The committee voted Thursday to cut the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality budget in several ways, among them elimination of the Waste and Hazardous Materials Division.

A 15 percent reduction in MDEQ Director Steve Chester's pay also will be taken to the House floor next week.

State Rep. John Moolenaar calls the DEQ "out of control" and said the legislature has an "important oversight responsibility with respect to the DEQ."

"Currently the DEQ is headed in the wrong direction," he said.

Elimination of the division, would save the state about $6 million and mean administration of permits and regulations relating to hazardous waste would be turned over to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"Ultimately what we want is accountability. The DEQ is not being held accountable by anyone," Moolenaar said.

The suggestion to eliminate the WHMD is related to the dioxin situation pending in Midland and along the Tittabawassee River, Moolenaar said. The division is responsible for administering the law as it pertains to dioxin. The state has a dioxin standard of 90 parts per trillion. Lawmakers argue that the number is not based on science, and that imposing remediation for the level will diminish property values and deter local business investment.

"It is a message of intent," Moolenaar said. "I'm hopeful the DEQ will rethink its approach."

Moolenaar and State Sen. Tony Stamas, along with others in the House and Senate, have proposed legislation that would increase the state's residential contact criteria for dioxin to 1,000 ppt, the action level prescribed by the EPA.

MDEQ Director Steve Chester calls the suggestion to chop the department "remarkable."

"I think it's a little ridiculous," he said. "Obviously there's a level of vindictiveness going on."

He said passing administration to the EPA would be a bad move. "It would have a very negative impact," Chester said, in particular to The Dow Chemical Co., which operates under permits issued by the state. The company also is working with the state to resolve dioxin contamination issues attributed to its historical manufacturing processes.

"We actually have a very good working relationship with Dow," Chester said. "I think they may get very different reception from the EPA. Traditionally, the EPA is less flexible than the state."

He added that besides the local issues with Dow, other business in Michigan would be affected by EPA governance. Permits could be delayed and business growth slowed, he said.

Gregory Rudloff, corrective action project manager for EPA Region 5, said a passback of administrative power in the waste and hazardous materials regulatory division to the federal agency is unprecedented, but that it could be done.

"Obviously we'd switch resources around," he said.

But EPA guidelines wouldn't guarantee a hike in the allowable levels of dioxin in Saginaw Valley soils, he said.

The EPA level has been under review for more than a dozen years and is expected to be complete within the next few years. He expects the 1,000 ppt level will be reduced by a factor of six.

"The final cleanup level would be closer to Michigan's level than to the current level," Rudloff said. The EPA would revisit cleanup sites after its reassessment and would require compliance, he said.

The other issue is that the state of Michigan has preventive standards in place to protect residents at a level of one additional cancer incident above the background rate per 100,000 people.

"We'd still have to comply with that," Rudloff said. That would mean the 90 ppt level could remain intact, though the federal guideline is calculated at a risk of 1 in 1 million.

Chester disagrees with comments that his department is out of control in the dioxin matter, but said he agrees that the DEQ needs to "step back" in its process.

He is working with the City of Midland and Dow on a resolution that's "results, not process-based," he said.

"I've said all along that you can have a healthy environment and a healthy economy," Chester said. He said he plans to take a closer look at a bioavailability study proposed by Dow that could shift the state's 90 ppt standard higher, based on the determination of the actual, not assumed, amount of dioxin that is absorbed into bodies.

Moolenaar offered an amendment to the state budget Thursday that would allocate $800,000 for such a study. His suggestion is to have the work done independently of Dow by an out-of-state university and to have it peer reviewed by the Michigan Environmental Science Board.

Chester said despite the possible flexibility in the state cleanup standard, there are areas along the Tittabawassee River that exceed even the federal guideline of 1,000 ppt.