NC Eliminates 13% Of Positions At Department Of Water Resources 1 Month After Dan River Collapse
EDIT
Last week, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources eliminated 13 percent of the staff positions in the Division of Water Resources. The cuts were only the latest step in years of winnowing the state agency. Legislators have erased jobs there every year since the recession in 2008.
The juxtaposition of regulators losing their jobs so soon after the environmental disaster at Dan River that spilled coal ash into the state’s waterways is jarring. But the cuts were planned last summer as part of the agency’s reorganization and are just a piece of a much more far-reaching scenario that has escalated since Republicans took control in 2011. Since then the state has imposed heavier budget cuts, reduced restrictions on private industry and required DENR’s staff to justify the agency’s regulations in an extensive review process that is just beginning.
Lawmakers say they are making government more efficient without endangering the environment or public health and emphasize that their changes have nothing to do with the Dan River spill. But environmentalists say the politicians are gambling with the state’s future, which inevitably will harm North Carolinians. Cuts to DENR have accelerated since 2011. The agency lost 30 positions in 2009 and 2010 combined and lost 225 jobs from 2011 through today.
The water resources unit has been the largest recent target for payroll savings, constituting half of the 131 layoffs and position losses in DENR since Gov. Pat McCrory took office in January 2013. The latest round, effective March 1, took about 51 jobs from the central water resources office and 17 from the regional stations that dot North Carolina. Some of those positions were already empty. That leaves 435 positions in the Division of Water Resources.
EDIT
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/07/3683762/cuts-to-denr-regulators-jarring.html
