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Great Lakes from space
(Picture courtesy of NASA on flickr.com.)
Another event in the ongoing saga that is that Big Lie about government not creating jobs is happening in the Great Lakes. Begun in 2009 when there still was a somewhat functional congress, the Great Lakes Restoration Investment is putting taxpayer money to work. For a change, that will be to benefit actual taxpayers.
In the Great Lakes area, the jobs will be created to work for ecological renewal, infrastructure and research that put back together one of the country’s most important resources.
As part of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will spend $6 million to hire unemployed people to work on a variety of projects related to cleaning up the Great Lakes. While the jobs program will be on a much smaller scale than the CCC, it will help address both the issue of unemployment and environmental improvement.
The $6 million available from the EPA is specified for projects that both restore the lakes and provide jobs for at least 20 out-of-work people. The EPA will announce its selection of projects by the end of next month.
Up to $1 million is available for any one project, but it must provide immediate benefit to the environment and be done in an area that has been identified as a federal priority, such as pollution sites or national lakeshores.
The work to be done is vital, and will recreate an environment rapidly being lost. The invasive species and loss of waterfront areas to polluting and destructive forces is important for the population, tourism and simple enjoyment of the land we need to protect.
Funded projects will advance the goals and objectives of the GLRI Action Plan, which EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson released in cooperation with 15 other participating agencies and several Great Lakes governors in February 2010.
The Great Lakes provide 20 million Americans with drinking water and underpin a multi-billion dollar economy. In February 2009, President Obama proposed the GLRI, the largest investment in the Great Lakes in two decades.
The Action Plan, which covers FY 2010 through 2014, was developed by a task force of 16 federal departments and agencies to implement the president’s historic initiative. It calls for aggressive efforts to address five urgent priority ‘Focus Areas’:
Cleaning up toxics and toxic hot spot areas of concern
• Combating invasive species
• Promoting near-shore health by protecting watersheds from polluted run-off
• Restoring wetlands and other habitats
• Tracking progress, education and working with strategic partners
If you fell over in a faint, you’ve been taking much too seriously that yapping campaign crowd that likes to refer to the ‘failed stimulus’ and thought that saying it is so makes it so, which your momma should have told you just isn’t so. While the grindingly slow process of working an initiative through the congress, funding it and getting the agencies at state and local levels into action seems like stasis, eventually the program the administration has worked long and hard for does arrive.
That big government can take so long that it seems impossible, but what it can accomplish with public service from those elected by the taxpayers is a very good use of the taxes we pay. That’s what those much maligned govvies are up there in D.C. trying to accomplish, over the many obstacles thrown into their path.
11 Comments
Thanks for the focus Ruth,
I have been following this locally under-reported initiative and there is a lot that needs attention in the lakes region. My fear is that the actual workers that might find temporary minimum wage jobs will be monetarily outpaced by individual contractors pocketing the bulk of available stimulus funding.
The sad state of the lakes on several levels is reported by Dan Egan of the MJS with links to further info.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/127610953.html
Thanks, and true, contractors are going to try shoveling all they can into their own pockets, administrators are going to need supervision. With the cuts in government workers, no need to guess how that’s going to go.
You are so right Ruth. And what gets me even more enraged, is when our very own black, democratic, President agrees with that BIG lie. I’d like for someone in those crowds he campaigns before, to ask him to please explain why he cannot via executive order institute another WPA,( Big government program that created some f***ing jobs.) as Roosevelt did.
“While the jobs program will be on a much smaller scale than the CCC, it will help address both the issue of unemployment and environmental improvement.”
Yes, it is miniscule compared to the great public works of the past. There is unlimited potential for the US to get going on this. Just the initial planning stages would employ thousands for aquisition, accounting, equipment, logistics, and on. Why won’t our President or congress agree to this?
They are being paid not to by the corporatists. They would rather sell our infrastructure and resources to foreigners.
Indeed, that economic health for the country is what the right wing is determined to battle to the death is pretty horrible, but with a good beginning we can hope for the public to get behind what they want. Sadly, the kind of continued battering successful and needed programs are getting from the corporate welfare crowd, the public seems to be deluded into staying out of it and failing to support their own best interests.
Jobs for “at least 20 out-of-work people”
How thrilling. Another 695,000 programs like this and all the unemployed will have temporary minimum wage jobs. And if the $6 million price tag is average it’ll only cost $4.17 trillion!
Look, I’m sorry to rain on the parade but citing this as proof that Big Government can create jobs is like putting out a match with a squirtgun and shouting, “See! Children can fight forest fires!”
TWENTY! 20 WHOLE JOBS!!! Well! If the Teabaggers needed any more proof that Obama is a socialist they just found it.(sarcasm intended for the psychically impaired).
Tangential– France’s super-rich offer pittance of a 3% tax increase the day Sarkozy announces austerity plan (AccountancyAge.Com, Aug. 25, 2011)
Why don’t you try re-reading the parts of the diary that you quoted? Each separate project requesting any part of that funding needs to include 20 people. I can’t request money to employ just me.
Your not raining on anyone’s parade with your faulty math analysis apparently made after misreading the quote in the diary. Ironic, ain’t it.
See nonquixote, or maybe, read the info
Nothing ironic about vague phrasing, but you’re correct that this is far less whimpy than I thought. Still, when it comes to rain and parades I notice you didn’t provide non-faulty numbers.
Let’s assume there’ll be a dozen projects, each employing 25 people: a whole 300 people off the dole and back into the workplace (at least temporarily). We got that unemployment problem on the run now, eh?
Seriously, do we have another 46,333 projects? I’m certain there’s that much work to be done a price tag of $278 billion is actually doable, at least in theory.