The firing of Pete Grannis, Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner, might seem of small concern to business interests in New York, but some observers say that in addition to putting natural resources at greater risk, the situation at the DEC has the potential to delay decisions and action on important economic matters facing the state.
Grannis was fired Oct. 21 after the leak of an unsigned memo protesting Gov. David Paterson”™s demand that the department lay off 209 employees by the end of the year. The memo warned that fewer polluted sites would be cleaned up, fewer regulators available to oversee the potential natural gas drilling boom in the Marcellus Shale and that stocking of game fish could halt.
The DEC memo states the department has borne a disproportionate share of earlier budget and staff cuts and warns of “potential serious risks to human health and safety and environmental quality” if the department is forced to go through with the additional cuts. The memo states DEC”™s work force would be reduced to 2,926 full-time positions, down from 3,775 in April 2008, a 22 percent decrease. It said the agency has absorbed 10 percent of state layoffs, thus far, although it is only 2.5 percent of the state work force.
“Many of our programs are hanging by a thread,” the memo states. “The public would be shocked to learn how thin we are in many areas.”
That area includes reviewing proposals for major projects.
“Even without mores staffing cuts, there are already significant delays in reviews,” said Larry Wolinsky, a partner with the law firm of Jacobowitz and Gubits in Newburgh, who has decades of experience dealing with SEQRA, the state environmental laws. He said that further reductions are likely. “Cuts may be a fact of life in order for the state to survive financially. So there has to be a continued push to review all the agencies so they can operate more efficiently.”
Wolinsky is on the board of Pattern for Progress, which has led efforts over recent years to reform SEQRA, and had counted Grannis as an ally in that effort. Wolinsky said efforts will continue to improve SEQRA but must move ahead on regulatory changes without benefit of additional training for town planners who are often cited as a roadblock in the approval process.
Pattern President and CEO Jonathan Drapkin also said that regulatory reform efforts must continue. The DEC must accept the fact the state is in a financial crisis and, temporarily at least, do more with less, Drapkin said. The next DEC commissioner should be selected as much for management ability as environmental knowledge, he said.
“A functional DEC is essential,” said Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, chairman of the Assembly Energy Committee, who criticized further cuts at DEC. “Locally, we are already seeing a permitting bottleneck further delaying responsible development projects.”
Cahill also raised concerns about the DEC ability to deal with key energy issues, such as whether to allow natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale regions of the Catskills and the state”™s Southern Tier, where a controversial drilling method called hydraulic fracturing is being touted by natural gas companies as a way to access trillions of cubic feet of natural gas reserves buried deep underground. However, the drilling method, known as fracking, is controversial due to toxins in the chemicals used to free the gas that are polluting wells in areas where fracking has been permitted. New York has yet to act on permit applications, and critics say further cuts to the DEC will further delay decision on whether and how fracking can be allowed in New York state.
