To the dismay of many Toledo-area officials and environmental groups, the Trump Administration is trying to kill all but 3 percent of funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

The program has been used for everything from helping Toledo avoid another algae-induced water crisis to building a wetland that reduces beach bacteria at Maumee Bay State Park.

The Ottawa River near Camp Miakonda has benefited from it, as has the Toledo Zoo in its long-range quest to re-establish huge, old-as-dinosaur lake sturgeon along the Maumee River.

The program last year provided the University of Toledo a half-million dollars to research invasive species.

It provided another half-million dollars to help farmers in Wood and Ottawa counties better control algae-forming runoff from their fields.

It was the biggest source of government funding for the historic $53 million, four-year cleanup of the River Raisin near Monroe that was completed last year.

“It is hard to imagine a more perilous time for the Trump Administration to abandon efforts that protect and restore our Great Lakes,” U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) said. “With a bipartisan effort, we can turn back ill-advised attacks on the health and quality of the lakes if President Trump proposes them. It will be all hands on deck for our Great Lakes.”

The GLRI was created by the Obama administration in response to a 2008 campaign pledge to infuse the Great Lakes region with at least $5 billion in new money for restoration work.

That promise came in response to the former Bush administration’s inventory of Great Lakes needs, the most comprehensive of its kind and one that showed the region needed about $23 billion of work back in 2005 — hardly any of which was funded until President Obama took office because of costs associated with Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the war in Iraq that year.

The Obama administration fell short of its pledge, never funding the GLRI higher than the program’s first-year allocation of $500 million. Congress settled at $300 million a year.

Now, the Trump Administration wants to fund the GLRI at only $10 million, a 97 percent cut of what it’s been in recent years, according to a leaked Environmental Protection Agency draft budget.

That drew an outcry from many Great Lakes advocates, including Lucas County Commissioners.

“We absolutely need those dollars. If you’re going to build a wall, why not build a wall to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes?” Commissioner Carol Contrada told The Blade from Burlington, Vt., where she is attending a major symposium addressing environmental concerns of large bodies of water. The gathering is co-sponsored by Vermont Law School.

“I really didn’t expect it to be so draconian,” Ms. Contrada, who is to deliver a speech about western Lake Erie at that event today, said of the proposed funding cut.

She said the cuts threaten to undo 40 years of environmental progress for the Great Lakes, which hold 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water.

“You really can’t stop and restart this,” Ms. Contrada said. “This is a continuing effort.”

Lucas County Commission President Tina Skeldon-Wozniak said she and other public officials must see to it that Congress doesn’t go along with the Trump budget plan.

“We would be neglecting our responsibility,” she said.

Under the tentative plan from the Office of Management and Budget, the federal EPA’s overall funding would be reduced by roughly 25 percent and about 3,000 jobs would be cut, about 19 percent of the agency’s staff. A spokesman for the EPA declined to comment. The White House also declined to comment.

Numerous Great Lakes environmental groups issued statements rebuking the proposed cuts, as did the Ann Arbor-based Great Lakes Commission, which is paid by the eight Great Lakes states to help coordinate regional policies, and the Chicago-based Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, a coalition of mayors from 125 Great Lakes cities including Toledo.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published March 4, 2017, 5:00 a.m.