Congressman Bill Huizenga and colleagues have introduced legislation to reauthorize the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, seeking to increase the program’s funding from $475 million to $500 per year starting next year.

Huizenga tells us the GLRI is set to expire in 2026, and the legislation would extend it another five years. He says since the initiative was started in 2010, it’s helped clean up pollution, keep invasive species out of the lakes, and maintained drinking water quality.

As a co-chair of the House Great Lakes Task Force, Huizenga says he’s supported the initiative since the beginning.

“Really, what we do is we look at both the ecology and the economy of the Great Lakes, and whether it is in invasive species, whether it’s regarding PFAS, whether it’s regarding habitat restoration, that is really an acknowledgment that we need to have a healthy Great Lakes, both again, on the ecology side but also on the economic side,” Huizenga said.

Huizenga says there has been talk of scaling back the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative at multiple points in the past, both during the Obama administration and the Trump administration, but it’s always been preserved once supporters demonstrate the initiative’s value. He recalls speaking to former President Donald Trump about the GLRI during Trump’s first term and convincing him to save the program.

With talk of massive federal spending cuts as the new Trump administration comes in, Huizenga says supporters of the GLRI will just have to once again show that it’s worth the investment.