GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce wants business owners to help them better understand why it now seemingly takes longer for some of their permits to get approved.
The chamber says over the past six months, it has heard concerns from several businesses over the rate of speed in which it takes the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) to complete permit requests.
Businesses must get EGLE’s approval before construction to ensure a project doesn’t violate any environmental regulations.
“This is an issue for competitiveness and growth in Michigan,” said Katie Doyen, government affairs manager at the Grand Rapids Chamber. “It really effects our economy by businesses spending unnecessary resources or putting jobs on hold that could come into your community as well as potentially putting at risk some tax revenue.”
As a result, the chamber recently launched a survey alongside other business associations about the ease of doing business.
According to Doyen, 25 businesses have responded. They hope to hear from at least 100 businesses by September 9.
Early results indicate it may be tied to a large number of retirements EGLE experienced during the pandemic, but Doyen says the chamber needs more data.
It’s also unknown just how much longer the process now takes. The survey hopes to give insight to that too.
“Especially as we see the billions of dollars flood our state with ARPA funds and how much that’s going to be spent on infrastructure and it needing to be spent by 2026, we want to make sure we can get these projects to and through EGLE to help us prosper in our state,” said Doyen.
In an email to FOX17, EGLE said while it holds regular discussions with the business community to discuss issues like this, it had not heard of the concern until seeing the survey on social media.
“While it is difficult to respond to a generic complaint about the pace of permit issuance – we process more than 24,000 permit applications annually, the vast majority of which are completed efficiently and in a timely manner – if the survey is able to identify ways that we can improve efficiency we are glad to consider and discuss constructive suggestions,” said Hugh McDiarmid, Jr., EGLE communications manager.
Brad Walsh owns Orion Construction, which manages up to 20 projects in the greater Grand Rapids area each year.
He says the process to get permitted through EGLE has always been “lengthy”, but has noticed longer than normal wait times in recent months.
“Understandably, it’s a lengthy process,” said Walsh. “You combine that with COVID… workplace environments changing along with staff shortages, [that would] definitely lengthen that process, but again, I go back to these individuals are responsible for the natural habitats we have in Michigan.”
Walsh thinks the area’s development may be playing a role in the backlog too.
He hopes a solution can be reached soon.
“Time is money,” said Walsh. “In this environment with inflation and the economy the way that it is, there’s a lot of uncertainty out there and developers sometimes get cold feet and the faster we can get projects in the ground, the more development and construction can happen.”
