Trump Sells Rural Voters Up the River

[applegrove]

https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/news/trump-sells-rural-voters-river

By Krissy Kasserman at Food and Water Watch

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2 - Water Infrastructure: Trump’s proposed budget would eliminate a program designed to help small rural communities improve water and sewer infrastructure. The Government Accountability Office has estimated the cost of replacing rural water infrastructure at nearly $190 billion in the coming decades, and in many cases, small rural communities do not have the number of users needed to improve infrastructure while maintaining affordable rates. In these cases, communities depend on federal grant and loan programs to make upgrades. The administration insists the program was duplicative because of other programs dedicated to improving water infrastructure generally. However, this was the only program specific to rural America—where small communities are rarely able to compete with larger cities for grants, loans or private financing.


3 - Agribusiness Mega-Mergers: The Trump Administration’s approval of the mega-merger between Dow and DuPont is bad for our food system, but it’s a particularly raw deal for farmers—many of whom are likely to see their income fall for the fourth straight year in 2017. The number of major seed and chemical companies will be reduced from six to five which means less competition—and a near certain rise in prices farmers pay for seeds and chemicals. Farmers are sandwiched between monopoly markets—they’ll have fewer options for purchasing inputs like fertilizer and seeds, and they’ll have fewer options for selling products.


4 - Economic Development: Trump’s proposed 2018 budget would zero out funding for the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority and the Northern Border Regional Commission which have long supported some of our country’s most vulnerable rural populations. These three agencies have a long history of success in creating economic opportunity, providing workforce development and funding infrastructure improvements throughout the northeast, Appalachian and Mississippi delta regions. Eliminating these three commissions affects 698 largely rural counties; the loss of more than $175 million will also impact regional efforts to support a just transition away from dirty energy and toward a more sustainable future.


5 - Promoting Fracking: An increase in natural gas exports, the cornerstone of Trump’s shortsighted and dangerous energy plan, will sacrifice rural America for corporate profit. The construction of pipelines necessary to bring this gas to market—big ones like Keystone and Dakota Access, and countless thousands of smaller ones—will turn our nation’s farmland into a tangled web of dirty and dangerous pipes. Trump’s postponement of an Obama-era rule limiting the release of methane and smog-forming pollutants from oil and gas wells was just blocked by a U.S. District Court, but you can bet the Trump Administration will keep trying. Delay of the methane rule will subject rural communities—where the vast majority of oil and gas development occurs—to higher levels of this dangerous and toxic pollutant. Recent studies in the Marcellus Shale basin have shown methane levels more than 50 parts per billion higher than would otherwise be expected in rural areas.


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