President Joe Biden declared Thursday that a $1 billion infusion from the bipartisan infrastructure deal would restore the Great Lakes harbors and tributary rivers that have been polluted by industrial toxins.
The president ventured close to the banks of Lake Erie to speak in Lorain, Ohio, a small city that once housed a shipbuilder, a Ford plant and a U.S. Steel factory and is now adapting to a post-industrial economy. Biden pledged that the investment in cleaning the waterways was as much about jobs as the environment, citing a note that Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur — who attended Thursday’s event — handed to him after an address last year to a joint session of Congress.
“That letter was about the Great Lakes,” the president said. “(They) support more than 1.3 million jobs in manufacturing tourism, transportation, warehousing, farming and fishing.”
Biden’s trip to northeast Ohio comes at a crucial political moment as the state’s Republican Sen. Rob Portman, Biden’s partner on the infrastructure deal, is retiring. That has left open a Senate seat this year that Democrats hope to claim, despite the state’s swing toward the GOP.
