Healey slams Trump for canceling $45M to protect farms, forests and wetlands in WMass and beyond
President Donald Trump 'is yet again taking action that will hurt Massachusetts' rural communities, farmers, and economy,' Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement.
'This is funding that would have been used to ensure clean water, provide access to fresh local food, and support our agricultural economy,' Healey said, accusing the Republican president of 'making us less healthy and weakening our economy. He should reverse these cuts immediately.'
The state announced the money, awarded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in October 2024.
It includes $20.8 million earmarked for protecting farms and wetlands that would have especially benefited the state's smaller and more rural communities, Healey's office said.
The White House also canceled $25 million that would have gone to Mass Audubon to protect more than 10,000 acres of 'vital' forest and wetlands along the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts.
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That money 'epitomized government efficiency and effectiveness. Not only would the grant have protected 10,000 acres of land that safeguards the public's drinking water and benefits wildlife,' David O'Neill, Mass Audubon's president and CEO, said in the administration's statement.
The now-canceled cash also 'would have leveraged tens of millions of private funds, and, importantly, kept working lands in the hands of private farmers,' O'Neill continued. 'When we terminate grants that conserve our forests, keep working lands working, act as a flood protection buffer for communities, and leverage millions from other funding sources, we all lose.'
The money that would have headed to farmers 'strips [them] of critical tools to keep their land in agriculture through voluntary conservation easements,' state Agricultural Resources Commissioner Ashley Randle said.
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'Without this support, farmers lose options – and some may be pushed to sell, putting local farming at risk," Randle said.
The USDA announced last month that it was cancelling the Climate Smart Commodities Program — a $3 billion effort to fund projects across the country to improve soil health, sequester carbon, reduce methane emissions and encourage other climate-friendly farming practices, The Wisconsin Examiner reported.
The USDA dismissed the program as a 'Biden era slush fund,' and argued that it was 'built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers.'
Earlier this week, state Attorney General Andrea J. Campbell, joined by colleagues nationwide, asked a federal judge in Boston to bar the White House from using an obscure clause in federal law to cut off funding to the states.
The Republican White House has wrongly used the 'agencies priorities clause' to block funding to the states for programs ranging from fighting violent crime and education to protecting clean drinking water and addressing food insecurity, Campbell's office said in a statement.
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