DEC repeals rules for sanitation grants lawmakers stopped funding in 2017

Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Randy Bates signed an order Oct. 13 repealing the rules for a grant program that once helped communities pay for sanitation projects. The Legislature stopped funding the program in 2017, the Department of Law said in approving the repeal, which takes effect Nov. 20.

The Municipal Matching Grant Program gave communities partial grants and let them cover their share with low-interest loans from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, according to DEC's technical support document. DEC created it after the federal construction grants that helped build public wastewater treatment plants in the 1970s and 1980s ended. The Legislature last put new money into it in state fiscal year 2016, and DEC says the rules, which date to 1977, are obsolete unless lawmakers fund a similar program again.

The repeal counts toward DEC's plan to cut about 20% of its roughly 13,000 discretionary rules by the end of 2026 under Gov. Mike Dunleavy's Administrative Order 360. The department's reform plan says it removes 69 requirements, which the support document describes as no longer in effect. DEC said when it proposed the repeal that it was meant to make clear to the public that the rules and the program are no longer in effect. Earlier this month, DEC repealed its 1971 laser safety rules, for which it says it has no regulatory program.

DEC says the repeal won't affect how its Village Safe Water program administers capital funding for water, sewer and solid waste projects. DEC received no public comments after it proposed the repeal in July.