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Snyder to separate
DNR, DEQ
Wednesday, December 1, 2010 By Chad Selweski
Macomb officials say state has not been helpful
addressing water quality
Macomb County officials reacted
skeptically Tuesday to Gov.-elect Rick Snyder’s
decision to split the Department of Environmental
Quality and the Department of Natural Resources
again, returning them to the status of separate
agencies as they were under former governor John
Engler.
Re-establishing the DEQ as a
separate entity is a key component of Snyder’s
government reorganization plan, which the Ann Arbor
Republican said would “provide exceptional value to
the taxpayers and citizens.”
But in Macomb County, the name
change meant little to those who have often clashed
with the DEQ and its successor, the Department of
Natural Resources and the Environment. The DNRE was
a cost-saving consolidation created by Gov. Jennifer
Granholm in 2009.
“The problem is much deeper.
They’ve got to turn the whole thing upside down,”
said Harrison Township Supervisor Anthony Forlini,
who was elected to the state House in November.
Forlini said his lakefront
community has found the DEQ and DNRE to be
“absolutely not helpful” and unresponsive on water
quality issues. Officials complain that the
department takes a hard-line approach to small
matters involving businesses, boaters and
homeowners, yet the DEQ has taken several years to
address the municipalities that dump raw sewage into
Lake St. Clair and the Clinton River.
The DEQ admitted in 2000 that
more than 100 towns across Michigan, including
Clinton Township, Center Line and Fraser, were
routinely dumping untreated sewage into the
waterways following heavy rainstorms. Yet, the
problems persist, with all three Macomb communities
under an ongoing “consent agreement” with the state
to remedy the problems. The most expensive fix, a
major sewer upgrade in Fraser, won’t be completed
until next year.
Macomb County Water Quality Board
Chairman Doug Martz, a persistent critic of the
DEQ’s lack of manpower and lax enforcement of
environmental laws, said the re-splitting of the
department will have minimal impact.
“It doesn’t matter if you split it up into 10
divisions, if you don’t have the people to do the
job, what difference does it make?” said Martz, a
clean-water crusader since 1994.
At the county Health Department,
interim deputy director Gary White, a longtime
figure in the Environmental Division, agreed with
Martz’s assessment. The reduced staffing at the DEQ
will only worsen, he said, when a series of
retirements occur in the department over the coming
months.
“It (the DNRE) was put together
for such a short period of time that we never really
adjusted to it,” White said.
The separation of natural
resources and environmental protection into two
separate functions was initiated by Engler in 1995.
Though Snyder campaigned on a
platform of smaller, downsized government, his first
announced policy decision headed in the other
direction. In addition to the traditional cabinet,
the governor-elect said he is creating a six-member
super cabinet consisting of “group executives” to
oversee clusters of departments.
The new DEQ, DNR and Department
of Agriculture will be overseen by Don Wyant, who
headed the agriculture department for several years
under Engler and Granholm. Snyder said the three
departments will be collectively known as the
Quality of Life section of state government.
Wyant will also serve as the new
DEQ director. DNR Science and Policy Office Chief
Rodney Stokes will become DNR director. Snyder said
the Department of Agriculture will have a new name —
the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
— and will be run by Keith Creagh, who just retired
as the department’s deputy director. Creagh and
Stokes are state government veterans.
The current DNRE director,
Rebecca Humphries, is leaving to work for Ducks
Unlimited.
At a Capitol news conference,
Snyder said the changes will take effect with an
executive order he will issue on Jan. 1, shortly
after being sworn into office.
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The "Asian carp" term used in the
media recently tends to include those species most
recently introduced that are of grave biological concern
to the fisheries management community: bighead carp,
silver carp and black carp.
