Victory: Toxics Use Reduction Program funded
Last night the Massachusetts State Senate voted in favor of an amendment to the State Budget to fund the Toxics Use Reduction Act Program - the last major step towards maintaining funding for this important program.
The Toxics Use Reduction Act (TURA) Program, has been a national leader in reducing the use and release of toxic chemicals. In it's 20+ years of existence, the TURA program has worked with Massachusetts companies to reduce 40% of their use and 80% of their release of toxic chemicals, all while saving million of dollars.
This year the funding for TURA was in jeopardy. In the Fiscal Year 2010 Massachusetts state budget, the funding for the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) (the backbone of the program, based at UMass Lowell) was eliminated and the Institute stayed afloat only through federal stimulus funds, not a long term solution.
Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow partners and others have working throughout this year to ensure that the program's funding was restored for Fiscal Year 2011 budget. That campaign started off well as the funding was included in the draft budgets released by the Governor and the House of Representatives. However, there was a bump in the road on May 19th: when the Senate released it's draft budget the line item was not included. While the Toxic Use Reduction Institute got a mention in the UMass Lowell section of the budget, with the University already struggling under a challenging fiscal climate there was no guarantee that it would be able to divert any funds to the TURA Program.Senator Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton) jumped into action and filed an amendment to have the line item included. Other Senators who got behind the effort and co-sponsored the amendment included Susan Fargo, Sonia Chang-Diaz, Michael Moore, Cynthia Creem, Marc Pacheco and Ken Donnelly.
Thanks to their support, the amendment was included in the final Senate budget and we can all rest assured that this important program will be able to continue to do its work, and continue to protect our health and environment from toxic chemicals for the coming year.
