October 20, 2005

The Department of Environmental Quality was awarded with an “Excellence in Technology Award” at the Michigan Digital Government Summit held on October 12th in Lansing. Michael Beaulac accepted the award in the “Best Application Serving a Public Organization’s Business Needs” category on behalf of the DEQ’s Executive Office from Jack Mortimer, of Government Technology magazine, and Teri Takai, CIO of the State of Michigan.

The award was given to honor the DEQ’s Electronic Discharge Monitoring Reporting (e-DMR) application. The e-DMR system uses machine to machine communications between the regulated community and the state and federal environmental staff.

The Federal Clean Water Act, enacted in 1972, requires permitted facilities to submit monthly wastewater discharge reports to the State and EPA, and the volume of reporting is second only to the Federal income tax returns. Historically, these reports were separately submitted via the US mail in paper form followed by duplicative manual data entry. Mr. Beaulac, along with Jeffrey Jones and Pete Ostlund of the DEQ’s Water Bureau, developed an innovative process allowing facilities to electronically report directly from their computers to those of the state’s, with the state then electronically submit approved reports to EPA’s computers. This data exchange uses the technology of the National Environmental Information Exchange Network to fulfill a facility’s statutory reporting duty while reducing the burden on all of the parties involved.

“Michael, Jeff and Pete’s hard work and dedication to improving the DEQ’s service to the public is exceptional, and this award is well deserved,” said DEQ Director Steven E. Chester. “The DEQ will continue to explore new ways to streamline our processes, and show our dedication to having a healthy economy and a healthy environment.”

The Exchange Network is a partnership between state environmental departments and the EPA tasked with creating an Internet and standards-based method for exchanging environmental information between partners. This approach promotes the use of extensible markup language (XML), web services and data standards, and provides real-time access to higher quality data while saving time, resources, and money for partner states, tribes, and territories.

The State can expect to reduce internal wastewater program staff costs by about $250,000 per year once all facilities use the e-DMR system. The 1,200 permitted facilities can expect to see a combined savings of $2M per year, mainly due to reduced data coding and clerical paperwork.

Editor’s note: DEQ news releases are available on the department’s Internet home page at www.michigan.gov/deq.

“Protecting Michigan’s Environment, Ensuring Michigan’s Future”

Revised October 20, 2005, by Shirley Smith for Pat Watson