PA Environment Digest Blog

Analysis: State Environmental Agency Funding Hasn’t Caught Up To 2 Decades Ago

Even with the recent increases in state funding, General Fund support for the departments of Environmental Protection and Conservation and Natural Resources still remains below where it was more than two decades ago.

While DCNR’s general operation funding has been made up with significant revenues from the Oil and Gas Fund, DEP’s funding has not.

DEP received about $164.4 million in 1994-95 from the General Fund and increased to a high of $245.6 million in 2002-03. In the 2014-15 budget, DEP’s General Fund total was $141.4 million, after bottoming out in 2012-13 at $126.8 million, less than half the highwater mark in 2002-03.

DEP attempted to make up for some of these cuts with over $30 million increases in permit review and administration fees and by charging more costs to special funds, but it still came up short.

DEP’s official staff complement is also below 1994-95 levels when DEP was split from DER. In 1995 DEP had an authorized complement of about 3,000, which increased to 3,211 by 2002-03. Now the authorized complement is down to about 2,681 or so, without the increases proposed by Gov. Wolf in 2015.

Click Here to view a table with Environmental Agency Funding 1994-95 to 2016-17.

Environmental Agency Funding 1994-95 to 2016-17

(figures in millions)

	1994-95 Casey*	1995-96 Ridge	2002-03 Schweiker	2003-04 Rendell	2011-12 Rendell	2012-13 Corbett	2014-15 Corbett	2016-17 Wolf**
Agriculture
General Fund	$44.8	$46.5	$76.1	$71.9	$130.4	$129.5	$124.6	$52.9
Federal	$2.9	$3.7	$17.1	$27.7	$38.6	$39.5	$40.1	?
Total	$103.9	$108.2	$213.3	$217.8	$288.7	$301.2	$341.2	?
Staff			656	628	596	598	596
DCNR
General Fund	$72.2	$82.7	$108.8	$98.2	$53.7	$53.7	$14.5	$59.9
Federal	$4.9	$15.7	$18.4	$25,9	$39.1	$43.8	$40.7	?
Total	$116.9	$192.7	$322.9	$295.9	$255.8	$300.1	$334.2	?
Staff			1,391	1,380	1,389	1,383	1,406
DEP
General Fund	$164.4	$170.6	$245.6	$193.3	$134.2	$126.8	$141.4	$142.6
Federal	$72.7	$100	$142.2	$147.1	$261.9	$233.6	$193.1	?
Total	$401.4	$526.9	$728.3	$654.7	$622	$655	$680	?
Staff	3,000		3,211	3,071	2,770	2,730	2,681

*Transition budget from split of DER into DCNR, DEP

**Budget so far as line-item vetoed by Gov. Wolf

Sources: Past budget documents are available on the Governor’s Budget Office webpage back to 1969-70.

The total funding deficit for environmental programs since 2002-03 is now somewhere around $2.4 billion; not counting this year because the budget isn’t final. If you want a list of the cuts and diversions of environmental funds for other purposes, just Click Here.

These cuts in support for environmental protection has occurred during a time when the responsibilities of Agriculture, DEP and DCNR have increased, not decreased. No environmental laws or programs have been repealed to match funding cut, nor would many advocate repealing our environmental protection laws.

DEP, in particular, is expected to do the same job and more with less than half the General Fund support it had before.

Somewhere this math may add up, but not here.

Obviously, we are still better off now than we were in the 1969-70 budget, but that isn’t saying much.

In the 1969-70 budget, the Department of Agriculture received $7.7 million from all sources and had a staff of 94; the Department of Forests and Waters had a budget of $18.6 million and a complement of 1,138; and the Department of Mines and Mineral Industry had a $5.6 million budget and staff of 277.

Of course, there were few environmental protection programs beyond addressing some mining, air quality and waste issues.

Pennsylvania has been moving more backward, not forward in supporting its environmental programs, and huge challenges remain ahead of us.

Cleaning up our more than 19,000 miles of polluted streams and meeting the pollution reductions Pennsylvania agreed to in the Chesapeake Bay Agreement are just two of those challenges.

We still have almost 220,000 acres of abandoned mines that pollute more than 5,000 miles of streams.

To his credit, the current DEP Secretary John Quigley has been very direct about the funding and staffing issue.

At his Senate budget hearing last year, Secretary Quigley said his agency had been “hollowed out,” and its staff reduced by 14 percent rather than the 6 percent other state agencies were hit with.

He also said Pennsylvania is not going to meet its Chesapeake Bay cleanup commitments and a plan to reboot the program is in the offing.

There are also discussions going on about the next version of a Growing Greener Program and the possibility of including it in Gov. Wolf’s next budget address in February.

Pennsylvania has a long way to go to be back where we were, but we have to start somewhere.

Bucks County Earth Guardian Joins Suit Against DEP On Setting Carbon Dioxide Limits

On December 4, Bucks County Earth Guardian Kaia Elinich officially joined six other Pennsylvania youths as petitioners in a lawsuit to force DEP to develop carbon dioxide and other limits to combat climate change filed by the Our Children’s Trust on their behalf.

The petition seeks relief by requesting Gov. Tom Wolf, in addition to a number of state agencies such as the Department of Environmental Protection and the Environmental Quality Board, to “develop a comprehensive plan and regulate in a comprehensive manner Pennsylvania’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases consistent with and in furtherance of the Commonwealth’s duties and obligations under Article I, Section 27.”

The plaintiffs are seeking to protect their constitutional rights to clean air, pure water, and other essential natural resources, which they rely on for their survival and wellbeing, but are currently threatened by climate change.

The original six young people from Pennsylvania filed the climate change lawsuit in the Commonwealth Court in mid-September.

Their complaint asserts that defendants are failing to fulfill their trustee obligations to meet the Commonwealth’s Article I, Section 27 requirements by failing to regulate CO2 emissions, as evidenced by the current harmful impacts of climate change within Pennsylvania, such as extreme weather events, rising temperatures, and disruptions to the hydrological cycle.

Ashley Funk, one of the plaintiffs, previously petitioned the Department of Environmental Protection three different times urging the state agency to take science-based action to reduce Pennsylvania’s carbon dioxide emissions.

“Through our work petitioning the DEP, I’ve learned so much and so has the DEP,” said Funk. “Our petitions forced the DEP to take a more critical look at what they are doing to address climate change in our state. Despite multiple opportunities, the DEP failed to take the necessary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change, making this lawsuit necessary. I hope that the DEP continues to learn and follows suit with other calls to action for decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. I hope they finally take action to do what our constitution requires them to do: preserve our atmosphere as a public trust for generations to come.”

Click Here for a chronology of actions related to Ashley Funk and DEP on the climate issue.

Kaia’s many actions to protest pipeline infrastructure, especially the proposed PennEast Pipeline and gas fracking in Pennsylvania, eventually led her to the Earth Guardians and Our Children’s Trust, an organization out of Eugene, Oregon, established to protect Earth’s climate for future generations.

Our Children’s Trust, along with Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic at Delaware Law School, Kenneth T. Kristl, Esq., felt Kaia’s concerns were important to the case, and she was added to the amended petition.

To learn more about the Bucks County Earth Guardians, visit their Facebook page and Twitter feed or contact Arianne and Kaia Elinich at 484-357-7474 or send email to: bucksccap@gmail.com.

Carol Collier: Front Row Seat At The Paris Climate Conference

Carol Collier, from the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University, had a front row seat at the Paris Climate Conference at the beginning of December. She captured her experience in a series of blog posts this week for the Academy--

-- Part 1: Overview Of The Conference

-- Part 2: Voluntary Versus Commitment With Teeth

-- Part 3: Academy Research Into Climate Change Impacts

Collier is the Senior Advisor for Watershed Management and Policy at the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University. She also serves as a member of the Board for the PA Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

She also served as Executive Director of the Delaware River Basin Commission, helped guide Pennsylvania’s 1998 21st Century Environment Commission, was Director of DEP’s Southeast Regional Office and worked for 19 years with BCM Environmental Engineers, Inc.