Last year, Vice President J.D. Vance, then an Ohio senator, was part of a bipartisan coalition calling to increase funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, or GLRI — among the country’s largest investments aimed at protecting and restoring the Great Lakes. 

“The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative delivers the tools we need to fight invasive species, algal blooms, pollution, and other threats to the ecosystem,” said Vance, who was co-chair of the Senate Great Lakes Task Force when the reauthorization bill was announced. He voted to extend and increase funding for the project until 2031. 

“This is a commonsense, bipartisan effort that I encourage all of my colleagues to support,” Vance said.

Advocates hope he hasn’t changed his mind. 

The five Great Lakes — Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario — represent the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world and a source of drinking water for about 10 percent of the country’s population. Since 2010, the massive GLRI spending package has helped fund everything from microplastics research to algal bloom elimination to climate-resilient shorelines. Just this week, Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Senator Todd Young of Indiana introduced a bill that would reauthorize funding at $500 million per year for the next five years. Politicians often point to the initiative as proof that they can agree on conservation and environmental issues.

But its future may be at risk. The last time Trump was in office, his administration tried and failed to slash or even eliminate GLRI funding several times. Now, Trump is taking aim at environmental spending, including funding for programs tied to environmental justice and climate change. Vance has changed course on environmental issues as he has risen through the political ranks, such as his support for coal, electric vehicles, and even what he’s said about human-caused climate change. He also invested in and sat on the board of the disastrous indoor farming operation AppHarvest. Advocates hope that Vance might save the GLRI despite a hostile political environment.

Already, the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars from two major initiatives passed under former president Joe Biden: the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. Amid escalating uncertainty around federal support, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker preemptively halted construction earlier this week on a billion-dollar megaproject to prevent the spread of invasive fish in the Great Lakes. But Trump’s blocking of federal funds for climate and DEI initiatives could put him at odds with longstanding bipartisan support for the Great Lakes — including from Vance.

“We know [Vance] supports Great Lakes restoration and protection,” said Laura Rubin, the director of Healing Our Waters–Great Lakes Coalition, a Michigan-based advocacy organization for federal environmental policy. “He was a champion of it, and we’re hoping that translates into his role as vice president.”

The vice president’s office did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment.

The GLRI began as a bipartisan response to mounting environmental problems in the early 2000s: rampant industrial and agricultural pollution, declining fish stocks, and growing threats of invasive species.

Recently retired Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow helped launch the initiative 15 years ago, during the Obama administration. “We need a fund that has broad jurisdiction, that can be activated immediately when there is a crisis,” she said at a policy conference in January.

The GLRI was preceded by a 2004 executive order from former president George W. Bush to create a regional task force — an attempt at improving coordination among federal agencies, states, and tribes to remediate freshwater ecosystems. 

Since it began, the GLRI has funded over 8,000 projects, with the federal government spending approximately $5 billion over the last 14 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

“That [funding] goes to cleaning up some of the most contaminated properties in our harbors and cities,” Rubin said. “It goes to improving habitats and removing invasive species. It goes to reducing phosphorus and nutrient runoff, and it goes to education and outreach.”

Many lawmakers support the GLRI for its economic benefits, such as increased tourism, job creation, and commercial development. A 2018 economic analysis from the Great Lakes Commission and the Council of Great Lakes Industries found that every federal dollar spent through the landmark program resulted in about $3 of additional benefits.

Bill Huizenga, a Republican representative from Michigan, co-sponsored the latest push to reauthorize the GLRI. He recently posted a video from a regional environmental summit, urging a plan for how to “parlay the relationships with J.D. Vance and people who are familiar with” the GLRI and explain what this investment means ecologically and economically. Huizenga’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

But funding can’t protect the Great Lakes if there’s nobody to direct it. 

The Trump administration, as part of a broader campaign, has begun an aggressive push to gut federal agencies, including the EPA, which oversees the GLRI. Last week, EPA workers were notified that more than 1,000 positions filled within the previous year could be terminated at any time. Not long after, a total of 168 employees who work on environmental justice projects were placed on paid administrative leave. 

Both deal a major blow to the EPA office that regulates much of the Midwest and Great Lakes, according to Nicole Cantello, president of the union that represents regional EPA workers. She estimated the Trump administration’s cuts could cost the office approximately 200 employees — one fifth of its entire workforce. 

Cantellos said that’s bad news for offices like the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office, which leads GLRI implementation. “I don’t know how strong that program will be after all this round of resignations and dismissals.” she said. 

The program — which has relied on funding from the the bipartisan infrastructure law to clean up some of the most environmentally damaged areas of the Great Lakes region — has a much lower percentage of obligated funds compared to many others. This means it could be at a greater risk of clawbacks; less than half of the appropriated $597 million had been obligated as of January 6, according to an EPA report. 

Last year, when the Republican-controlled House of Representatives was cutting overall spending levels, it didn’t touch the GLRI, according to Don Jodery, director of federal relations for the nonprofit Alliance of the Great Lakes.

Jodery said it’s fair for new administrations to review federal funding and agency staffing. “But some of these programs are really, critically important,” he said,” “and they really shouldn’t be up for debate as to whether or not they need to be funded.”