The WV-DEP Secretary Randy Huffman told legislators Tuesday he fears a brain drain at the regulatory agency, as many longtime employees are reaching retirement age. Many of those employees joined the DEP in the 1970s and early 1980s, as environmental regulations were being enacted, and devoted themselves to careers in public service. 

However, Huffman told a Joint Government Organization interim committee meeting that the new generation of employees does not have the same level of commitment. “That sense of loyalty, that sense of public service that caused my generation to stay, they don’t have that,” he said of younger employees. He said younger employees today are much more likely to leave the DEP for private-sector jobs in regulated industries, something that rarely happened in the past, despite higher salaries in the private sector.

Huffman stressed that the Office of Oil and Gas needs to hire more inspectors, with the anticipated growth in Marcellus Shale drilling. Currently, the office is budgeted for 17 inspectors and has one vacancy.  However, he said the shortage of inspectors is not as severe as critics claim. (He reported earlier this year of the need to revise the State laws that govern such inspectors.)