Fletcher in 2024. Photo: Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
House Democrats are raising fresh concerns about how the Trump administration's funding freeze could impact cleanup of abandoned oil and gas wells.
Why it matters: The IIJA allocated nearly $5 billion to remediate orphaned wells, a huge chunk of change for thousands of potentially toxic and methane-emitting sites across the country.
Driving the news: In a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher and 30 other lawmakers said the agency has offered "no clear, public guidance" on IIJA money since President Trump's executive order to halt spending.
- "We have already begun to hear from IIJA funding recipients impacted by this pause who now face an uncertain future after DOI issued a stop work order on their orphaned well remediation projects," they wrote in the letter, first seen by Axios.
- They said $3.4 billion from the program was still available to be spent as of late last year.
Between the lines: It's another data point in the ongoing fight about bipartisan IIJA dollars, and it's a program that could benefit red states.
- In an initial funding round, Interior identified more than 1,000 orphaned well sites in Kentucky alone.
- "While we do not comment on congressional correspondence, the Department of the Interior takes all correspondence from Congress seriously and carefully reviews each matter," Interior spokesperson J. Elizabeth Peace said in an email.
