LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — Michigan lawmakers lately launched new payments that will maintain polluters accountable for environmentally damaging practices.
Senate Invoice 392 would assist scale back the creation of “dead zones,” areas the place groundwater has turn into contaminated, by requiring polluters to wash up these zones to residential requirements, besides the place it’s technically infeasible.
Senate Invoice 391 seeks to maintain the Michigan Division of Atmosphere, Nice Lakes, and Power (EGLE) and the general public knowledgeable about polluted websites and cleanups by requiring stories on previous pollutant releases, reporting on self-managed cleanups of releases, and post-cleanup monitoring to detect migration of contaminants in groundwater.
The house owners or operators of those websites will probably be pressured to submit a clean-up plan, detailing how they may “fulfill their duty to protect the public,” in response to For Love of Water (FLOW), an environmental advocacy group centered on the Nice Lakes Basin
The group additionally says present regulation has facilitated the frequent use of issues comparable to deed restrictions and native ordinances to ban the usage of contaminated areas somewhat than cleansing them up.
Extra payments within the plan will probably be launched later this week, in response to FLOW.
These payments would assist strengthen and revise EGLE clean-up standards, enhance transparency within the cleanup program, and supply a reason for motion in court docket for funding medical monitoring wanted by individuals uncovered to contamination, in response to the group.
EGLE estimates that roughly $13 billion in funds will probably be wanted to wash up all deserted contaminated websites, the place these chargeable for the air pollution are actually bankrupt or defunct.
“Michigan can no longer afford to let polluters off the hook. For too long, families, small businesses, and communities have borne the health and financial costs of toxic contamination they didn’t cause,” mentioned FLOW in a information launch despatched to six Information.
