There’s an approaching large hole in the state Department Environmental Protection’s budget for the agency’s mine regulatory program.
State DEP Secretary Randy Huffman told members of the House Finance Committee Friday the program will need as much as $5 million by the summer of 2014 if the same level of services is to be maintained.
Huffman says the DEP will come to lawmakers with a funding plan in next year’s regular session but he wanted to make them aware of the situation this year.
The mine regulatory program received up to $4 million of its annual funding from the state’s synfuels tax created in the early 2000s but when the federal tax credit went away in 2007 operators stopped making synthetic fuels and the money disappeared.
Sec. Huffman says since then the agency has gotten by by using reserves, federal grants and revenue from the coal tax, but all of those funds have decreased.
“We can only make it until next summer, so about a June or July (2014) time frame and there literally will not be enough cash or revenue in the mining program to cover the day-to-day operational costs,” Huffman said.
The secretary says the federal sequestration cuts also do not help. He says that’s added another $1 million to the need.
“Instead of being a four million dollar annual need we’re looking at a five million dollar annual need if we keep the same level of services,” Huffman said. “We are constantly evaluating that. Obviously as coal production goes down the theory is the amount of work we need to do would go down. That’s true in the long-term but not really true in the short-term.”
The state DEP is just now beginning to see a decline in coal permit applications according to Huffman. He says coal business has been slow for a while but the DEP is usually doesn’t notice it for a few months.