Senator Gary Peters announces $9 million bonus for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Gary Peters has announced an additional $9 million has been secured for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative for the fiscal year of 2020.

This initiative aims at maintaining our Great Lakes, which provides drinking water for almost 40 million people, is critical to the fishing industry, supports hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout the region, and contributes $10 billion a year in tourism. “We’ll I’m certainly pleased I was able to get additional funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative,” said Sen. Peters. “This is an incredibly important resource for us to clean up the Great Lakes and keep them clean. It deals with cleaning up toxic waste sites. It deals with making sure invasive species stay out, as well as all the watersheds are healthy so that the water going into the Great Lakes is clean.”

Sen. Peters pointed out that this is the first time that congress has appropriated more money than was authorized. He said this shows that the country is realizing how important these bodies of water are. “This additional funding passed the senate unanimously and that shows that the rest of the country is realizing that the Great Lakes are important, not just for Michigan, and the Great Lakes state, but these are an incredibly important resource for the entire country, and we have to do everything we can to make sure that they stay healthy.”

This money increase brings funding up from $301 million to $310 million.