The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control is requesting nearly $82 million in capital funding, a 40% increase from FY24, but says it still isn’t enough.
Although the increase is one of the largest capital requests from a state agency, DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin says only 22% of project funding comes from the state budget.
He explains 54% of their funding comes from grants and fees, but the majority of the fees have not been increased since 1991 or before.
“We will say the only reason that we’re not drowning right now is unfortunately we have 104 FTEs that are vacant. If we got anywhere close to filling those vacancies, we would not have enough money," Garvin said.
FTEs refers to a full-time employee, or the equivalent, and although filling these vacancies would be expensive, Garvin says workload for current employees has become burdensome.
Garvin is requesting several new positions be added to the department, as well as an increase in funding for their internship programs.
“I’m sure looking at the crowd, there’s a lot of folks here who are going to speak to open space dollars and the ability to get more open space. As we do that, which I think is a great thing, we also add more and more responsibilities to how we take care of those lands.”
Garvin is referring to the Delaware Open Space Program, which coordinates land acquisitions to expand state parks and reserves, fish and wildlife areas, state forests and cultural resource sites.
He says operational and maintenance positions have gone from averaging 10,000 acres of responsibility to 20,000 acres, and as the department continues to acquire more land, more staff will be needed.
In the hopes of increasing funding, Garvin says legislation has been introduced that would raise 155 DNREC fees to compensate for inflation.
You can find DNREC's full operating budget request here and capital request here.
