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However, the Conservation Law Foundation and its partner organizations oppose this delegation of authority to Massachusetts without adequate funding and without being able to explain the benefits the state is claiming will come from oversight of the program, said Caitlin Peale Sloan, a Conservation Law Foundation staff attorney.
“We’ve already seen over the last decade as DEP’s budget has gotten slashed again and again, a serious degradation in ability to assess water quality and come up with a solution for the water programs that they manage now,” she told Bloomberg BNA in an interview June 20.
“It doesn’t seem reasonable to ask the legislature to give them control of this program that is going to cost millions more per year than it does now because EPA is paying for it now,” Sloan said. “And they haven’t shown they can even carry out adequately the job that they have currently in terms of assessing water quality, let alone NPDES permitting.”