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Just think how audacious restoration becomes when you consider all the restoration efforts in the United States – all $200 billion of them – that span more than half the nation. That’s a lot of congressional districts.
A few months ago, representatives from numerous US restoration efforts – including the HOW Coalition – met in New Orleans to discuss creating a Great Waters Coalition. The reason is simple: numbers matter in Washington.
The Great Lakes are home to more than 40 million people in political swing states, but when you add in the other restoration projects such as Chesapeake Bay, Everglades, Puget Sound, and Coastal Louisiana to name a few, then we are talking about half the people in this country residing in more than 27 states. “That is a lot of voters and a huge caucus in Congress,” said Bill Leary, who used to work with the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Right now, each region or restoration project is pitted against one another when they try to get funding from Congress. When the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative was being considered by Rep. Norm Dick’s (D-Wash.) subcommittee in the US House, folks working for Puget Sound restoration (including his son) may have been wondering why the Great Lakes deserve money more than their Representative’s backyard does (Puget Sound is in Dick’s district – imagine Thanksgiving dinner at his place this year!). This system that leaves every restoration project to fend for itself sets up an unlikely competition, according to Malia Hale who directs water restoration campaigns for the National Wildlife Federation. She says, “It’s fostering competition between the have not’s and the have not’s. Working together will help us improve and get a greater amount of money.”
Combining efforts isn’t as big of a leap as you might think – consider how connected this nation’s waterways are especially to the wildlife that lives in them. “The Great Lakes are not a closed system,” said Gildo Tori, a policy director with Ducks Unlimited. “We are connected to many other parts of the country,” he explained while showing a slide detailing the migration of waterfowl from the Great Lakes to the Chesapeake, Gulf of Maine, and even the Texas panhandle. Besides, the Great Lakes may be in the spotlight right now, but that spotlight moves and these restoration projects are 30-year multibillion dollar projects.
A shifting spotlight
“The spotlight moves, it doesn’t stay in one place. It shifts around the country and it can dim and fade and sometimes it can blind you. The spotlight can be shut off depending on how successful you are and you may not get the attention you once had,” Tori said. Just this week, the federal agencies working on the restoration of Chesapeake Bay – our nation’s largest estuary – released a series of draft reports that would implement a strategy for cleaning up the pollution in the Bay.
The Chesapeake Bay touches six states and DC and is worth $1 trillion in business dollars (it produces more than 500 million pounds of seafood a year) and supports thousands of species of plants and wildlife. The President also named a Czar for the Bay this year – are we going to compete with the Bay for the spotlight or work together to ensure all our restoration efforts are completed and this nation’s waters are returned to a healthy state?
It wasn’t long ago that the Everglades was in the spotlight – President George W. Bush set aside $200 million a year for 20 years for Everglades Restoration. Jeb Bush was Governor of Florida then and Bill Leary was with the White House. Leary says people were always coming up to him saying, “Bill we want the Everglades money and we deserve it. Well, the truth is, so would they.” Of the total $1.9 billion the Everglades restoration projects were promised, they received $314 million. American politics sure is a fickle beast.
“It’s in there” politics
But here is the most important argument for joining forces into a Great Water’s Coalition: the Congress wants us to do it (even if they don’t know it), and the White House wants us to do it (and they do know it). NWF’s Hale who advocates for water restoration in Congress, says she is always hearing from lawmakers that they would like to give the Great Lakes money, but then what about the Everglades, or the Chesapeake or Puget Sound?
But when we all come together under one umbrella with one price tag then: “Rep. Norm Dicks sees money for Puget Sound, Sen. Barbara Boxer sees it for San Francisco Bay…you start seeing a package here that they pay attention to,” said Leary. But even more importantly, he says “the Obama Administration wants you to do it.” Friends of Leary’s in the White House have argued that an overarching restoration coalition would help the White House get funding for our programs and it would have a stronger edge when competing with other national priorities for funding. “This Administration sees the ecosystem restoration efforts as a package and you need to as well if you are going to help them help you.”
Leary dared us to think big – to think of the audacity of restoration. Since the Great Waters Conference this past summer, people representing various restoration projects have been meeting in committees to establish parameters for a coalition. Hale says that they are hoping to have the work complete so that a Great Waters Coalition can be launched sometime in November.
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