Combining Michigan DNR and DEQ leaves too many questionsBy Howard Meyerson, The Grand Rapids Press, found at MLive.com
January 17, 2010"What a long, strange trip it’s been." - The Grateful DeadThe DNR-DEQ merger becomes law today, and I am finding it more than a little ironic.
Didn’t we deal with this in the mid-1990s?
Fifteen years ago, former Gov. John Engler split the Department of Natural Resources, creating the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
Today, Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s executive orders go into effect, merging the two and creating the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment (DNRE).
Allegedly, It’s a move to streamline government, but no can say how much money will be saved.
Ten years ago, I would have cheered about the merger. Today, I am not sure what to expect. Disruptions like this take time to settle. Productivity is lost. Programs stall. It took a year or two for things to smooth out when the DNR was split in 1995.
Engler split the agency to get accountability from the environmental protection side. He favored less environmental protection and more expedient permit issuance to business and industry. Those were permits to pollute air and water and fill wetlands.
Engler also abolished the environmental commissions, the air and water pollution commissions, the Toxic Substance Control Commission and the Wilderness and Natural Areas board, among others.
Environmentalists were very unhappy. Splitting the agency weakened environmental enforcement and the commissions were open, public forums. Public access to environmental decision making was reduced dramatically.
Conservationists, on the other hand, were pleased. They wanted the DNR and Natural Resources Commission to focus more on hunting and fishing issues. That’s what they got.
What happens now?
Now, we have come full circle. So what should we expect?
At the NRC meeting last week, chairman Keith Charters wanted to know that very thing.
He wondered how much time to give environmental issues at the meeting in February. More to point, he wanted to know the NRC’s role on those matters.
Would benzene and carbon emissions become part of the meeting along with deer, bait and trout?
He publicly was asking Bruce Rasher, former mayor of Marshall, the man appointed by Granholm to be the transition manager for the agency merger. Rasher was updating the NRC about his report to the governor, a report that had not been given to the commission to review but since has been released.
“I guess you could call it a plea that we get it (the draft report) yesterday,” Charters said.
It used to be that NRC meetings were two-day affairs with an agenda for natural resource issues and another for environmental protection issues.
Rasher offered a well-modulated but abstruse response.
“For what it is worth, the executive order does define the role of the department and commission,” Rasher said. “What I try to do is reaffirm the very important role the commission plays in fish and game matters.”
“But I do not think the executive order changes the scope of the authority of the commission and expand it with respect to permit decisions, especially related to decisions related to environmental protection programs.”
Did you get that? He said “no.” The NRC won’t make environmental protection permit decisions.
Mary Brown, a commissioner from Kalamazoo, said there might be issues that overlap, such as poor people needing to be better advised about eating contaminated sport fish.
“I can’t imagine that the public won’t want to talk to us,” Brown said. “We need to figure out whether to receive them or refer them on those issues.”
Rasher called the reorganization a “work in process” that would take until June to get straightened out, but he offered a peek at what is in store, including:
* Creating a regional DNR director for the Upper Peninsula to work more closely with U.P. residents.
* Dividing the state into four eco-regions for management.
* Creating resources, stewardship and environmental protection bureaus within the DNR and reducing the number of divisions.
Rasher said the end goal is a department that is more nimble in responding to “permit applications from job providers,” one that is transparent and closer to the citizens in terms of decision making and feedback.
It would provide quality outdoor recreation, accessible outdoor recreation, focus on cultural resources, protect the environment and human health and resources and encourage economic growth in a sustainable manner.
Whether it will do all those things, of course, depends on who is driving the ship of state. What’s ironic is that Granholm’s executive orders also strip the NRC of its ability to hire and fire the DNRE director and transfers it to the governor, making it a political appointment.
So much for continuity.
E-mail Howard Meyerson at hmeyerson@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/HMeyersonhttp://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2010/01/combining_dnr_and_deq_leaves_m.html
