Cape Cod water quality projects in limbo after Trump funding freeze
- The affected projects, totaling $17.5 million, aim to restore salt marshes, wetlands, tidal exchanges, and a cold-water fishery.
- Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, believes the freeze stems from an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that paused federal funding.
- Gottlieb has been unable to submit payment requests since the order was enacted.
- Gottlieb is seeking answers from the federal government but has been met with silence.
Federal funding remains frozen for six water quality restoration projects on the Cape, despite challenges to President Donald Trump’s executive order.
Andrew Gottlieb, executive director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, has been unable to submit payment requests through the federal government portal since Jan. 21, the day after Trump took office.
“I just told the Harwich Conservation Trust to put the brakes on a construction contract because we don’t have the money or the assurance we can pay for it,” he said in a Feb. 5 telephone interview. The contract is for Hinckleys Pond work.
The nonprofit signed two contracts with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for projects to restore salt marshes, wetlands, tidal exchanges, and a cold-water fishery in Falmouth, Mashpee, Dennis and Harwich. Partners in the work include the towns of Dennis, Falmouth, Mashpee, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, Harwich Conservation Trust and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
But one of the executive orders Trump signed during his first week in office paused disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Gottlieb believes that’s the reason he hasn’t been able to submit invoices.
“We’ve been unable to access the federal payment system to submit invoices for work legally authorized to be completed under the terms of binding contracts,” he said in a telephone interview Feb. 5.
The Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) is an electronic system that federal agencies use to transfer money. Gottlieb has tried to access the system several times daily.
“When contracts are signed, the money transfers off the agency’s account into the ASAP system which is managed under the Department of Treasury,” he said. “That money is then available because it’s been encumbered by the contract and distributed for legally authorized program activities and uses.”
Those two legally binding contracts, totaling $17.5 million, were authorized by Congress for the following projects:
- The restoration of a tidal pond and salt marsh at Oyster Pond in West Falmouth.
- A bog and wetland restoration project at Red Brook on the Falmouth/Mashpee border.
- The restoration of a cold-water fisheries habitat for herring migration on the Upper Quashnet River in Mashpee.
- The restoration of Mashpee River from Mashpee Pond to the tidal exchange on Route 28.
- A salt marsh restoration project at the Weir Creek system in Dennis.
- A cranberry bog and natural wetland conversion at Hinckleys Pond in Harwich.
The federal agency Gottlieb works with hasn’t been able to give him any information. He was told to contact the ASAP help line, but no one picks up.
“You can grow old waiting on the line,” he said. “No one answers. It’s pretty bad.”
Denise Coffey writes about business, tourism and issues impacting the Cape’s residents and visitors. Contact her at[email protected] .
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