Executive Watch: Cooper Calls for DEQ Funding
While his environmental enforcement staff is making its most aggressive moves yet to halt GenX emissions, Gov. Roy Cooper called on the state legislature to ramp up funding for the Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) efforts to address similar “emerging contaminants” in our water and air.
Cooper announced last week that his state budget proposal this year will include $14.5 million to address health and safety threats from GenX and other “emerging contaminants.” He described his recommendation as one which will “give state agencies the tools they need to continue keeping North Carolina families healthy” and “hold polluters accountable” via new investments in water testing, permit tracking, and scientific analysis.
Last year, Cooper sought $2.6 million for DEQ and the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to study GenX and its long-term health effects. However, the legislature ultimately approved only $435,000 in new funding for related studies—and they refused to allow the state agencies responsible for environmental enforcement to do the research.
Nearly half of Cooper’s new request, $7 million, would go to hiring 39 new fulltime DEQ employees to do the research and testing, as well as beginning to address the state’s backlog of wastewater discharge permit requests. Other parts of the request include these:
- $1 million for new scientific equipment and laboratory analysis
- $4.4 million for a new publicly-accessible online data and permits tracking system
- $1.5 million for upgrades to the state lab which analyzes air and water samples
- $536,000 for DHHS to hire four specific new professional staff: a medical risk assessor, environmental toxicologist, public health educator, and public health epidemiologist.
The proposed total of 43 new state professional analysis and enforcement staff may sound large (and it is), but we must put that into the context of recent state budget history. Years of deliberate budget starvation diets imposed by the General Assembly have left North Carolina’s key environmental and public health protection agencies understaffed, with antiquated equipment, and unable to complete their jobs of protecting the public. We’re now seeing the consequences of that irresponsible legislative approach.
That approach must be changed. Public recognition of the seriousness of the problem has continued to grow since the legislature refused to fund Cooper’s first request. Is public pressure strong enough yet to convince today’s anti-regulatory legislative leadership that stronger measures are required?
