It is possible that the Michigan Legislature will do more damage to environmental policy in the next two weeks than it has done since the era of the 19th Century lumber barons and market hunters. The results of that previous assault were logged-out, burned-over forestlands and depleted fish and game species that took many decades to restore — at public expense.
The attacks this time have been sudden, little-publicized, and wholly unjustified. They include one bill that leaves unguarded over a half million acres of wetlands and over 20,000 miles of streams, another that handcuffs state agency scientists trying to set chemical cleanup standards protective of human health (including pregnant women), and still another that would attempt to cripple efforts to set environmental standards that go beyond federal minimums.
Then there’s the ill-considered bill that has eclipsed all of these — giving Enbridge Energy the opportunity to transport petroleum products through the Straits of Mackinac for another 10 years under the guise of (maybe) building a tunnel under the Straits in the meantime to contain the company’s Line 5 pipelines. Given the Enbridge record — including an epic oil spill in the Kalamazoo River watershed in 2010 and shabby stewardship of the Straits pipeline — this potential gift from the state makes no sense. Especially since it envisions a 99-year lease to use the Straits to transport fossil fuels as the imperative of moving away from those fuels to protect the climate becomes ever clearer. If it results in a spill in the Straits, the bill will surely be cursed as long as it lives in Michigan’s memory.
Of course, all of these things have the potential to happen only because Michigan is suffering through a lame-duck legislative session where proponents of the environmental attacks can largely escape accountability. Many of them are leaving office, never (hopefully) to return. It is clearly not the public will to expose people to harmful chemicals and water resources to pollution and destruction. These things can become public policy only when the public can do nothing about it. But it is the public that will pay if these bills become law.
What is happening to our system of governance?