Fransen appointed director of Idaho Department of Environmental Quality

Curt Fransen

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter has appointed Curt Fransen, deputy director of the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality since 2007, to the position of director of the DEQ.

Fransen replaces Toni Hardesty, who has been DEQ director since 2004. She recently resigned – effective Feb. 24 – to become Idaho director of The Nature Conservancy.

Fransen is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of California’s Hastings College of Law. He joined the Attorney General’s Office in 1983 and represented the Department of Health and Welfare’s Division of Health until 1986. From 1986 to 1997, he was chief of the Environmental Quality Section with the Attorney General’s Natural Resources Division, overseeing legal services to DEQ.

He moved to Coeur d’Alene in 1997, representing a number of state agencies on mining cleanup and other northern Idaho natural resources issues until becoming DEQ’s deputy director in 2007.

Fransen has served as chair of the Western States Hazardous Waste Project, chair of the Environment and Natural Resources Section of the Idaho State Bar, and on the steering committee of the Idaho Environmental Forum. He also has been involved with the Coeur d’Alene Basin Environmental Improvement Commission and the Lake Pend Oreille Commission.

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