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Alabama's environmental agency has a wonderful staff and fine laws, but it is unwilling to use them, residents told the staff and leadership of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management Wednesday.

"ADEM's main problem is: They don't think they're an environmental protection agency," environmental lawyer Bart Slawson said at a public meeting at Birmingham-Southern College.

Members of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission, which oversees ADEM, called the gathering to get the public's input into its strategic planning process.

Currently, ADEM has no management plan and only a short mission statement that does not call for a clean environment or aggressive pollution control. Instead, it states the department's job is to: "Provide environmental stewardship through the implementation of authorized environmental statutes, advocating statutory change as needed."

In recent months, new members of the Environmental Management Commission called for a more charismatic mission statement and a plan to strengthen the department and its leadership.

At Wednesday's meeting, members of the public complained repeatedly about light fines that they believe are simply fees polluters pay as a cost of doing business rather than a deterrent to lawbreaking or an incentive to cleanups.

In some cases, polluters never are fined. Both lawyers who sued to clean up Jefferson County's filthy sewage practices spoke Wednesday, and complained that the department did not fine the county in 15 years of known violations. Ultimately, ADEM refused to even join the overwhelmingly successful lawsuit that required the county to quit dumping raw sewage into the Cahaba and Black Warrior river basins.

"There are a lot of very good environmental laws on the books," said Beth Stewart, executive director of the Cahaba River Society, whose group sued under the U.S. Clean Water Act to clean up the rivers. "They would got a long way toward restoring and protecting the environment if they were fully enforced."

Speakers praised ADEM for its ability to function with an ever shrinking pool of state money, but encouraged it to foster better ties with the Legislature so it is unafraid to ask for the money it needs. The majority of the department's money comes from the federal government.

The meeting, which drew about 70, is one of five held around the state this week.