Cristin Curwick, Minnesota Environmental Partnership
Since January 20th, I had been dreading MEP’s trip to D.C. for Great Lakes Day with the Healing Our Waters Coalition. The new Trump administration already pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and cut federal funding for important environmental research, gutting important environmental work across the country. Flying to D.C. while hundreds of federal workers were losing their jobs felt bleak. The pressure was on to show how these cuts will hurt our communities, and why it’s fiscally sound to address environmental concerns head on.
We were strategic in our approach to the new administration and what sort of stories we wanted to highlight in our communities. Myself and our Executive Director, Steve Morse, were joined by two representatives (Taylor Kline & John Hawkins) from Northern Waters Smokehaus (NWS), a local smoked fish business that serves both residents and tourists of Duluth and rely heavily on trout and white fish from Lake Superior. We also were joined by Salaam Witherspoon, with Family Freedom Center, and Chris Goepfert from National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) to demonstrate the importance of federal workers, Great Lakes issues, and environmental research.
Despite the tension, we were able to meet with staff from every federal Minnesota office, and stopped by Sen. Klobuchar’s weekly Minnesota Mornings breakfast. We pressed on the fiscal impacts of laying off federal employees working to mitigate sea lamprey invasion in our Great Lakes.
Taylor and John expressed how this affects local businesses like Northern Waters Smokehaus that rely on healthy fish populations and tourism. Our group discussed how various GLRI projects along the St. Louis River benefit our community and protect us from bearing the burden of industrial pollution. Chris gave important insight into how these federal layoffs will affect National Parks capacity, especially entering their busiest season.
During our discussions, we were able to level with Legislative staff as their offices were just as confused about some of the shake ups and cuts. They wanted specific stories they could share about how these cuts are affecting folks on the ground. Now we are seeing federal workers who worked on sea lamprey mitigation being offered their jobs back, however the distrust has taken root.
We are going to continue to connect with our legislators and urge them to prioritize Great Lakes Restoration. It’s our time to remind our representatives who they represent and that the cost of clean water is priceless.