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Blankenship said he was on a teleconference with a meeting of the Chesapeake Bay Program on Friday and that everyone in the room broke out in applause when an EPA official announced the funding has been restored.

A couple of people left the Journal because of the uncertainty with its funding. He said it was a big diversion from their reporting but that it also gave him a chance to see how much people appreciate their work.

\"When this happened not only did people donate more, a lot of people wrote really nice letters and notes and made phone calls,\" he said.

In January, a former official from the Chesapeake Bay Program told E&E News that the paper's funding was withdrawn by a political appointee who said \"everybody knows that the American public doesn't trust the press\" and that the EPA should not continue funding the Journal.

That former EPA official, Nicholas DiPasquale, told E&E that the decision to withdraw funding was \"totally ideologically driven.\"

Democratic senators questioned EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt about that report and the decision to withdraw funding in a hearing for the Environment and Public Works Committee a few weeks later.

\"PHOTO:
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
PHOTO: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt testifies before the Senate Environment Committee on Capitol Hill, Jan. 30, 2018, in Washington.
>

In the hearing, Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., urged Pruitt to reinstate the funding, saying the Chesapeake Bay program is very popular and that the public information about the program is important. Pruitt said the decision was already under reconsideration.

\"I learned of that decision after the fact and I think it was probably a decision that should not have been made in the way that it was,\" he said.

Another Democrat from Maryland, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, asked Pruitt specifically if he looked into the issue over whether the funding was withdrawn for political reasons.

\"The retired head of the Bay Program just earlier this month, in an interview to Energy and Environment Daily, said that was politics that killed the funding for Bay Journal,\" he said.

Pruitt responded that it was \"under reconsideration\" and that the agency was taking steps to address the issue.

\"It's something that's under reconsideration, and I'm familiar with it at this point and we are taking steps to address it,\" Pruitt said.

The job of the EPA is to protect our environment and the health of all Americans—but instead we see a raft of political decisions that undermine its integrity, including the politically motivated termination of the Chesapeake Bay Journal Cooperative Agreement. pic.twitter.com/Mw2DCuNNRm

— Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) February 1, 2018

The EPA had no further comment Friday other than to reference Pruitt's comments during the hearing.

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