Re: [CPEO-BIF] Michigan's brownfield laws

["Evans Paull" <epaull@nemw.org>]

Title: [CPEO-BIF] Michigan's brownfield laws

For those of you that may not have paid attention to this one, it is really interesting and I'm hoping to get some exchange going. 

 

Basically there are six bills pending in the legislature - Senate Bills 437, 1345, 1346, 1347, 1348 and 1349 - that have the collective effect of throwing out the state DNR's regulatory guidances for brownfields in favor of case-by-case decisions.  The article claims that the intent of Michigan's brownfields laws have been undermined by DNR staffers who never bought into the risk based cleanups, developed guidelines that make the program inflexible, and who keep moving the goalposts, making "finality" an allusive target for developers.  Two of the Bills also say that Michigan's cleanup standards may not be more stringent than the federal guidelines.

 

I hear this complaint in a lot of states, especially as brownfields programs mature and become more bureaucratized - less flexible and less user-friendly.

 

Could others comment on this problem relative to their states?  And those of you who are close to the situation in Michigan - what's your opinion? 

 

Ev Paull

ev@redevelopmenteconomics.com

www.redevelopmenteconomics.com

 

 

 

 

---

From: brownfields-bounces@lists.cpeo.org on behalf of Lenny Siegel
Sent: Fri 6/4/2010 8:27 AM
To: Brownfields Internet Forum
Subject: [CPEO-BIF] Michigan's brownfield laws

Changes in Brownfield Laws Will Help Michigan

By Russ Harding
Mackinac Center for Public Policy (MI)
June 3, 2010

Michigan's brownfield contaminated site cleanup program, once considered
by many to be the best in the nation, is today largely dysfunctional.
The main problem is that it is nearly impossible to get closure - once
you check in you can never check out. Businesses are reluctant to invest
money to clean up contaminated sites when they are at the whim of state
environmental regulators for a never ending series of additional cleanup
requirements.

Michigan made significant changes in how it deals with brownfield
cleanups by amending state environmental cleanup laws in the mid 1990s.
Michigan abandoned the federal model which makes a business responsible
for cleanup costs just by being in the chain of title even if they were
not responsible for the contamination. Instead Michigan lawmakers with
bipartisan support adopted a causation standard that says if you caused
the pollution you pay to clean it up and if you did not cause the
pollution you are not responsible for costs. Another significant change
in the law was to tailor cleanup standards to environmental and human
health risks rather than the previous requirement that all sites be
cleaned up to background levels. These two changes in the law opened up
a floodgate of investment in brownfields around the state.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.mackinac.org/12899

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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