Lots of input goes into new DEQ bill

BOISE – Legislation designed to remove the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality’s authority to review changes to water supply and wastewater systems has been completely reworked, to the point that now both the department and the original bill’s sponsors say they can live with it.

As rewritten, the measure now codifies a “fast-track” program that DEQ Director Toni Hardesty is initiating for projects that already were reviewed by cities, counties or regulated public utilities. It also allows stormwater improvements and routine maintenance projects without DEQ reviews.

“It is night and day, absolutely night and day,” Sen. Dick Compton, R-Coeur d’Alene, told the Senate Health and Welfare Committee on Tuesday. Compton, the committee’s chairman, held the original bill, HB 143, and worked with cities, counties, engineering companies and their lobbyist, the DEQ, and the bill’s sponsors to develop the new legislation.

“I didn’t even bring 143 to you because it was a crappy, crappy bill,” Compton told his committee members.

Ken McClure, lobbyist for the American Council of Engineering Companies, told the panel, “It is something all parties can now agree upon.”

The new bill allows small cities to get DEQ reviews if they want them.

Hardesty told the committee, “We had heard from many cities saying they wanted to have the ability to be able to go to DEQ.”

Compton added, “That’s the reason I dug in on the bill. I heard from small cities saying, ‘We rely on DEQ, don’t take that away from us.’ “

The original HB 143, aimed at reducing delays in project reviews, also would have ended DEQ reviews of certain industrial wastewater projects. If it had been in effect earlier, DEQ would have had no authority to review plans for the controversial BNSF Railway Co. refueling depot on the Rathdrum Prairie. That depot, built over the aquifer that supplies the area’s drinking water, is under a court-ordered shutdown because of leaks.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency informed the state last month that if HB 143 passed, the state likely would lose primacy for enforcing the Clean Water Act in Idaho, along with more than $40 million in federal grants.

The original bill also called for projects to be automatically approved if they hadn’t been ruled upon by DEQ within 45 days. Under the new bill, which doesn’t yet have a bill number, an applicant would have the right to demand a decision if DEQ hadn’t decided within 42 days, and the agency would then have seven days to say “yes” or “no” to the project.

Hardesty said that will likely lead to more project denials, but the DEQ could still continue to work with applicants to modify their projects and try again to get approval.

Compton said he was so pleased with the parties agreeing to compromise that he wanted the bill sent directly to the full Senate, without any further hearings. But members of the committee objected and said they needed to know more about what the bill would do.

Sen. Charles Coiner, R-Twin Falls, said, “I just have the feeling we’ve come up with an excellent solution and now we have to go out and find the problem to fit it to. … Can the department, with what we already have out there, go ahead and deal with these problems without us having to go through this exercise?”

Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, moved to introduce the new version but still require it to come back to the committee for a full hearing.

“There’s a great deal of people that have put a lot of work into this, and I respect that,” she said. “There are also other people that have not seen it, not only here in this room but across the state.” She added, “I think oftentimes at the end of the session we get in too much of a hurry. While we are here to serve and move things along … I believe we need to do due diligence.”