$5 million federal funding freeze threatens to sink city river restoration project

Authorities freeze uplift funds for Pindi

With the federal budget for 2025-26 approaching, development funds for all six districts of Rawalpindi Division have been frozen. The Local Government Department, including Rawalpindi District Council, has been directed to immediately return unutilised development funds to the Ministry of Finance. All development schemes that have not yet commenced have been categorised as "lapsed funds," with an immediate ban placed on any expenditures. Only sc…

$5 million federal funding freeze threatens to sink city river restoration project

When Steamboat Springs Water Resources Manager Julie Baxter learned in January that the total required funding of $7.9 million was available for a decade-long goal to restore the highly altered confluence of Walton Creek and the Yampa River, she was excited that the city could move forward. Damage from old gravel pits in the 1960s and a hydrologically unsound reroute of the Yampa River in the 1970s caused multiple river ecosystem problems that c…