On Wedneday afternoon, the Senate Natural Resources and Environmental Affairs Committee took testimony on Senate Bills 1442 and 1443, two bills that would leverage revenues from the 2002 Great Lakes Water Quality Bond ballot proposal to support non-point source clean-up activities at orphan brownfield sites and free up critical new funding for community wastewater infrastructure projects. The League testified in support of this legislation, based upon the new funding that would be available to communities under the proposal. The legislation includes grants to assist communities with wastewater financing applications, new funding for municipal brownfield grants and loans, new dollars for wastewater loan programs, and an advisory council to reform wastewater financing options. While much of the testimony was supportive of the concepts and the programs delineated in the bills, the committee chair, Sen. Patty Birkholz (R-Saugatuck), agreed to continue negotiating with the League, business groups and the Granholm administration on the appropriate dollar amount to allocate towards each program from the bond. Workgroup meetings are scheduled and a second committee hearing is planned for Tuesday, August 24th, where the committee is expected to report the bills to the full Senate. Passage of this revenue is tied to the package of broad reforms to the Part 201 brownfield process.
For further details on these bills, please check out the Inside 208 article on this package.
Chris Hackbarth handles environmental issues for the Michigan Municipal League. Chris can be reached at 517-908-0303, or by email at chackbarth@mml.org.
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