Bills working their way through the state Legislature would give business interests far more sway in determining permits and rules on air quality, clean water, shorelines and wetlands.

Supporters of this major change say that reforms are needed due to the “adversarial” approach taken by the Department of Environmental Quality toward business operations.

Yet, the researchers at the House Fiscal Agency found that in fiscal year 2017, the DEQ granted 7,447 permits and denied 34, a 99.5% approval rate for permit-seeking businesses. The approval rate was even higher the previous year.

So, 99.5 percent is not good enough for the business community. They seem to be saying that those stats demonstrate a hostile environment at the DEQ that must be remedied by revamping the state’s permitting process.

A three-bill package approved by the state Senate earlier this year would take away the DEQ’s authority to create new rules and regulations and put that power in the hands of a committee dominated by industry. A second committee would handle appeals when a land-use permit is denied due to concerns about environmental contamination.

The state House on Tuesday approved a softened version of the bill package that makes the two panels more advisory in nature while giving the governor a final say.

But the 11-member Environmental Rules Review Committee would still include just one member from the environmental community, one from a land conservation group, and one from the general public. The rest of the appointees would represent industries such as manufacturing, waste disposal, agriculture and oil and gas.

Environmental groups have labeled the legislation the “fox guarding the henhouse” bills. Chris Kolb, president of the Michigan Environmental Council, said in a statement:

“While Governor Snyder and lawmakers negotiated some of the sting out of the bills — by making the new unelected DEQ rules committee more advisory in nature — this legislative package still gives polluters and other corporate interests who are unaccountable to Michigan voters and taxpayers an oversized voice in crafting environmental protections. In particular, it vests too much power in the permit appeals panel, giving members of that newly appointed body final say over the contested case process as the last decision maker before the court system.”

State Rep. Bill Sowerby, a Democrat from Clinton Township, a community that has dealt with pollution in the Clinton River for decades, said: “These bills give far too much power to members of unelected DEQ rule-making and permit panels. These panels allow non-Michiganders and employees of corporations, (who) could have a vested interest in exploiting our natural resources, to be appointed members.”

Casperson

At the same time, business groups applaud the legislation. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce says the bills are an attempt to remove politics from the process of giving business a stamp of approval for projects that could affect the environment.

The sponsor of the three bills is state Sen. Tom Casperson, an Upper Peninsula Republican whose family has been in the logging business for decades. Casperson has called the DEQ a “radical” state agency with an anti-business bias. He has argued that environmentalists, some of whom want to “turn everything back to the way it was before man got here,” hold too much sway over the DEQ process.

The bills now return to the Senate for concurrence on the House amendments. If approved, they would then go to Gov. Rick Snyder’s desk for signature into law.

 

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