ELM -- Environmental League of Massachusetts

Before the Great and General Court

Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Friend of the General Court Brief in Support of the Green Budget

We, the undersigned, have each had the honor of serving as Commissioners of one of the Commonwealth's environmental agencies. Together, we bring 91 years of experience in leading the agencies responsible for protecting water quality, enforcing environmental laws, maintaining our extensive park and forest system, protecting wildlife, and protecting our working farms.

We have come together to urge you to provide adequate funds in the FY2007 budget so that our successors and the agencies they lead can do the jobs the people of Massachusetts expect them to do.

You and your predecessors have tasked our environmental agencies with protecting our rivers and beaches, guarding our children and families from exposure to toxic chemicals, protecting our natural places, and providing recreational opportunities. We can attest from our experience that having adequate personnel and other resources is essential to carrying out these important missions.

The Department of Environmental Protection has a very broad mission. It is charged with ensuring that pollutants do not foul our air and water, that our wetlands are preserved for flood storage, water purification, and wildlife habitat, that the thousands of hazardous waste sites are cleaned up and, where appropriate, redeveloped, and that the condition of our air, water and land is monitored so that problems can be dealt with before they become crises. DEP's budget has been cut 22 percent in real dollars since FY 2002, and the effects of these cuts are disturbing. DEP has not implemented the comprehensive water quality monitoring program originally developed in 2001. Many watersheds have not been fully assessed, as required by the Water Management Act, to determine if they meet water quality standards for their uses, whether that is drinking water, swimming, or fishing. DEP's program to discover abandoned hazardous waste sites has been terminated due to lack of staffing; DEP now can only react to sites once someone else discovers them. With fewer staff to insure that our environmental laws are being complied with, the risk of noncompliance and degradation of air and water has increased.

The Department of Conservation and Recreation has lost over a quarter of its funding since FY2001. Even with the initial progress made by the legislature in FY2006 in restoring some DCR funding, the damage of the last several years has not been erased. There are fewer park rangers (which increases the risk of illegal dumping and threats to public safety), fewer park programs for children, later opening dates for pools and beaches, and decreased maintenance of trails, buildings, and other facilities. And DCR is charged with much more than just our parks: parkways, dams, forests, and stormwater management are also DCR's responsibility.

Within the Department of Fish and Game, the state has not provided operating funding for the Natural Heritage and Endangered Species program for three years. The protection of the commonwealth's wildlife and habitat is crucial to the state's recreation industries and our commercial fishing industry. From bird watching to camping to hunting and fishing, protecting our wildlife is central to our tourism economy. In just the last few years, we have already lost two species, the Atlantic salmon and the trout perch. Not adequately funding wildlife protection and management will lead us to lose more species that have defined Massachusetts and New England.

The Department of Agricultural Resources became responsible for implementing the Children and Families Protection Act of 2000, intended to protect our most vulnerable population-children-from exposure to toxic chemicals at school. However, in the years following the passage of that Act, DAR's budget has been cut, making it difficult to do the outreach and monitoring needed to make sure that schools and daycare centers are safe for the children who attend them. A weakened DAR also cannot provide assistance to farmers in reducing their use of pesticides, marketing their produce, and keeping their farms in business.

The Green Budget, prepared by the Environmental League of Massachusetts and endorsed by 45 environmental groups from Cape Cod to the Berkshires, contains a series of recommendations for improving the capacity of our environmental agencies to protect the environment, public health, public safety, and our quality of life. We urge you to adopt the Green Budget's recommendations as part of the budget you enact for the new fiscal year.

We are very proud of our service to the commonwealth, and we know that the public servants who work in our environmental agencies today are proud of their service as well. But those agencies have had their budgets and personnel cut back to the point that many basic responsibilities cannot be met. For the last few years we have witnessed our parks deteriorate, our wetlands diminish, our rivers be polluted, and our children remaining exposed to toxic chemicals at school.

Massachusetts has a long record of leadership in protecting its natural resources and public health and in providing recreational opportunities to our people. From Charles Eliot's establishment of the metropolitan parks to the passage of the nation's first laws to protect wetlands, prevent acid rain, and reduce the use of toxic chemicals, Massachusetts has typically set the standard for the rest of the nation and the world. It is time to do so again.

Thank you for your service to the commonwealth, and for your consideration of our brief.

Katherine Abbott
Commissioner
Department of Conservation and Recreation
2003-2005

Anthony Cortese
Commissioner
Department of Environmental Quality Engineering
1979-1984

Richard Kendall
Commissioner
Department of Environmental Management
1977-1981; 1988-1990

John Phillips
Commissioner
Fisheries, Wildlife and Environmental Law Enforcement
1991-1999

Thomas Powers
Acting Commissioner
Department of Environmental Protection
1994-1995

David Standley
Commissioner
Department of Environmental Quality Engineering
1975-1978