State Reinforces Soil Erosion Law
In the final days of its session last year, the Michigan Legislature responded to broad concern about weak environmental protection by strengthening the state's soil erosion control law. The new provisions include much higher fines for violations and greater local government authority to require restoration of eroded sites.

State Senator Ken Sikkema (R-Grandville) led the charge for a stronger soil erosion law. He started two years ago after construction at Arcadia Bluffs golf course in Manistee County resulted in tons of soil and sand rushing repeatedly into Lake Michigan off a high bluff that developers had stripped bare of trees. Read more...

Industry Exempts Itself
Even as they improved the state's soil erosion control law last year, lawmakers nevertheless took care of their friends in the oil and gas industry, one of the largest contributors to conservative legislators' campaigns. A provision of the newly amended law specifically exempts oil and gas producers from local permitting and oversight. The waiver nullifies a 1996 District Court ruling that upheld the authority of local governments to issue soil erosion permits before oil companies can build roads, pipelines, drilling pads, and other installations. Read more...

Rural Voices Win
Farmers and environmentalists demonstrated the power of their combined voices last December when their calls and letters to Michigan's senators succeeded in convincing the lawmakers to stop a bad law from becoming worse.

The Michigan Drain Code has promoted sprawl's spread across farmland for decades by allowing local authorities, called drain commissioners, to evade environmental laws and shift the cost of stormwater management from developers onto local landowners. The senate rejected a new version of the Drain Code that would have expanded the unchecked powers of drain commissioners. Read more...

Fuzzy Bridge Math
A year after one federal agency found fault with it, another U.S. agency is challenging the accuracy and quality of a $1 million study that the Grand Traverse County Road Commission and Michigan Department of Transportation are using to justify a $25 million bridge over the Boardman River valley near Traverse City. The Fish and Wildlife Service joins the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the citizen-led Coalition for Sensible Growth, and the Michigan Land Use Institute, each of which questioned an earlier version of the study. The Federal Highway Administration will make the final decision on the bridge project after the public makes comments on the final study. Read more...

Drill, Drill, Drill
Spencer Abraham, the new U.S. Secretary of Energy, twice tried to eliminate the Department of Energy when he was a U.S. senator from Michigan.

But he may now use his leadership of the department to press for opening the Lake Michigan coastline to oil and gas drilling. Mr. Abraham supports President George Bush's energy policy, which the president described during his campaign as "drill, drill, drill."

Vice President Dick Cheney also stated on the campaign trail that directional drilling beneath Lake Michigan was a reasonable solution for providing more oil and gas. Read more...

Swamp Attack
Thousands of acres of Michigan wetlands recently lost an important protector. The United States Supreme Court in January ruled, in a 5-to-4 decision, that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has no authority over wetlands that are not directly connected to the nation's "navigable waters."

The high court, acting on a case in Illinois, said that the Corps went too far when it prohibited a group of 23 local governments from building a regional garbage dump on a tract of swampy land near Chicago. The Corps maintained that the pollution from the landfill would harm protected waterfowl that use the swamp.

Don Your Bathrobes
"We're not dealing with sophisticated, educated people. We're dealing with housewives who would read about this at breakfast." These are the words of Douglas Wicklund, president of a company that has applied for state permission to put a hazardous waste well in the middle of the congested Romulus neighborhood near Detroit's Metropolitan Airport.

A state-appointed panel of experts and citizens last year advised against granting Environmental Disposal Systems a permit because the proposed location of the well is itself hazardous. Yet when more than 400 people showed up at a January public meeting to reinforce the site review board's recommendation, Mr. Wicklund arrogantly dismissed their concerns in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.

Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Russell Harding has said he intends to grant a permit to the company. People connected financially to EDS have put $20,000 since 1997 into the campaigns of Governor John Engler and other Republicans. Read more...

Let's Talk
Even in this information age, it's not common for local governments to share information — or consult one another — about development projects that can affect more than one township or county. That could change, however, with new legislation that lawmakers plan to push this session.

The Coordinated Planning Act would give Michigan's 1,800 local governments incentives for considering neighboring communities when planning for land uses. The Act would maintain local control while encouraging cooperation. Read more...

To find out more about these and other issues and how you can get involved, call the Institute at 231-882-4723, or visit our Web site at www.mlui.org.

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