Imagine it is a Monday morning, your first day back from a week-long vacation. No matter how revitalized you felt upon getting home, that freshly restored perspective usually doesn’t last long once you return to work. There are meetings you missed to catch up on, deadlines that have crept closer, not to mention all those unread emails lurking in your inbox, each one demanding your attention now now now. And then there’s the work that was already on your full schedule for the weeks ahead.
Catching up after time off can be tough under the best of circumstances. Now, imagine your out-of-office message has been on for 43 days, and it is not just you who is trying to get back to business but it is your entire workplace. The longest shutdown of the federal government in United States history may have ended last Wednesday, but it is going to take some time before business is back to usual. Congress will be playing six weeks’ worth of catch-up while trying to move along various pieces of must-pass legislation before the end of the first session of the 119th Congress. Compounding that pressure is the fact that the Continuing Resolution under which the government is now running is set to expire on January 30, 2026.
In the environmental protection space, many of the impacts of the shutdown were subtle and not immediately evident. Here too, it will take a long time before we can assess the full scope and scale of the consequences.
For example, back in October, the Management Committee of the Long Island Sound Partnership canceled its scheduled meeting. That may sound like a simple matter of rescheduling. But when leaders from the Partnership miss the chance to talk through next steps with leaders from Environmental Protection Agency Regions I and II, workflow inevitably is going to be impeded, for the near future and down the road.
In August, we celebrated 40 years of conservation efforts by the Partnership—the body, known until recently as the Long Island Sound Study, that coordinates LIS restoration and stewardship efforts among the federal, New York, and Connecticut governments and regional organizations. We entered the fall looking forward to getting started on implementing the new Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan for improving water quality, restoring and protecting ecological balance throughout the watershed, and supporting sustainable and resilient communities over the next decade. Much of that work was put on pause during the shutdown.
Add to that the uncertainty that lingers regarding federal funding for environmental projects, which many stakeholders were not able to access during the shutdown. There is real concern in the environmental community that contractors in the private sector may become reluctant to enter into contracts with NGOs if they’re not confident that already-approved federal funding will be made available.
Just as worrying is the demoralizing impact this shutdown is having on young people considering careers in environmental fields. Juniors and seniors in the UConn Environmental Law class taught by Denise Stranko, our executive vice president of programs and the point person for Save the Sound’s federal policy team, have begun to question whether the jobs they’ve been going to school for will even exist when they enter the work force in a few years.
Denise’s response to their questions has been consistent: Prepare yourself for challenges like extended shutdowns, but don’t lose hope. We need you now more than ever.
For our part at Save the Sound, now that the federal government is open again, we are working to make up for lost time and are painfully aware of the clock ticking between now and January 30.