Senator Birkholz’s statement is as follows:
Mr. President, this is a great day, a magnificent day for our Great Lakes. We stand on the verge of doing what no other state in the Great Lakes Basin has done; not one other state has done what we are doing here today. We are not only adopting the Great Lakes Basin Compact, but we are adopting a new standard for evaluating large-quantity withdrawals of water which is based in sound science and uses a biological marker to prohibit adverse resource impacts from ever occurring in our water bodies.
We started this journey toward water protection over five years ago with the introduction of Senate Bill No. 289, which became Public Act 148 of 2003 and eventually led to the creation of the Groundwater Conservation Advisory Council. We set recommendations that form the foundation for our action here today.
Over that time, we had one simple mission — to protect the waters and the water-dependent natural resources of our basin and to protect the rights of those who are wise users of those waters. We have done that. We have achieved three significant landmarks with this package of bills today. We protect our waters and our water-dependent natural resources for many generations to come. We have employed a consensus set of recommendations from the Groundwater Conservation Advisory Council that is rooted in sound science and focused on protecting our groundwater and our surface water. We will soon engage in a water withdrawal assessment process that is user-friendly, based on over forty years of peer-reviewed stream data and employs water health on a biological basis.
But we went further than the recommendations of the council and set a conservative set of water-protection zones that permanently preserve a large majority of this state’s water resources. We have wisely protected our water users and the future use of our water and directly engaged the public in that effort.
In protecting our existing users, we give them regulatory certainty so that they can continue to use our water wisely. We have also provided clear and science-based standards for new users that want to use our water. This effort that we undertook in Michigan is doing more than simply passing the compact which is going to yield tremendous results, but for our future because people will now know the ground rules for use of our water.
We have enlisted three clear mechanisms for the public to help us in our efforts to safeguard our waters. Individual water-user committees, public input on permitting decisions, and the use of water awareness and education committees. We do include the public in the process.
We have taken the step to affirm the existing authority of the state to protect our natural resources and the existing common law property rights of a person’s right to use their water.
And lastly, we have shown a very skeptical public that the Michigan Legislature can indeed produce significant public policy for the people of this state. We know that some have said that the Legislature has not functioned very well lately. There has been great skepticism throughout this state that we would ever reach a consensus for water protection because of political squabbles that occur here, the diverse nature of water interests, and the complexity of this issue. Passing this package is a direct testimony that we can achieve significant results. This has been a collegial effort between the House and the Senate, between leaders of both of these bodies, and between Democrats and Republicans. Although it may have been easy to become distracted by some of the unnecessary criticism that we have received during this process, we never let that get in the way of our end goal.
We have engaged the public in hundreds of hours of workshops, encouraged our citizen stewards in the efforts of the Groundwater Conservation Advisory Council, and engaged the hearts and minds of the people all across this state. Their efforts have a direct handprint on the twelve-bill package that we are concluding now.
Let me end with a very sincere thank you to all the people of this state who have been a part of this process, the members of the Groundwater Conservation Advisory Council, some of them our up in the Gallery today, the Department of Environmental Quality, particularly Frank Ruswick who was there at the end in the final negotiations, to my legislative partners, particularly Representative Rebekah Warren and the committee members — Senators Van Workoem, Patterson, Basham and Prusi — who came to committee some days when they really didn’t want to be there and spent long hours listening to testimony. A sincere thank you to the Governor and her staff, most notably Skip Pruss, who weighed in these last few days and were very helpful to reach a final closure. I want to say thank you also to our Majority Leader, who has been there every step of the way encouraging me, and to the Speaker of the House, who has also been very encouraging; and especially to Bob Wilson and Sally Durfee from my staff and the staff from the Democratic side of our committee who have been there helping us too.
I am humbled and grateful to the people of this state for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this landmark achievement in our natural resources policy.