Hi Will,
At Town Meeting this week, Dave Rogers mentioned how he supported increased funding for DEP during the House work on the 2015 budget. I know that the Senate is working on their version of the budget and I wanted to encourage you to support increased funding for DEP and DCR as it took a hard hit over the last few years. In particular, I understand the following line items need more funding:
DEP Administration (line-item 2200-0100)
DCR State Parks & Recreation (line-item 2810-0100)
DCR Seasonal Staff (line-item 2800-0501)
Thanks!
Steve Kundrot
TMM Precinct 7, Belmont
Apologies, I have a typo above regarding line numbers. That fix and some additional information follows…
The MA Division of Ecological Restoration (DER) restores and protects the Commonwealth’s rivers, wetlands, and watersheds for the benefit of people and the environment. At any given time, DER staff typically support over 70 restoration projects that improve stream flow, protect drinking water, reduce flooding, restore habitat, and provide fish passage. Since 2009, DER has helped communities secure competitive non-state funding awards totaling over $40M to complete restoration projects of local and statewide importance.
In FY2009, this division was funded at $650,000. Since then, funding has dropped substantially, and today has only increased to $494,000. Budget cuts have kept operational funds for this highly effective division below maintenance levels, resulting in lost opportunities to leverage additional non-state funding. Staffing has remained 20% below FY2009 levels and cannot meet the growing demand from communities for technical assistance on construction projects, including culvert replacements and dam removals.
The DER line-item is 2300-0101. Funding this important division at $650,000 will return it to its FY09 funding level.
Thanks, Steve.
I do support these items and hope we can help.
My current top environmental advocacy priority in the budget is funding to support modeling of storm surge as augmented by sea level rise in the Mystic and Charles basins.
We need to get some numbers in place so we can assess our long term exposure and plan accordingly. Cambridge is doing great work on this but we need to expand the scope of modeling further up river to Watertown, Belmont, Arlington, Winchester, etc.
We need to put some money behind the legislation we passed on this.