DEQ Funding Shortfall

Friday, September 12, 2008

By Jeff Alexander

A cash-strapped Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is making unprecedented cuts in programs designed to protect the state’s surface waters and wetlands from environmental abuse.

MDEQ Director Steven Chester said several years of budget cuts, in the face of rising inflation and other expenses, have left the department unable to fully do its job.

“We simply don’t have the kind of funding we need to adequately implement the laws we’re required to implement,” Chester told local officials Thursday at a water quality preservation workshop.

The DEQ has dropped on-site inspections of wetlands that developers and others want to fill with dirt or otherwise alter. Agency officials are reviewing those proposals from their desks, relying on photographs submitted by permit applicants.

“Historically, we’ve always done a site visit for wetlands permits,” Chester said. “We will no longer be doing that — we’ll be doing a desk review.”

The DEQ also is slashing its pollution spill response program and will ignore “minor complaints” about individuals or businesses illegally filling in wetlands. Chester said the DEQ will defer to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on wetland alteration permits sought for sites along the Great Lakes and connecting waters.

The agency also will issue surface water discharge permits, which allow companies to pump limited amounts of pollutants into lakes and streams, to “minor facilities” without first conducting an on-site inspection.

“The bottom line is we simply don’t have the resources to get out and inspect all of these facilities … in some cases, we’ll have to rely on people’s honesty and integrity,” Chester said.

Environmental advocate Tanya Cabala said the cuts will jeopardize Michigan’s environment. She said areas like West Michigan, where surface waters and wetlands are abundant, will suffer more than drier areas of the state.

“There’s no question there will be an impact to the environment,” Cabala said. “It may not be readily apparent in the short term, but one of the things that concerns me is that this will create a climate that leads to more violations” of environmental laws.

Chester’s comments were a prelude to his pitch for increased funding of the DEQ and an environmental cleanup bond the agency hopes to put before voters in November 2010.

The DEQ’s retreat on environmental protection programs is one of many symptoms of the state’s prolonged fiscal crisis. Chester said the DEQ’s general fund budget has been cut by 60 percent over the past six years; the agency has recouped some of those losses by charging companies more for permits to alter wetlands or discharge pollutants to the air and water.

DEQ officials had hoped to put a $1.3 billion environmental bond — the funds from which would clean up hundreds of pollution sites and bolster Great Lakes restoration efforts — on this November’s ballot.

Chester said there wasn’t enough support in the Legislature to put the environmental bond before voters this year. He said the department hopes to get the initiative on the November 2010 ballot.

The $675 million from the Clean Michigan Initiative that voters approved in 1998 is almost gone. Chester said there is enough bond money left to continue cleanups at 100 sites — work will soon be suspended or halted soon at about 70 other sites.

There is no money in the DEQ budget, Chester said, to begin cleanups at about 3,000 other known pollution sites.