EGLE water resources officials brief House subcommittee on permits, staffing, PFAS and dam safety

Officials from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) outlined the scope and priorities of the department's Water Resources Division during a briefing to the Michigan House Appropriations Subcommittee on the Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. EGLE described permitting workloads, staffing trends, grant programs and actions on dredging, PFAS testing and dam safety.

Jared Sanders, director of EGLE's Water Resources Division, said Michigan and the Great Lakes Basin are uniquely water-rich and that that context shapes the division's work. "The basin itself, Great Lakes Basin, is 70% of North America's fresh surface water, about 21% of the world," Sanders said, adding that Michigan has about 3,300 miles of Great Lakes coastline, roughly 11,000 inland lakes, about 50,000 river miles and about 6,000,000 acres of wetlands.

Sanders told the subcommittee the division issues roughly 9,000 to 10,000 permit decisions per year, conducts about 7,000 inspections annually (about 5,500 focused on compliance), and opens about 2,000 compliance actions; fewer than 100 escalated enforcement actions are pursued each year. He said the division receives roughly 2,500 complaints and 2,500 service requests annually and that approximately 15,000 regulatory work items are handled across programs.

Why it matters: EGLE said those workloads intersect with staffing and funding issues that affect turnaround times and enforcement capacity. Sanders said fee schedules that fund parts of the division have not been updated in decades (one major fee program last revised in 2004…