A state panel is studying whether staff shortages have hamstrung Indiana’s environmental agency, leaving it unable to stop polluters.
The move comes amid charges by the state’s two largest environmental advocacy groups that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management is too understaffed to enforce Indiana’s beefed-up water-quality regulations.
Department officials maintain that they have enough people to do their job despite staff shortages.
Environmentalists are concerned that a lack of technically competent workers and a backlog of 474 pending waste-water permits could cause further erosion of troubled Hoosier waterways.
The agency has been the target of criticism by the Sierra Club and the Hoosier Environmental Council for years for phasing out vacant jobs and relying increasingly on less skilled temporary employees.
