LANSING – Members of environmental and conservation groups on Thursday called for Governor Rick Snyder to appoint a permanent Department of Environmental Quality director who has environmental and public health expertise to shake up the “culture of complacency” at the department, they said.

“The department is charged with protecting our state from hazards to human health in air, land and water. This has fallen by the wayside,” said Lisa Wozniak, executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.

Wozniak also said the DEQ, per Snyder’s own Task Force’s initial analysis of what caused the Flint water crisis, had created a “culture of technical compliance leading to a minimalist approach that is unacceptable and insufficient to the task of public protection.”

Eleven groups signed a letter to Snyder, requesting the next director make protecting human health his or her number one priority, be a defender of the state’s most vulnerable communities and re-establish Michigan’s national leader prowess when it comes to environmental protection.

And the governor should “cast a wide net, looking beyond his own network and administration, to a broad pool of qualified candidates,” said Mike Shriberg, regional executive director of the Great Lakes for the National Wildlife Federation.

Snyder needs to “appoint a new director who is ready to step well beyond politics,” Shriberg said. “The critical choice … is a key opportunity for Governor Snyder to begin to redefine his legacy. True leadership by him now will be measured not in words but in actions to commitment … of natural resources.”

“There’s enough blame to go around on the governance at every level … This choice is both an important choice symbolically and it’s an important choice for everybody who cares about access to clean water,” he said.

None of the three individuals on the press call – Wozniak, Shriberg and Rebecca Fedewa, executive director of the Flint River Watershed Coalition – were willing to say Interim DEQ Director Keith Creagh would be the right person for the job, noting the focus of their conference was outlining their priorities and criteria for whomever may become the next DEQ director.

And, “There’s no indication that Creagh is being considered as a permanent, long-term director,” Wozniak said when pressed. “As an interim, this has been a solid decision, but we need an open process.”

Nor did the groups have any particular individuals they thought would be a good fit.

“Our goal is to outline the priorities and criteria for the governor,” Shriberg said. “We strongly encourage him to take our letter and advice in hand when making this very important decision for the long-haul.”

He said they had no specific timeline in mind, but reiterated that the process should be open and transparent, and a process that “gets to the right leader,” Shriberg said.

The administration has so far praised Creagh’s work and said it would let people know when a decision was made, but in the meantime, Creagh is “doing a great job,” Snyder Press Secretary Dave Murray recently told Gongwer News Service (See Gongwer Michigan Report, February 23, 2016).

This story was published by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on www.gongwer.com