DEQ struggles with deep budget cuts

The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has been forced to try to keep air and water clean on a much smaller budget over the last few years.

From 2009 to now the department lost about a quarter of it’s budget, from $18 million to less than $14 million.

Local DEQ Administrator Bruce Olenick admits the department is far from unique in having to deal with fewer resources.

“But like everybody else families, businesses, as well as state agencies we all had to figure out ways to do things smarter and save money and do things a little more leaner than we had in the past,” Olenick said.

That leaning process, means positions left unfilled and some programs halted entirely. Like one that checked water quality and health in rivers and streams across the state.

“By seeing if they degraded over time, that data is really important to have because you can’t make predictions or you can’t judge early in the process whether the types of activities we’re doing are damaging,” Olenick said.

Local communities and environmental groups are finding the need to step up and try to fill the gap.

“To keep up with the vast amount of environmental issues that we deal with here with water quality, the problems aren’t going away and the solution are costly often,” Pocatello Environmental Educator Hannah Sanger said.

Sanger said rhe repercussions of having less environmental protection funding aren’t always easy to see at first but are very real.

“We see the results years later, and I think a great example is drinking water. We depend, our economy depends, on having clean and cheap drinking water,” Sanger said.

The state legislature has restored funding for surface water monitoring for the 2013 fiscal year.