Why the Village of Milford is thankful that the legislature robbed Peter to pay Paul (and what happens when that money runs out?)

Charming Milford

Eleven thousand contaminated sites, most with no responsible party left alive to pay for a cleanup. So the state has raided another fund to pay enough to work on the riskiest of sites. It’ll last for 3, maybe 4 years. A temporary, one-time fix for a crucial program (Hmmmmm….seems I’ve heard of that happening before in Lansing.)

At least places like the Coe’s Cleaners site in the stunningly cute Village of Milford in rural Oakland County won’t be abandoned. The contamination threatens the village’s drinking water supply. Village Manager Arthur Shufflebarger says, "It's a longtime source of contamination. If that would have been discontinued, it would have been a huge concern. I'm very pleased that another source of support has been offered."

So what about when the money runs out? Or, maybe we even want to address more than a handful of these sites as a way to get Michigan’s towns and cities to attract businesses and industry on reclaimed sites of contamination (brownfields, as they’re called)?. How about a 3/8ths of a cent sales tax on the 2012 ballot to let Michigan voters decide whether to permanently fund cleanup programs?

The devil, of course, is in the details. And in the politics.

Stay tuned on this one.

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Environmental protection takes 72 percent budget hit in eight years. Who's going to be blamed when we can't adequately respond to a BP-style crisis?

The chart accompanying this Detroit News story http://bit.ly/cY6FcL illustrates exactly how drastically we've cut funding for environmental protection in Michigan during the last decade. The budget for these agencies has declined from $153 million in 2002 to $42 million proposed for 2010. That's a 72 percent cut.

If your household income was $60,000 in 2002 and you received the same cut, you'd be making  just shy of $17, 000 today.
 
We'll hear a lot about low taxes and limited government this election season. But given the choice, do Michiganders really want to see even more cuts to programs like deer check stations?  Monitoring of pollution flowing into the Great Lakes? Forest fire fighting personnel? Keeping state campgrounds open? Cleaning up contaminated industrial sites?

And when some BP-style disaster strikes and Michigan's environmental agencies do not have the resources to respond adequately, who's going to be blamed? 

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Message to neighbors of Michigan's 4,000 orphan contaminated sites: Sorry, you're on your own

Our state used to be pretty good at keeping tabs on places where abandoned industrial contamination poisoned the water and soil. When nasty stuff moved toward residential wells, a solution was found before people got sick. If toxic stuff headed for an unpolluted stream or lake, a strategy was created to  avoid a disaster.

Not any longer.

As this excellent package of stories by the Detroit News’ Jim Lynch chronicles, there are more than 4,000 such sites and no money left to monitor the pollution, much less clean it up:

http://bit.ly/dj7HdQ

These are sites where the polluters are long gone – bankrupt, dead, or untraceable. Society can pitch in to address the problems. Or we can simply write off the land, water and neighbors affected by each of these sites as expendable.

As the stories illustrate, the damage isn’t just to the environment, but to public health, economic prosperity and property values.

Even in this dismal economic climate, you would think that managing this problem would be considered a core government service, but it’s not.

No, Michigan lawmakers have been busy slashing the general fund budget of the agency that oversees these problems 75 percent in the last eight years – and there are plenty of lawmakers who wanted to take more.

In a sidebar to the News’ main story, a fellow from the Michigan Manufacturers Association suggests that the problem is a result of red tape. Presumably, if we just get the bureaucrats out of the way, things will be fine. Never mind about funding the program.

Meanwhile, contaminated plumes of groundwater are moving toward - and already have - poisoned drinking water wells. Others have, or soon will, reach unpolluted streams, lakes and ponds.

You can probably find a site near you on the News’ interactive map of some selected sites: http://bit.ly/bj0sO5

This year, we’ve got candidates for governor and for state legislative offices running for election. It would be a fine time to ask them whether they consider toxic cleanup of such “orphan” sites an essential function of government, and if so how they intend to restore funding for it.

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