Kilili vows to fight for continued EPA funding

WASHINGTON, D.C.—As the Pacific Islands Environmental Conference ended, Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP) thanked Environmental Protection Agency Region IX Administrator Alexis Strauss and all his team for the agency’s work in the Marianas.

And Sablan vowed to continued his work to maintain EPA funding—especially the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water programs that have brought over $55 million to the Marianas, because of changes in the funding formula that Sablan helped achieve in 2009, his first year in office.

“The Environmental Protection Agency is one of the great federal partners for the Marianas,” Sablan said. “From the cleanup of PCB contamination in Tanapag to the agency’s work helping to close the Puerto Rico dump the Marianas has a cleaner, healthier environment today, thanks to EPA.”

The congressman also vowed to do everything possible to maintain the EPA funding that the new Trump administration has proposed slashing.

“Congress provided $2.1 million in direct funding to the Marianas in the current fiscal year, 2017,” Sablan said. “President Trump has proposed cutting that by $926,678 in fiscal 2018.

“That means, if the Commonwealth wants [the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Quality] to keep protecting our fragile island environment, CNMI taxpayers will have to come up with extra money to replace what President Trump is taking away.

“Of course,” Sablan added, “many of us in Congress do not agree with the President and we will work to maintain the funding that goes through EPA to our local governments. But our work is more difficult when the White House does not want to help us protect the environment.”

Trump has also proposed eliminating nationwide the Coastal Zone Management Program, which is key to protecting the sensitive shoreline of the Mariana Islands. That program is worth $1,028,000 to the Marianas annually, money that would have to be replaced by Commonwealth taxpayers, if environmental safeguards and controls of coastal developments are to continue.

Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget also cuts 20 percent from the annual Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act grants that help the Marianas maintain its water and sewer systems. That could mean a loss of about $1 million—funds that would have to be paid with CUC rate increases by every household and business in the Marianas.

“When I was first elected, the Safe Drinking and Clean Water funding set aside for the islands was 0.25 percent and 0.33 percent, respectively,” Sablan explained. “Starting in 2010 we got those set-asides increased to 1.5 percent for both programs. As a result, the Marianas has received $55 million in water and sewer project funds through fiscal year 2016. Without the formula change we would have gotten only about $6 million.

“CUC ratepayers would have had to pay the $49 million difference, if we had not gotten the funding formula changed,” Sablan said.

“Every time CUC has a ribbon cutting for a new waterline or signs a contract for a new improvement in our wastewater system I recommit myself to keeping CUC rates low by making sure that 10-fold funding increase we got, beginning in 2010 and every year after, continues.” (PR)