President Donald Trump's proposed federal budget calls for a 30 percent cut to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site program. That reduction could threaten clean up of the polluted Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. But area activists and lawmakers are pushing back.

"President Trump's proposed budget cuts would have a devastating impact on New York — delaying and obstructing environmental projects around the state," said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

He joined activists and other lawmakers along the banks of the 100-foot waterway to ask Congress to reject the President's proposed budget.

The Gowanus was created in the 1800s to bring ships to the many companies that operated beside it. Over generations, these firms spewed more than a dozen types of industrial waste and sewage into the water.

The canal was added to the Superfund program's top of the heap in 2010. A number of parties, including National Grid and the city of New York, have agreed to pay for the $500 million cleanup.

"The beauty of the Superfund program is that the polluters pay for the cleanup," said New York City Councilman Brad Lander, who represents communities that border the canal, like Gowanus and Carroll Gardens.

"We don't need federal government money to actually clean that canal. But of course that only works if the EPA can administer the program and the cuts to Superfund in the Trump budget are to the Superfund administration," he said.

The EPA finalized the Gowanus cleanup in 2013, but it's still in the 'design' phase.

Actual dredging of the toxic sludge won't begin until later this year.