The Maine Department of Environmental Protection faces significant funding shortfalls in its air emissions and wastewater discharge programs by next year, according to the department’s director of policy.

The shortfalls are still being calculated, but as of three weeks ago the deficit in the air program was projected to be $640,000, while shortages in the water program could range from $250,000 to $300,000, Jim Dusch said.

The funding shortfalls are a chronic problem because contributions from the state’s General Fund and federal grants have remained flat, Dusch said. Licensing fees in the air bureau have not changed since 1994, and wastewater discharge fees haven’t changed since the state was delegated the federal licensing program.

“It’s costing more and more just to support programs in the condition they’re in now,” Dusch said. “It’s the same number of people or less trying to do increasing amounts of work, but there’s no more money coming in.”

In the past the DEP has cobbled together money for its departmental budget by getting one-time allocations from the General Fund or grants from the Maine Department of Transportation. Now the environmental department’s Commissioner Dawn Gallagher wants the agency to look for a more long-term solution, Dusch says.

Norman Anderson, research coordinator at the American Lung Association of Maine, says he supports the concept of looking at both programs together and considering alternative ways to pay for them.

Anderson said he does not want to see any cutbacks in licensing and enforcement, but acknowledges the difficulties ahead.

“It doesn’t seem like there are easy solutions to this problem,” he said. “There needs to be a way to at least maintain, if not enhance, the department’s ability to regulate these sources.”

Michael Barden, director of environmental affairs at the Maine Pulp and Paper Association, says his industry already funds about 50 percent of the staff positions in the air program.

A large pulp and paper mill typically pays about $300,000 in licensing fees for air, water and hazardous waste, Barden said. But his concerns over funding such programs would be program efficiencies.

“Have they looked at reducing staff, for example? Do they need this many staff people anymore?” he said. “Or, if they do need the staff, have they looked at other options for funding some of these people?”

Meanwhile, several toxic waste cleanup projects and “critical” municipal sewer improvements aimed at reducing water pollution are on hold indefinitely at the DEP because the Legislature failed to support a bond package that included $11 million for environmental initiatives, according to the department.

Projects would have included an effort to get sewer overflow out of the Machias River in Washington County and a merging of the sewage treatment plants in Limestone and the Loring Commerce Centre to protect several small trout streams, said Steve McLaughlin of the DEP.

The slightly more than $3 million in water quality bond money alone would have brought the state $12.5 million in federal pollution control funds, he said Tuesday.

The loss of an additional million dollars proposed for cleaning up hazardous waste sites hit the department particularly hard because the federal Superfund program is all but bankrupt, placing ever more responsibility onto the states.

And 17 continuing cleanup projects, already delayed when their funding was shifted last year to help keep the Lincoln and Brewer paper mills secure during bankruptcy proceedings, are on hold until $1.175 million in funding can be raised.

Bond-funded projects rarely affect the DEP’s spending, McLaughlin said. But the anticipated tight budget eliminates the ability to use department money in place of bond dollars to secure federal matching funds.

Right now, a June 2005 bond package, as suggested by some legislators, seems to be the only option, McLaughlin said.