US Budget Director On Climate-National Security Prep: "We're Not Spending Money On That Any More"
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Many of these programs help cities cope with water emergencies. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, one microbiologist interviewed by ABC News sampled floodwaters in New Orleans and found bacteria linked to sewage at 45,000 times the level considered safe for swimming. Seven years later, Hurricane Sandy inundated East Coast water treatment plants to the point of overflow, releasing a total of 10.9 billion gallons of sewage into waterways and streets along the mid-Atlantic coast. In places like Camden, New Jersey, an economically depressed, mostly black and Latino community with an outdated sewer system, the risk of contaminated water is more routine: Sewage flows into the streets amid hard rains.
At the federal level, the task of helping cities like New Orleans and Camden deal with these water crises falls in part to Homeland Security. It’s not one of the department’s flashiest mandates, but the work, in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency, helps to secure public health by stopping toilet water from entering streets, homes, and waterways during extreme weather events.
“If you’re going to have catastrophic flooding that threatens public health, then that’s something we need to look at,” said Alice Hill, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and an architect of the Department of Homeland Security’s early efforts at addressing climate change under Obama. “To the extent you see chronic seepage of wastewater endangering routinely the health of American citizens, that’s something Homeland Security will worry about.”
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Yet the climate change-related branding that helped advance the project under Obama has made it a target under the Trump administration. As White House budget director Mick Mulvaney put it, “Regarding the question as to climate change, I think the president was fairly straightforward — we’re not spending money on that anymore. We consider that to be a waste of your money.” In early April, the EPA closed its climate adaptation program, reassigning four staffers. And the March budget memo would slash 224 jobs focused on climate protection.
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https://theintercept.com/2017/04/26/donald-trump-is-slashing-programs-linking-climate-change-to-u-s-national-security/
