You might think a bill that streamlined the environmental permitting process, cut paperwork and reduced duplication of effort for municipalities and industry would be well-received in the Legislature. Think again.

LD 1836, which strengthens the Department of Environmental Protection’s wastewater permitting program and removes inconsistencies between state and federal laws, is a commonsense approach to improving the way regulators and wastewater dischargers operate. The bill, about as glamorous as a sewage pipe, is noteworthy because it has needlessly gotten clogged in the Maine House. It needs and deserves help in the Senate to get going again.

The problem is simple. Through budget cuts over the last decade, the DEP has lost most of the staff used to permit wastewater dischargers, which include municipalities, paper companies, Bath Iron Works and many others. It currently has two permit writers to cover 350 facilities statewide. The process, not surprisingly, is slow and inadequate.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency lets most states decide whether dischargers are meeting their permits, delegating its authority to the state. This keeps the process moving and means that businesses have fewer regulators to satisfy and, subsequently, less paperwork. Maine is among the few states that don’t meet EPA standards for this expedited process. Its two overworked permit writers, understandably, aren’t considered sufficient. Further, Maine and the EPA regulations don’t always match up, creating headaches for everyone.

The DEP proposed LD 1836 to fix all this. It would add eight people to the wastewater permit staff, costing the General Fund approximately $250,000 and fee-payers another $500,000, based on their volume of waste. That’s not cheap, but considering what they’re getting for their money, many of the dischargers affected signed on — BIW and International Paper support the change, so do cities such as Portland and Augusta.

House members want the permit process to be slower, more cumbersome and expensive for their own reasons. The Senate can clear the obstruction by supporting LD 1836 and eliminate needless regulation in Maine.