EGLE officials brief House subcommittee on agency support services, IT modernization and mounting water-infrastructure needs

Officials from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) described the agency’s administrative support, information-technology modernization and water-infrastructure financing programs during a presentation to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy at a committee meeting.

EGLE Deputy Director Travis Bosco and Paul McDonald, director of the agency’s Finance Division, outlined outreach and education programs, records-management and FOIA processing, GIS and drone tools, and the department’s role administering the state revolving funds (SRF) that finance community water projects.

Bosco said EGLE’s outreach team runs large conferences and public meetings that reach thousands of people each year; he cited a recent virtual PFAS summit with about 2,000 attendees from across the U.S. and abroad and said the agency held 56 public meetings and hearings last year with about 2,800 total attendees. He also described production of instructional materials for regulated industries (for example, an “air permit to install 101” video series). "If you call that number, you get a person," Bosco said of EGLE’s central Environmental Assistance Center, which he said handled more than 20,000 calls and emails last year.

Nut graf: The presentation emphasized that EGLE’s small centralized support teams—records management, FOIA, a call center, GIS and web services, drone pilots, and a small finance staff—enable field programs to operate more efficiently. At the same time,…