Money coming in… money going out - budget talk

Thursday was a roller coaster of a day in terms of budget-related news and the environment.  First we got a press release titled, “All-Cuts Budget is Environmental Crisis for Washington” which announced that Governor Gregoire’s budget cuts would be deep and significant in the arena of environmental protection. Later on we received word from our Spokane Riverkeeper that the Coeur d’ Alene Basin area cleanup efforts would be receiving financial assistance to the tune of $436 million via a settlement in a claim against Asarco Inc.

First, the bad news. On Wednesday, Governor Gregoire released an all-cuts budget that will prove to be detrimental to the core environmental protections that keep our families and communities healthy.  According to a release sent out by the Environmental Priorities Coalition: Natural resource agencies have already been cut to the bone. Last year, one quarter of the funding for natural resource agencies was eliminated. Any further reductions will eliminate the agencies’ ability to deliver basic functions on which we rely. These cuts undermine our values as Washingtonians – a healthy economy and environment that go hand and hand.

This is the exact reason why this year’s Environmental Priorities are so key. One of them, Sustain Environmental Protections in the Budget, will aim to ensure Washington’s budget sustains core environmental protections that safeguard the health of our families, communities and economy. Take some time to learn about the priorities , and contact your representatives to tell them how important they are.

And now for money flooding in to the region for environmental clean-up efforts. As a result of the largest environmental bankruptcy in U.S. history, $1.79 billion has been paid to fund environmental cleanup and restoration under a bankruptcy reorganization of American Smelting and Refining Company LLC (ASARCO), the Justice Department, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture announced Thursday .  This is huge news for the cleanup of mine waste in the Coeur d’Alene Basin, which will receive $436 million dollars according to Spokane Riverkeeper Rick Eichstaedt.
According to a story by Becky Kramer that appeared in the Spokesman yesterday , EPA officials said the settlement will go a long way toward addressing pollution problems in the basin. More than $2 billion worth of cleanup work remains in an area that stretches from the Coeur d’Alene River’s headwaters to Lake Coeur d’Alene and parts of the Spokane River. Rural Shoshone County, where the unemployment rate hit 17 percent in November, should receive an economic boost from the work.  Washington State’s share of the pie was also reported in the Spokesman: Washington will receive $188 million as part of Asarco’s environmental settlement. Most of the money will be used to clean up a toxic plume from the company’s defunct Tacoma lead smelter, which spewed arsenic, lead and other metals over 1,000 square miles. The settlement also includes cleanup money for an Everett smelter, a Pierce County landfill and old mine sites in northwest and Eastern Washington.