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No funds for wetlands permitting study Legislature removes budget funding for study into state takeover from federal agencies of primacy for dredge-and-fill permitting Alan Bailey Petroleum News
In its final version of the state budget for the 2015 fiscal year, the Alaska Legislature dropped the funding for an evaluation of the possibility of the state taking over from the federal government the primacy for wetlands permitting in Alaska.
“The second year’s work is not funded for that program,” Ty Keltner, information officer for the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, told Petroleum News on May 5. But although the funding has gone, the law passed in 2013 requiring the state to investigate the primacy issue is still in effect, giving state agencies an obligation to continue with the program, Keltner said.
The Department of Environmental Conservation is the lead state agency for the primacy investigation, with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources also involved.
The permitting in question, called “404 permitting” after the section of the Clean Water Act that mandates its use, applies to any activity that involves the dredge and fill of materials into the waters of the United States. Overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the permitting involves the thorny question of what actually constitutes U.S. waters under federal jurisdiction, a question that plays into state accusations of federal permitting overreach into state interests.
The 404 permitting program came into particular criticism in Alaska following wetland permitting delays for ConocoPhillips’ CD-5 oilfield development in the northeastern National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
The Clean Water Act allows for the possibility of individual states taking over administration of the 404 permitting program for non-navigable waters, although the Corps of Engineers has said that it would retain administration of tidal waters, navigable waters and adjacent wetlands.
Question of priorities Andrew Sayers-Fay, deputy director of the Department of Environmental Conservation Division of Water, told Petroleum News on May 5 that his division is still figuring out how to respond to the pulling of the funding. The plan had been to deliver to the Legislature for the next legislative session a cost-benefit analysis report for state primacy, Sayers-Fay said. But now the division must determine the relative priorities of preparing that report and of doing some other work, including the state permitting needed in association with a new Corps of Engineers placer mining general permit, he said.
It is likely that the division will move personnel who have been working on the 404 permitting analysis into a section that already deals with wetlands permits, thus retaining the expertise on the 404 permitting question — there are pending vacancies in the relevant section because of upcoming staff retirements, Sayers-Fay said.
And, rather than dropping the 404-permitting report, it is more a question of when the report will be completed.
“We are planning to continue, but it’s obviously going to be much slower given the change in resources,” Sayers-Fay said.
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