The Director of the Michigan Department for Environment, Great Lakes and Energy comments on the 2025 budget

Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) has a budget of $1 billion for 2025. According to its director, Phil Roos, the budget will continue to fund work that focuses on environmental protection and public health, such as clean drinking water, climate-resilient stormwater infrastructure, waste management, brownfield remediation and other large-scale projects that support individual communities.

Last year, more than 50 percent of EGLE’s budget was returned to communities in the form of grants, typically for infrastructure projects such as the $85 million budgeted for next year to replace lead service lines.

New in this year’s budget is $10 million for climate-resilient stormwater infrastructure, an item that Roos says will be essential in the future to deal with even more storms and floods.

“We’re particularly looking at areas that affect basic human health, like drinking water, but at the same time, wherever possible, can provide economic benefits and create jobs,” Roos said. “These high-level climate initiatives are, so to speak, impacting things that really affect people, individuals and communities, very directly.”

Roos said one issue not addressed in this year’s budget that he would like to make room for is waste management, specifically efforts to keep food waste out of landfills and plug wells that contribute to methane emissions.

According to a March study by the National Environmental Protection Agency, Michigan leads the nation in the amount of waste generated per capita. Roos explained that 25% of Michigan’s landfills consist of waste from out of state, largely because the current garbage fee, or landfill fee, is $0.36 per ton, which is lower than all surrounding states. He says raising it to $5 would put Michigan on par with Midwestern states and create more revenue for other projects like cleaning up contaminated sites and remediating brownfields.

The ministry also plans to continue to focus on climate, energy and mobility by allocating money for electric vehicle chargers and private and public-scale renewable energy projects. Roos said they plan to continue the ministry’s Solar for All program, allocate $30 million for electric vehicle charging stations in shopping centers and homes, and invest in hydrogen refueling stations.

“We’ve set big goals for some of the impacts we’re going to make. In fact, we’re redefining the way we measure success by focusing on how much of a positive impact it has on the community, and we’ve tasked our entire agency to look for new ways to make a big impact,” Roos said. “It’s about environmental protection. It’s about protecting public health, but it’s also about economic and community development that can make a big difference, and that’s what we want to convey, and this budget should help us achieve more of that.”

Roos said that with climate and health goals to be achieved and aging infrastructure to be replaced, Egle is excited to use the budget funds to support state projects that impact personal concerns and improve the lives of people in the state.