Democratic members in the House and Senate introduced legislation setting more stringent cleanup standards with the goal of preventing sites from becoming “orphaned.”
Key Points:
-
- Provides additional information to the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) and the public about cleanups and polluted sites.
- Requires polluters to pay for land and water to be restored to usable condition as much as technically feasible.
- Enables EGLE to set cleanup criteria without easily blocked APA rulemaking.
- Requires businesses with large amounts of potentially polluting materials to post up-front financial assurance to cover any cleanup.
- Empowers the state to bring claims on behalf of the public to cover cleanup costs and damage to natural resources due to contaminants.
- Enables people exposed to hazardous substances to bring a claim against the polluter to cover the costs of medical monitoring needed to detect a condition linked to exposure.
- Changes the timeline for when a person can file a claim from when they discovered the existence of should have discovered it.
Next Steps:
-
- The Senate bills were referred to the Senate Energy and Environment Committee.
- The House bills were referred to the House Natural Resources, Environment, Tourism and Outdoor Recreation Committee.
