Flint, Michigan, won’t be a casualty in President Trump’s environmental war, according to EPA officials TYT Politics spoke with.

The agency confirmed the $100 million (shrunk from $170 million) funded to Flint through Congress last year will not be affected by Trump’s 31 percent downsizing of the EPA.

“No previously awarded grant would be affected by any budget proposal,” Jeff Kelley, Director for EPA Region 5’s Office of External Communications, told me.

This assurance comes as residents from Flint and fellow lead-poisoned city East Chicago, Indiana, are set to rally in Chicago Tuesday along with several environmental groups to protest the president’s machete to the EPA.

Trump’s draconian budget proposal comes at a time when cities around the country are dealing with water contamination, dangerous levels of air pollution, pipeline spills, and other threats to our people and planet.

And the most vulnerable communities — ones like Flint and East Chicago, who’ve been poisoned by gross negligence and governmental corruption — are having insult added to injury with looming cuts.

Despite big-picture funding for Flint and East Chicago — the latter having received no grant money to date, according to the EPA — remaining untouched so far by Trump’s EPA cuts, the overall assault on the environment will affect them.

One of the biggest cuts looming is to the Great Lakes Restoration Project; a $289 million annual program with 71 full-time employees that has been cleaning up the crucial Great Lakes since 2010.

The lakes, which hold 84 percent of North America’s surface freshwater and economically or environmentally affect the daily lives of some 30 million people, have been a dumping ground for some of the worst industrialized factories’ polluting, specifically in states like Indiana that have the most lax environmental regulations in the country.

If the Great Lakes cleanup is cut from nearly $300 million down to $10 million per year — a 97% cut — then the toxic-waste chemicals dumped into the Great Lakes flow into Lake Huron, which many areas get their drinking water from.

Including Flint, Michigan.

“Eliminating programs that focus on restoring the watersheds — source water comes from these areas — so we are setting the stage for more Flints,” Dr. Adrienne Hollis of environmental justice group WE ACT told me.

So after poisoning Flint’s residents, the government is now going to cut the programs tasked with cleaning up its source drinking water?

Brilliant!

Then there is the Superfund program, which Trump proposes cutting by $28.9 million.

East Chicago, Indiana, was declared a Superfund site in 2009 due to a checkered history of toxic industrialized factories in the area. Worse than that, the northwestern Indiana city had certain sections built on top of a lead smelting plant — and others next to toxic polluters like DuPont and Aarco.

In July of 2016, one low-income government-housing complex was shown to have lead soil levels north of 200 times the “allowable” limit. At the time, an EPA official told me to stop barking about testing the water, promising East Chicago was not Flint and there was no water issue.

Three months later — lead in the water.

My on-the-ground reporting alongside water contamination investigator Scott Smith has also found lead water levels higher than the EPA’s allowable limit of 15 parts per billion.

And it’s not just lead that’s spreading through the air and drinking water. There are also high levels of arsenic that have been found in the soil; my reporting has shown bacteria and toxins like chloroform in both drinking water and shower water (the latter of which the EPA doesn’t test).

So, after government officials on the federal and state level knew about high risks for lead and other contaminants for three decades but did nothing, the Trump administration wants to cut nearly $30 million from toxic Superfund sites.

I guess the residents are already poisoned and sick, so who cares about cleaning up their homes or purifying their water and air, right?

Making matters worse — while East Chicago and other SuperFund cities are harmed by the cuts, toxic polluters will be emboldened: 3,200 SuperFund and general EPA enforcement agents are set to be cut as part of Trump’s EPA demolition.

“If there’s no police out there checking industry, industry is going to do what they want — that’s really one of the worst things that’s going to happen,” Lois Gibbs, the infamous environmental activist who sounded the alarm on toxic chemicals surrounding her and her neighbors’ homes in Love Canal, told me.

“Refineries, power plants, landfills — they’re just going to dump without enough police paying attention. Why would industry do what is right? If they can pollute a little more, which gives them more profit, they will.”

And as these toxic polluters are able to dump their waste unchecked, source water (like the Great Lakes) for cities like Flint will be further contaminated.

Then there’s the $16.61 million cut to the lead-abatement program, which helps old homes with lead-based paint get repainted and retrofitted. An estimated 38 million homes in the U.S. have lead-based paint.

“Further cutting the lead-abatement programs will leave too much unfinished in the ground and inside homes; we are an older city with far too many older homes with lead paint and lead plumbing,” Flint resident and activist Melissa Mays told me. “Slashing these programs will put a stop to the progress towards recovery being made.”

Of the two lead-abatement programs being cut, one includes training for professional remodelers who strip away lead from homes.

So, not only is Trump removing actual funds for lead abatement, but training as well, making it more likely to have folks without the most up-to-date expertise working on homes in desperate need of repair.

And if all this isn’t enough, Trump aims to cut the Environmental Justice Department altogether; a decision that directly harms the most vulnerable communities like East Chicago and Flint.

“Low-income people don’t get anything from the government,” Gibbs said.

Cutting the program would be disaster for East Chicago, Gibbs added.

“A community of color that’s struggling to stay alive and have housing; that program is really important because it provides extra resources to people who need it.”

Those resources include grants, licenses, and regulations for predominantly low-income and minority communities.

Gibbs suspects that whatever grants are pending for Flint and East Chicago will most likely avoid cuts since too many people are paying attention.

But, transparency in the Trump administration has not been forthcoming.

“What Trump administration is doing is putting these numbers out there without putting forward any details,” she said.

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and HUD Secretary Ben Carson are scheduled to visit East Chicago this month.