The House Appropriations Committee would continue funding key Bay restoration programs at EPA and the Department of the Interior at current levels in the fiscal year 2026 spending plan it approved today, 33-28.
The panel rejected President Trump’s push to eliminate critical grant programs the Bay states rely on to reduce polluted runoff and run their state clean water programs. While it did not slash funds to modernize wastewater treatment plants as deeply as the administration called for, it would cut program funding deeply, from $1.64 billion this year to $1.2 billion in fiscal 2026.
The House Appropriations Committee did follow the administration’s recommendation to direct $92 million to EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program. Funding for the Bay Program, which leads the multi-agency, multi-state cleanup effort, has held steady at $92 million in the last three budget cycles.
Roughly two-thirds of the Bay Program’s annual budget goes to state and local governments, universities, and local conservation groups to fund everything from monitoring water pollution to restoring eroded stream banks and rebuilding populations of native brook trout.
At the Interior Department, the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) work in the Bay watershed would be flat funded at nearly $17.5 million again next year. The Trump budget request would wipe out funding for all USGS ecosystems research and monitoring activities, including in the Bay and its rivers and streams.
The committee also used the report on the bill to express support for USGS’s “watershed-wide research, assessment, monitoring, and modeling that help the Chesapeake Bay partners make informed management decisions to restore and protect the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.”
USGS provides the Bay states and other restoration partners with unbiased scientific information to help manage the watershed’s lands, waterways, fish, and wildlife.
The House Appropriations Committee would also keep funding steady for the Chesapeake WILD grant program, at $8 million, and Chesapeake Gateways and Watertrails, at $3 million in fiscal 2026. The White House budget would not fund either one.
Chesapeake WILD is run by Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service. It provides competitive grants for habitat restoration and conservation projects across the Bay region. Chesapeake Gateways and Watertrails, which the National Park Service administers, makes grants to local communities to showcase sites of historical, environmental, and cultural significance to the Bay and its waterways.
Chesapeake Bay Foundation Senior Policy Director Keisha Sedlacek issued the following statement:
“The broad, bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for restoring the Bay and its waterways stands in stark contrast to the devastating budget cuts and poison pill riders in the House Appropriations Committee bill.
“The committee did reject the White House’s push to eliminate programs that help the states clean up the Bay and its waterways, restore wildlife habitat, and spotlight our region’s natural and historical treasures.
“But this bill would still slash total EPA funding 23 percent, roll back bedrock clean air and water protections, and lock in the administration’s destabilizing mass layoffs and senseless reorganization plans.
“It will be up to the Senate Appropriations Committee to address these glaring deficiencies and match, if not exceed, the Bay restoration funding levels in this bill when it takes up its version later this week.”
Washington, D.C. Communications & Media Relations Manager, CBF
lcaruso@cbf.org
202-793-4485
