Although state coffers are stuffed, legislators want to know how they can cut $550,000 from the budget of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality. The DEQ chief thinks that would "impact the effectiveness of our programs."

Dianne R. Nielson, executive director of the department, outlined budget concerns Tuesday while meeting with Deseret Morning News journalists. Responding to a question, she discussed requests made Monday when she appeared before the Legislature's joint appropriations committee for Transportation, Environmental Quality and the National Guard.

Under Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr.'s recommendation for fiscal year 2008, the DEQ budget would be $51,171,400, a decrease of 3.2 percent. General funds would provide about $13.5 million of that.

But at the joint committee meeting Monday, legislators wanted to know what would happen if the DEQ budget was cut by $550,000. That amounts to about 4 percent of the DEQ's general funds.

General funds make up 23 percent of the department's overall budget, with other money coming from such things as fees or federal grants.

Meanwhile, the state government has $1.6 billion more income because of new and one-time tax revenues. The money is available for fiscal years 2007 and '08, with a tax cut possibly taking a large portion.

Nielson said she might not know about some budgetary discussions concerning other departments, but "I'm not aware of other agencies right now that are providing those cuts."

The DEQ has "offered a couple of proposals" on how to cut that much from its budget, she said.

First, she suggested reducing water loan funding that is derived from sales tax. Over the past six years, she said, cuts in the fund already have amounted to about $5.5 million.

"Much as we hate to lose more, this was what we offered (the committee members) first," Nielson said. That cut would not risk a whole program, the department believes. But the committee asked for a different way to reduce the DEQ budget.

"So yesterday I told them what the impacts would be if they took $550,000 out of any of the (DEQ) divisions," Nielson said.

She told the committee another method to get that much to the general fund would be to raise fees charged for disposing of commercial radioactive and hazardous solid waste. That would result in greater revenue.

Rather than dropping such fees by $400,000 this year, the state's fee for using the facilities could be raised by $500,000. "That didn't get support either," she said.

"I was directed to go back and provide specific reductions in programs" that legislators could study. The DEQ is working on the task now, she said.

"We went through about $1.5 million of those kinds of individual programmatic cuts in 2002, '03 and '04. And we're at a point where I think we're lean but we're getting the work done."

With its present budget, the department is able to continue working with stakeholders and meet its primacy obligations, she said. Primacy refers to the state's control over certain programs like air quality and water quality. If Utah can't handle those programs, it loses primacy and they go under direct control of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

"My concern is additional cuts that we take now," Nielson said, "will impact the effectiveness of our programs."

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Contributing: Bob Bernick Jr.

E-mail: bau@desnews.com