Days Left to Save the EPA

Contact your members of Congress now! 

We're at the home stretch. Congress is fast-approaching Friday’s funding deadline, and they have a choice to make: Pass legislation that decimates the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget; or compromise (and avoid a government shutdown) by extending current funding levels until a better budget is proposed.

We can’t let the budget pass as it stands right now—because it’s a clear attempt by the Trump Administration to hobble the EPA, leaving only (as the President himself put it) “little tidbits” of the agency whose sole purpose is to protect Americans’ health and safety.

We deserve strong protections from the pollution that puts us at risk. Use our easy tool (link below) to call your Senators today, and demand that they protect the EPA—and oppose the bad budget bill.

This is a fight we can win. Because when the President proposed his budget, cuts to the EPA were so outrageous that even members of his own party spoke out against them.

Here’s what President Trump is pushing to cut:

*Clean water: The budget would eliminate funding to mitigate runoff pollution from roads, parking lots, and farm fields. Grants that protect water and soil from tanks that leak chemicals would disappear. And water pollution control grants and state public water system supervision would be slashed by nearly a third.

*Clean air: EPA grants for local air quality monitoring would also be cut by a third—putting Americans’ health directly at risk. These are the grants that allow your local officials to keep track of whether or not the air you and your loved ones are breathing is safe—and to warn children and the elderly to stay inside when it’s too dangerous to breathe outside.

*Climate action: President Trump’s budget would eliminate basically all funding for EPA’s work on climate—including the Clean Power Plan, international climate programs, and eviscerating all climate research.

- Heather Shelby, Action Network Manager

Use this link to be connected with your members of Congress.

The link above forwarded me to Sen. McCain's office - where they encouraged me to leave a message on his website (see link below.) I left a message in both places.

https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact-form

Here is my personalized message for inspiration...

Dear Senator McCain,

Please, don't let the budget pass as it stands right now—because it’s a clear attempt by the Trump Administration to hobble the EPA - an agency whose sole purpose is to protect Americans’ health and safety.

Here in Tucson we have annual flood damage from monsoon storms. We rely on funds from the EPA to fix our roads and underpasses.The budget would eliminate funding to mitigate runoff pollution from roads, parking lots, and farm fields.

Without the EPA, we would not have found out about the dioxin that leaked into Tucson's aquifer. The EPA forced the guilty parties to clean up our water. We still need our wells to be tested for poison toxins. But the Grants that protect water and soil from tanks that leak chemicals would also disappear under the President's budget.

As you know, sewage is leaking into Arizona from the border town of Naco. We need the EPA to clean up that mess.

Please, don't put our lives at risk by passing a budget that cuts funds from the EPA. Your constituents are counting on you to protect them. Please, vote no to any budget that cuts much needed funds for the EPA.

Thank you,
Jana Segal