Moore commits funding for 67 hires in state’s embattled environment department

Gov. Wes Moore said Thursday he is committed to filling vacancies as quickly as possible at the Maryland Department of the Environment, the state’s troubled regulator of drinking water and wastewater treatment, which has been plagued by staff shortages and extensive backlogs of expired pollution control permits. For years, environmentalists and advocates have called for rebuilding the state’s primary environmental enforcement agency, whose staff numbers plummeted and performance deteriorated under the administration of former Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who served for eight years.