By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

LANSING, Mich. — With the latest round of budget cuts there won’t be much left of the state’s much heralded water withdrawal assessment program.

In February, a list of budget cuts issued by Gov. Granholm included a $130,000 cut to the Michigan Department of Agriculture’s (MDA) water withdrawal program. Last month Granholm did another round of cuts because the state was falling short of anticipated tax revenues. These included a cut of $80,000 to the water withdrawal assessment program, only this time to the part of the program overseen by the Deptartment of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

“There’s very little funding left to the program. There’s money left for the assessment tool, but that’s about it,” said Robert McCann, press secretary for the DEQ. “If there needs to be any updates to the tool, or anything unrelated to the tool for that matter, it might not get done.”

Matt Smego, legislative counsel for the Michigan Farm Bureau (MFB), said that he believes the latest cut will mean a job related to the program will go unfilled, but that the online assessment tool will go forward.

“It should not have an overall impact on the process that is called for in the legislation,” Smego said. “As July rolls around the tool will become effective.”

It was only last July that Granholm, State Senator Patricia Birkholz (R-Saugatuck), MFB President Wayne Wood and several other officials stood together as the governor signed the Great Lakes Water Compact, a collection of bills that has been hailed as a great victory for the region’s abundant water resources.

In her weekly radio address given just after signing the package of bills, Granholm said: “It’s not every week that we make history in Michigan; it’s not every day that we do something so monumental that it will be remembered for generations to come. But this was one of those weeks, and Wednesday was one of those days. Overlooking the beautiful blue waters of Lake Michigan, I signed into law historic new protections for the Great Lakes that mark a defining moment in our state’s history and establish Michigan as the nation’s leader in the scientific management of water.”
But 11 months have made all the difference and, although the assessment tool is not in immediate danger, the earlier cut made to the water withdrawal program at the MDA might be in violation of the compact.

“Those reductions would hinder if not eliminate the ability of MDA to receive reporting and registration of farm wells,” Smego said.
Smego stated that those functions were “acknowledged” in the package of bills the governor signed into law last year and therefore could be considered part of the multi-state compact.
It makes it more likely that somebody could question the cut and maybe even sue over it on those grounds, he said.

McCann said he’s not concerned about a lawsuit.
“I think we’ll be in compliance with what we committed to in the compact,” he said.

He said the more likely scenario is that the state will not be able to respond to conflicts regarding water withdrawals in a timely manner, but he said the state will have to make do with what it has.