“Enough to spend less than one-half of one percent of the state’s general fund budget to protect it. How do we compare with other states in spending on natural resources? We’re at the bottom of the list.”
That’s pretty embarrassing, especially for a state that has always touted its natural beauty and amazing resources. Our license plates used to say Water-Winter Wonderland. Thirty years ago, we had a governor whose main cause was Michigan’s environment.
And now we are squandering it. Rebecca Humphries is struggling to keep the Department of Natural Resources going. But Kalamazoo reporter Alex Nixon discovered the situation was, if anything, even worse at the DNR’s sister agency, the Department of Environmental Quality, known as the DEQ.
DEQ director Steven Chester said his department needs to come up with 17.5 million dollars by Jan. 15. The only way he can do that is to sock businesses and homeowners with new fees.
Even if he does, he still may face an $80 million shortfall later in the year. That means massive layoffs and a reduction in inspections. It also means that the DEQ will have to shut down systems that are preventing the spread of toxic pollution to homes and businesses.
“Whatever remediation systems we’re paying for now, and whatever drinking water supplies we’re paying for now, the money won’t be there. It will end,” he told the paper.
“The public won’t be able to look to the DEQ for assistance. We won’t be there. That’s the bottom line.” That’s the head of the entire department talking. So, to put it politely and reasonably, a rational person has to ask:
Are we all freaking nuts? Are we, the people of the state of Michigan, insane? I would like to think the answer is no.
But we aren’t acting like sane people. Our wildlife are threatened. Our drinking water is threatened. We won’t have the money to inspect the nickel mine we are apparently going to let some foreign developer build in the Upper Peninsula.
You remember that’s the one that may leak sulfuric acid into the stream where the rare subspecies of brook trout reproduce.
Wonder why we are even allowing this mine at all? Well, they say it will create a few dozen temporary jobs for a few years.
That’s Lansing logic at work. Throughout the entire budget debate, I don’t recall a word from anyone about the environment.
Yes, Michigan has money problems. But they weren’t bad enough to prevent the legislature from spending twelve million dollars on a presidential primary that only one party is taking part in.
But our lawmakers aren’t even willing to raise hunting and fishing licenses something people pay voluntarily to save the environment so the people buying the licenses will still have animals to kill.
If you understand the logic of this, please explain it to me.
Glad I found this website with Mr. Lesenberry's intelligent columns and remarks. Are all his columns posted here regularly?
Posted by: Betty Wilkins | February 15, 2008 at 11:17 AM