The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality is set for a 4 percent budget increase in state general funds next year, largely because of the continued ramp-up of the Idaho Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or IPDES, a function for which the state is taking primacy from the federal EPA. That includes adding four new employees. Overall, the budget set by the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee this morning reflects a drop of 2.2 percent in total funding for DEQ, due to reductions in federal funds.

The budget, proposed by Reps. Sage Dixon, R-Ponderay, and Van Burtenshaw, R-Terreton, includes a transfer of $1.5 million from the state’s Water Pollution Control Account toward the state’s 10 percent match requirement for Superfund cleanup in the Coeur d’Alene Basin, a transfer that will occur each year for the next 16 years as the state builds up its fund to provide the state match for basin cleanup.

The budget also recognizes the receipt of $5.5 million as the first of three payments from a Volkswagen legal settlement over cheating on diesel emissions; the state can use those funds only for air quality projects designed to reduce diesel emissions. “It’s really tight, very directed – there’s not a lot of latitude there,” said Rep. Steve Miller, R-Fairfield, who helped craft the budget along with Dixon, Burtenshaw, and Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise.  

The budget still needs House and Senate passage and the governor’s signature to become law, but budget bills rarely change once they’re set by the joint committee.