WKSU News: Senators to Obama: Use harbor maintenance funds for harbors

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 Senators to Obama: Use harbor maintenance funds for harbors Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman joined senators across the country in asking the Obama Administration to maintain harbors by WKSU's MARANDA SHREWSBERRY	Reporter Maranda Shrewsberry

Ohio Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman joined forces this week to call on the Obama Administration to repair Lake Erie’s harbors. The Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund is part of the Highway Bill that was passed in July.

The money is supposed to be used for operating and dredging harbors, and Brown and Portman joined 23 senators in writing a bipartisan letter requesting the fund be used for that intent instead of what they call unrelated projects.

Kristy Meyer is the director of Agricultural and Clean Water Programs for the Ohio Environmental Council. She says simply that there is a lack of funds for what needs done in the harbors.

Meyer talks about the Toledo Harbor, the shallowest in the Great Lakes.

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“I think it’s a good thing if we can focus these funds for what they’re intended for," she says. "Certainly we know that the Toledo harbor is the shallowest harbor of all harbors in the Great Lakes. And each year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ask for more and more – in their permit they ask to be able to dredge more and more sediments and each year they’re told ‘no.’”

In the letter to the Office of Management and Budget, the senators point out that the fund contains about $8-billion, but budget requests from the fund have only been about $800-million.

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RE: Use of Harbor Funds.

An Open Letter to Ohio Senators Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman and all Ohio Public Officials plus WKSU/89.7 :

Greetings,
As part of ICEA's 25th Anniversary, The 'ICEALITY SILVER REVELATION', the International Center for Environmental Arts (ICEA) would like to expand its 18 year old original Ohio's Coastweeks celebration concept from the ARK in Berea into a National Educational program for children in all 50 States focusing on the natural beauty, iceality, history and development for future uses of America's coastlines.

Specifically, ICEA is seeking to petition the Federal Government to administer and help fund the building of the COASTWEEKS Program. This program would be very similar to the Great Depression Era New Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA) Program called the Federal Art Project (FAP). Almost every community in the United States has riverfront parks or green shoreline spaces which would benefit from this program, especially rural and inter-city areas that would provide positive local community guidance for the youth and jobs for the unemployed who are able to work....
....We Can Do This!

PEACE FRIENDS,
Ambassador Renate

http://www.COASTWEEKS.COM

Posted by: renate jakupca (ARK in Berea, Ohio) on August 17, 2012 4:08AM

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