We never grow tired of pointing out the inadequacies of our state’s environmental management group, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. After all, this community knows the failings of ADEM better than any community. A good argument could be made that we wouldn’t have our pollution problems today if ADEM had done half of what it was supposed to do the last 20 years.
Yet when we speak of an inadequate ADEM we are really speaking of a failure of our state’s leaders, especially those in our Legislature who have seen fit through the years to slash funding to the agency to the point where it is not even funny anymore.
While the agency has been mandated with many more responsibilities in the last few years, funding has been slashed. No agency should be expected to do an adequate job under such circumstances.
It is infuriating what the Legislature has done to environmental funding in this state, but it is also pretty maddening to see that ADEM has done precious little to get itself out of the bog it has languished in for so long. Everyone in Montgomery knows you have to go to the Legislature to lobby for pennies to add to the budget of any agency. ADEM commander-in-chief Jim Warr is a rare sight around the lawmakers’ chambers. That doesn’t do him or his agency or Alabama any good.
Now, however, a ray of sunshine might be filtering down through the muck. There is a plan on the table to increase fees that industry and municipalities pay for water discharge permits. Those fees should raise a couple of million dollars a year that ADEM can use for enforcement and monitoring.
That’ll help, but believe it or not there is already talk of derailing this modest plan to improve the agency. Word is some lawmakers want to use the new fees to supplant current ADEM funding. That’s the last thing we need to do, even though we also have a problem with the overall budget. The new money should be in addition to current spending.
Of course, it does not escape us that this news comes in the wake of formal calls for a major chunk of ADEM’s responsibilities to be taken over by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The biggest complaint and the one that EPA seems to be looking at, is a shortage of funding for the agency. This new revenue stream — no doubt the decision-makers at ADEM are thinking — will keep the feds at bay for the time being at least. And keeping the feds out is of importance to industry as well, and that might explain why many of them are supporting the moves to increase the fees. Better to pay up to an anemic, weak-kneed ADEM than a tough EPA.
But if state lawmakers and bureaucrats think this tepid move will be enough, they should have a look at a recent study by the Washington D.C-based U.S. Public Interest Research Group that found 72 of Alabama’s water polluters to be significant and put the state in the top 10 with large factories in violation of the Clean Water Act.
Add that to the fact that we have close to 200 rivers, lakes and streams so polluted as to be classified “impaired” and you have a serious water problem indeed.
Put it all together then and the best path would seem to be to allow ADEM to collect the higher fees, not touch current ADEM funding, cajole the Legislature into adding to that budget and let the EPA take over most of the agency’s responsibilities anyway.
That’ll cause some heartburn at ADEM, but it will make just about everyone else happy.
