Water quality checks suffer hit

Faced with a series of permanent and one-time budget holdbacks, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality has ended a partnership with a federal agency to conduct water quality monitoring throughout the state.

Late last year the department held on to $117,000 and backed out of a cost-share program with the U.S. Geological Survey that funded a large chunk of the water monitoring in Idaho’s streams, lakes and rivers.

“Historically, we had entered into a cooperative agreement with them for monitoring. We had to discontinue that agreement because of our budget shortfall,” said Gwen Fransen, the Region II administrator for the department at Lewiston and Boise. Fransen said the federal agency continues to do water quality monitoring in the state and the department also monitors waters on high-priority projects. But without the agreement, she said, there is less work getting done.

“They do surface water monitoring with or without cooperative agreements. Obviously they can do more when they cooperate with others.”

Although the department hopes to resume the agreement when state revenues and agency budgets improve, going without will have consequences. Every two years the state is required to write a water quality status report under the federal Clean Water Act. Fransen said enough data has been collected recently to complete the 2010 report. But if the program is not restored it will be more difficult in future years.

“If we can’t resume the monitoring we have had to suspend, we are going to have to figure out a different strategy for completing that report in 2012.”

Justin Hayes of the Idaho Conservation League in Boise said ending the agreement means the state is turning away some federal dollars.

“DEQ puts money in a pot and USGS does, and the USGS does the work. That relationship came to a crashing halt. We are leaving a lot of federal money on the table.”

He said the lack of data collection could hinder businesses looking to locate in Idaho, especially those that require a permit to discharge effluents.

“You end up in a situation where industry wants permits and won’t be able to get them because there is not enough money to process the permits.”

Fransen said if that situation were to arise, the department could require the business seeking a permit to do the background water monitoring. That may sound like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse, she said, but added that the department and the federal Environmental Protection Agency would do confirmation monitoring. If a permit meant more jobs coming to an area, she said, the department would likely be able to come up with the money to do such monitoring.

Despite ending the agreement, Fransen said the state’s ongoing requirement to write pollution reduction plans for water bodies not meeting state water quality standards – known as total maximum daily loads – won’t be affected. The agency continues to do water quality monitoring on those streams to meet a court order.

Since the agency’s 2009 budget was approved, there has been about $4 million in holdbacks.