Environmental agencies may not have the funding to keep our water clean, report says
Through budget cuts, the Trump administration has reigned in the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate pollution in rivers and streams, passing the baton to states to pick up the slack.
But a recent report found that environmental agencies in EPA’s Region 7, which includes Kansas, are facing their own budget and staff reductions and could be struggling under the added pressure.
The Clean Water Act allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate and enforce water quality standards and place limits on the amount of pollution industries and cities can discharge into waters, such as a river.
State agencies in EPA’s Region 7, which includes Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska, have been facing shrinking budgets and staff numbers, according to the report released recently by the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a Midwest nonprofit advocacy group. The report looked at data from 2011 to 2018, when they could gather the most recent data for each state.
During this same time, both federal agencies’ and state agencies’ in EPA Region 7 enforcement of the Clean Water Act has been declining, likely due to cuts to funding staff and President Trump cuts to the EPA’s budget, according to the report. The president has proposed a 26 percent cut to the agency in 2021, meaning the EPA is facing historic lows to its funding.
While Kansas is not immune to the budget and staff cuts other states are facing, Kansas is not having the same problems other states are with enforcing the Clean Water Act. The study highlighted facilities in EPA Region 7 with significant violations that had not been formally enforced by the EPA, none of which were in Kansas.
“One of the reasons we didn’t highlight facilities in Kansas was (that) ... we were not seeing the same compliance issues among them that we were in the other states,” Hammons said.
The EPA has a measure called “significant noncompliance” which are facilities that chronically violate regulation standards. Currently, 21.8% of EPA Region 7 facilities are in significant noncompliance, down from 24.4% at the beginning of the year, according to a spokesperson. The EPA set a national goal of cutting the number of chronically violating facilities to 12%, but Kansas’ numbers have consistently been 3 and 4%, according to Tom Stiles, Director of the Bureau of Water at KDHE.
“We’ve always had a very aggressive and a comprehensive monitoring program for our permitted facilities,” Stiles said. “We look at the data and we can respond very quickly to issues that arise relative to that and bring those cities and industries back into compliance relatively quickly.”
An EPA Region 7 spokesperson said that the region is consistent with national numbers and while enforcement case initiations were consistent throughout the past eight years, total penalties across the region increased. In 2020, that meant 32 enforcement actions and approximately $4 million paid in violations.
“Water pollution has a trickle-down effect and the reason that we have a federal statute that both the federal EPA and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment enforce is to ensure that we have the fishable streams (and) swimmable rivers that I enjoyed growing up in Kansas,” said Jeffrey Hammons, staff attorney at Environmental Law and Policy Center. “When you have these industrial facilities that are not complying with their permitted limits and then nobody in the government is enforcing it, that’s not good, because then the integrity of our surface waters decline.”
In Region 7, Kansas’s Department of Health and Environment had the second-biggest decrease in the environment budget and lost more than 40 staff members over the past decade. For the Kansas Division of Environment, this means the reduced capability to monitor the environment.
“I will say that because of staff cutbacks and funding reductions, our measure of the environment has been reduced,” said Stiles. “We still maintain an overall pretty strong surveillance program on the environment side…(and) when it comes to compliance with the act, we remain in the upper echelon in terms of keeping facilities on the right side of the law.”
In 2008, Kansas’ environmental budget under the Kansas Department of Health and Environment was $82.4 million, adjusted for 2018 inflation, compared to $73 million today. That’s a decrease of $9.4 million.
Alternatively, Missouri increased its budget 35% since 2008.
“In absolute terms, could we use more funds, could we use more people? Sure,” Stiles said. “The more we have, the more extensive we can look into things, the faster we’ll be able to respond, the faster we can turn out permits there, but with our loss over time of, staff in attrition, we’ve still maintained a high degree of compliance relative to the Clean Water Act.”
Gov. Kelly’s proposed budget for 2021 will be $74.8 million, a slight decrease from last year. Environmental Law and Policy Center’s recommendation in their study is that the budget of the Division of Environment under KDHE be at least $82.4 million, the same as it was in 2008, adjusting for inflation so that the department can focus on clean water protection and enforcement.
“If you believe in law and order, then you also have to believe in holding people accountable when they violate their permits,” Hammons said. “When nobody’s enforcing the limits on those permits then we can no longer be sure that our water quality is being protected, and that’s not really a political issue. Everybody understands the importance of clean water.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a response from EPA Region 7.
This story was originally published October 19, 2020 at 5:01 AM.
