04/22/24 - 117 New Stories - REAL Environmental & Conservation Leadership In PA: http://tinyurl.com/9bh4zbtr
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DEP Increasing Permit Fees By $24.7 Million To Offset Dramatic Budget Cuts
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The Environmental Quality Board and the Department of Environmental Protection have finalized or proposed permit fee increases for DEP totaling about $24.7 million to help offset the dramatic cuts in the agency's General Fund budget.
Last July the EQB finalized changes to permit fees for Marcellus Shale natural gas drilling applications to increase revenue from about $935,000 a year to $8.4 million for FY 2009-10.
The EQB will consider final changes in July to Chapter 92 which will result in increasing NPDES water quality permit fee revenue from about $750,000 annually to about $5 million. In addition to increasing permit review fees, the agency is also proposing an annual permit administration fee for the first time.
The new NPDES fees will have an impact on 5,000 industrial and public wastewater treatment systems across the state as well as about 5,000 applicants applying for NPDES General Permits.
Regulation changes finalized in May to Chapter 102 Erosion and Sedimentation regulations will increase application fees to yield about $7.3 million annually instead of about $635,000. Much of the increase-- about $5 million- was supposed to go to county conservation districts which perform this permit review work, however DEP has since said it plans to take the bulk of the fees to make up for budget cuts.
Other fee changes finalized or proposed this last year include--
-- Finalized Laboratory Accreditation fees increased from $500,000 to $1.6 million;
-- Proposed Air Quality fee increases from $20.2 million to $24.4 million;
-- Proposed Non-Coal Mining permit fee increases in June from $25,000 to over $2.5 million;
-- Proposed new fees for the administration of the Uniform Environmental Covenants Act that will raise $105,000 annually;
-- Proposed new fees for regulating the beneficial use of coal ash to raise $100,000 a year; and
-- DEP will shortly propose permit fee increases for the surface coal mining program that will increase revenue by about $400,000.
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7/5/2010 |
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