MARQUETTE - Michigan Department of Natural Resources Director Rebecca Humphries expects Gov. Jennifer Granholm will issue an executive order "very soon" recombining the DNR and the state Department of Environmental Quality.
But Humphries said she doubts the Michigan Department of Agriculture will be included in the merger, at least for now.
Early last month, Lt. Gov. John Cherry Jr. said he expected the three agencies would be combined. In Granholm's State of the State address earlier this year, the governor tapped Cherry to lead an initiative to streamline state government and reduce the number of state departments.
Cherry said the activities of the three agencies are all very similar.
"And what those programs do, they protect and enhance our interaction with our natural environment for the purposes of living and working here in Michigan," Cherry said.
The agriculture department inclusion may come later, Humphries said Monday in an interview with The Mining Journal in Marquette.
"I can't tell you whether there's going to be any of Ag in it or not," Humphries said. "Certainly, when the lieutenant governor was up here, he said yes to Ag. At this point I'm not so sure that's going to be part of this first rollout, certainly DNR-DEQ. But I can't tell you. My guess is no, but I don't know that for certain."
Humphries said she believes "they'll make decisions on how they are going to treat agriculture as they make the decisions on the other departments."
"It sounds like ... DNR-DEQ will be at the forefront of this and they'll have an executive order that will kind of lay out how our departments are to be combined. That will be a little bit of a template; I think it will be a sneak peek in terms of some of the ways that they look at combining some of the other departments later," Humphries said. "And what I'm hearing is probably with the next winter's State of the State (address), most of the other executive orders will roll out. And that last year of this governor's administration will be then put in place to complete those consolidations."
Last week, Granholm issued an executive order moving a lot of the historical aspects of the now defunct Department of History, Arts and Libraries - including archive collections - to the DNR.
Humphries said there are a lot of details remaining to be worked out on the recombining of the DNR and DEQ.
"At least immediately, we'll probably have to keep separate facilities," Humphries said. "I think the executive order that comes out, if it's been like other executive orders I've worked with, it will kind of be an umbrella statement that will talk about your authorities and how the departments are supposed to function, and how they'll be organized with commissions or boards or any of that. So it will just kind of lay out the very top level.
"And then from there, there'll probably be some sort of expectation with time limits and framework for completing the consolidation."
Putting the two agencies back together will likely be as difficult as it was to pull them apart. Gov. John Engler used an executive order to create the DEQ in 1995 when he split away environmental regulatory programs from the DNR.
"It will probably be like we did the divorce, it will take us a number of years to look at avenues to put our people together and we'll slowly chink away at it," Humphries said. "It was painful to pull apart, it will be a lot of work to put it back together again."
Humphries said that before the two agencies split, they were "pretty much an environmental bureau and a resource bureau."
"I'm hoping as we recombine, we can look at real avenues to do a better job. I think most citizens look at the quality of their environment based on whether the habitat's good for fish and wildlife, whether the fish are safe to eat, whether the human health aspects are there," Humphries said. "And so the more that we can try and create opportunities to make sure that we are managing that on an ecosystem basis, I think the better off we'll be. But that's where it gets tricky. The devil's always in the details no matter how you try and do this."
Humphries said she isn't sure what the recombined agency will be named.
"I get the feeling it's going to be a true merger, that will be change on both of our parts as they bring us together again," Humphries said.
