reuters. Grants to help Native American tribes combat pollution would be cut 30 percent to $45.8 million.

And an EPA climate-protection program focused on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases like methane that contribute to global warming would be cut 70 percent to $29 million. The proposal would also cut funding for the brownfields industrial-site cleanup program by 42 percent to $14.7 million and would reduce funding for enforcing existing pollution laws by 11 percent to $153 million.

Environmentalists slammed the cuts.

“Slashing the EPA’s budget will be dangerous to our health and the well-being of our children,” said Rhea Suh, president of the National Resources Defense Council.

The Republican-led Congress may fight some of the cuts.