TPM: After An Angry Tweet From The President, Money Dried Up For Storm Surge Planning
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime/weekly-primers/new-york-city-seawall-trump-administration-flooding-tweet-mop-bucket
By Matt Shuham
February 27, 2020 2:47 p.m.
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The Army Corps of Engineers announced this week the study examining the potential sea wall and several others were being shut down. It was a money issue, but not a congressional one; somewhere along the line after Congress allocated the funds at the White House budget office perhaps, or the Pentagon the cash was cut off.
Robert Freudenberg, vice president of the Regional Plan Association, told TPM that stakeholders only found out about the studys cancellation because the Army Corps cancelled a planned meeting on the project.
There was supposed to be a public meeting happening, he recalled. They said, That meeting is indefinitely postponed, and, by the way, so is the study.'
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The Trump administration has demonstrated a pattern of interfering in government science everything from scrubbing climate change information from agency webpages to stocking scientific advisory boards with industry allies.
In March of last year, the Navy quietly ended a climate change task force that had been empaneled during the Obama administration, saying it was no longer needed.
The bashful wind-down of such panels wasnt normally how things work, the Navy task forces former leader told E&E News. The task force ended, in my opinion, without full incorporation of climate change considerations, Navy Rear Adm. Jon White said.
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