Money from the Great Lakes office has been used to clean up Muskegon Lake in west Michigan, the Rouge River in southeast Michigan, and dozens of other projects. Ambs said these are not just environmental but economic development successes, restoring once-polluted areas to cleaner conditions and returning $3 for every $1 invested by boosting real estate values, tourism and job growth.

But the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative isn’t the only EPA effort imperiled by the administration’s spending priorities.

The Chicago Sun-Times, citing an anonymous source, said the cuts would lead to the closing of the Region 5 office of the EPA, which covers six states including Michigan, and whose staff were deeply involved, as heroes and villains, in the Flint water crisis. An agency spokesman denied the report.

The EPA issued a statement saying Administrator Scott Pruitt “is committed to leading the EPA in a more effective, more focused, less costly way as we partner with states to fulfill the agency’s core mission,” and offered no further comment.

Politicians from both major parties have spoken out against the cuts. Democratic Sen. Gary Peters called the potential closing of the Region 5 office a matter of “grave concern” and a “disaster for the Great Lakes.” His Senate colleague and fellow Democrat Debbie Stabenow described axing the GLRI as “outrageous.”

Sixty-three members of Congress signed a letter to the House Appropriations Committee, asking that GLRI funding be restored. The letter was signed by all but two members of the Michigan delegation – Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Midland, who as a member of the committee would not sign such a letter, and who later wrote an op-ed pledging his support for the GLRI; and Justin Amash, R-Cascade Twp.

Amash said at a recent town-hall meeting that he supports the EPA, but the agency “overreaches,” and protecting the Great Lakes is “complicated.”

“We need to analyze what the cuts are that are being proposed ...and try to understand what is the best level of funding and what is proper EPA oversight versus state oversight,” Amash said at a town hall in Ionia.

The stopgap spending plan takes much of the passion out of the debate, as it preserves the GLRI and only cuts the EPA’s overall budget by a single percentage point, said Jason Hayes, director of environmental policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market think tank in Midland.

But Hayes said federal agencies should be prepared to shrink under Trump.

“I won’t pretend cutting the GLRI was a good idea, but honestly, is there any government agency that can’t cut somewhere?” Hayes said.

So what effect would such cuts have in Michigan? Environmental groups have done the math, and have some ideas. While stressing, as Amash does, that a blueprint is only a request, most believe some cuts are inevitable.

“Numbers don’t lie,” said Joel Brammeier, president and CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, in Chicago. “This gives us the reality check of what the Trump administration really thinks of the Great Lakes.”

Experts point to several areas likely to see fewer resources in the future:

Less oversight of the Great Lakes, its tributaries and other bodies of water

Both drinking water and recreational water resources would likely be less protected if EPA money is lost, via cuts to both grant programs and EPA programs. Charlotte Jameson, government affairs director for the League of Conservation Voters, said the Trump budget proposal cuts grants to states by 45 percent for control of “non-point” pollution -- such as runoff from farm fields. Such runoff has been tied to toxic algae blooms that temporarily poisoned drinking water in Toledo and other Lake Erie communities in 2014, as well as nuisance algae blooms in inland lakes and at such marquee vacation spots as Sleeping Bear Dunes.