Senators Brater, Clark-Coleman, Scott and Jacobs, under their constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18),
protested against the passage of House Bill Nos. 6359, 6360, and 6363.
Senator Brater's statement, in which Senators Clark-Coleman, Scott and Jacobs concurred, is as follows:
I rise to give my "no vote" explanation for House Bill No. 6363, but there are also two other bills in the package,
House Bill Nos. 6359 and 6360, that I would like to address at the same time. The proponents of these bills argue
that this package of bills will make it easier for those responsible for Part 201 facilities, otherwise known as sites of
toxic pollution, for them to do a cleanup. Unfortunately, what it is making it easier for them to do is an insufficient
cleanup which will not result in returning the site to conditions that are sufficiently protective of our environment.
Back in 1995, the polluter pay law, Act 307, was repealed or vastly weakened through amendment which resulted
in the Part 201 process. What Part 201 does is allow a tenfold increase in cancer risk that we tolerate in citizens here
in the state of Michigan. So instead of a 1-in-1-million cancer risk tolerance that we used to have, we now allow 1-
in-100,000 as a cancer risk standard. Also this Part 201 allows mixing zones which allow untreated pollution to
migrate into our surface waters in the state of Michigan. The theory behind that is the solution to pollution is
dilution. I do not subscribe to that approach. I think these polluted ground waters must be cleaned up before they are
allowed to migrate and should be remediated before they are allowed to migrate to our surface waters.
There are also discrepancies in the standards, depending on use--residential use versus industrial use versus
commercial use--in Part 201. I think that these are misguided because ground water, migrating water doesn't know a
boundary between residential zoning and commercial or industrial zoning. It continues to migrate underground and
move from one section of property to another. So we can't really say how we are affecting residential property which
has a higher standard of cleanup than a budding or nearby industrial property.
I think in all these ways that I would like to go on record to say that I hope at some time a future Legislature will
see fit to restore these standards that we used to have to truly clean up our waters when necessary when they become
polluted.