Michigan’s “North Coast” natural resources represent one of the state’s most distinctive and competitive assets in the 21st Century.
You’d never know it from the alarming conclusions in a new report by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters:
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has lost a third of its workforce in recent years. The DNR and Department of Environmental Quality have taken bigger budget hits than any other area of state government during this ongoing era of contraction. It takes $100 million a year to clean up Michigan’s legacy of contaminated industrial sites yet, as of late 2008, there won’t be any money to fund cleanups.
The recent budget negotiations have, at times, looked somewhat promising, with various proposals setting aside funds to alleviate the need for the DNR’s dire request to increase hunting and fishing license fees for the first time in more than a decade.
Then came this new short-sighted raid on conservation and park maintenance programs.
