Thanks to your calls, tweets, and emails and the hard work of our partners at Heal the Bay, Clean Ocean Action, NRDC , Surfers Environmental Alliance and the Waterkeeper Alliance, we were able to get 18 Senators to join New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg to request that the federal funding for water quality monitoring be restored. More specifically, they sent a letter to the Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment and Related Agencies requesting that they restore the funding for EPA's Beach Act grant program.
You can read the Senators' letter and see who signed on here. This is a great first step towards restoring this important funding and maintaining tough national standards on recreational water quality monitoring at our beaches. A similar request was also submitted by a bipartisan group of Congressman led by R. Pallone and Lobiondo, also from NJ, to the Appropriations Subcommittee in the House of Representatives.
We have also submitted a request directly to the Appropriations Subcommittees along with over 60 other environmental, coastal and health agencies asking for the BEACH Act grant funding to be restored. Read our letter here.
You can get some background on this issue here.
You can continue to help support our efforts to restore funding for water quality monitoring by contacting your Congressional representatives here.
Stay tuned as we continue to advocate for this important issue.