Report: Michigan's weak pollution cleanups are costing future generations

• A new report warns that Michigan industries are pushing costs and risks onto future generations by refusing to clean up their pollution
• Through so-called ‘institutional controls,’ Michigan law allows industry to cordon off pollution, rather than cleaning it up
• Researchers suggested changes to state law to require stronger cleanups

By polluting the state’s groundwater and choosing not to clean it up, Michigan industries are saddling future generations with untold financial, social and health risks. 

That’s according to a new report from researchers at Michigan State University and the nonprofit FLOW (For Love of Water) that recommends changing Michigan law to make it harder for polluters to avoid cleaning up their mess.

“If it continues to remain easier and less costly to write off aquifers in which contaminants may take many decades to break down, we may see more examples of Michigan communities without access to clean drinking water,” said Glenn O’Neil, an environmental scientist at the MSU Institute of Water Research and a co-author of the report.

The state department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy commissioned the study, hoping to quantify the long-term public costs of so-called “institutional controls” that polluters frequently use instead of cleaning up contamination.

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Michigan law allows polluters to avoid spending money on cleanups if they can limit public exposure to the contamination through institutional controls, such as capping polluted soil rather than cleaning it up. Bridge Michigan chronicled the vicious cycle in its "Industrial Legacy" project last year that showed how manufacturers have left polluted sites throughout Michigan, saddling taxpayers with the costs of cleanup.

There are more than 2,000 sites in Michigan with such groundwater restrictions, covering an area more than twice the size of Grand Rapids.

While favored by industry, institutional controls are often unpopular with neighbors.

“I've experienced it on an individual site, where citizens are angry,” said Josh Mosher, assistant director of the EGLE’s Remediation and Redevelopment Division. “They’ve had to get their private well pulled out, and hooked up to municipal water, and have to pay a water bill, because now the groundwater can't be used anymore.”

Industry officials say institutional controls benefit society by lowering the cost to redevelop polluted sites. 

But it comes with tradeoffs: Restricting groundwater access can drive down land values and limit options for redeveloping polluted sites. Left unaddressed, pollution plumes sometimes expand to create an ever-growing health threat. And then there’s the social stigma of living near pollution.

Using seven sites as a case study, the MSU and FLOW researchers found that polluters routinely underestimate the true costs when deciding whether to use institutional controls.

They urged reforms to Michigan’s weak cleanup laws, writing in the report that “failing to remediate contamination transfers the responsibility and costs to future generations.”

“The problem will not fix itself,” said O’Neil. 

The recommendations, most of which would require legislative action, include: 

• Identify Michigan’s most important aquifers and require companies that pollute them to clean up their mess, rather than defaulting to institutional controls.
• Consider imposing user fees and damage assessments on polluters who cordon off pollution, rather than cleaning it up. 
• Require more transparency from polluters about where they have contaminated land and water, and how they plan to clean it up. Under current law, polluters can keep regulators and the public in the dark.
• Revise a law that requires polluters to clean up pollution at the source, but narrowly defines a “source” as the leaky barrel that caused a chemical spill, rather than the area where those chemicals leaked. 

“It's just very obvious to anyone that removing the empty barrel that already leaked onto the ground doesn't do anything,” said Christine Flaga, a toxicology expert and former state environmental supervisor who co-authored the report as a contractor for FLOW.

Mosher said EGLE supports strengthening Michigan’s cleanup laws in key ways, including giving regulators more say over how industry responds to pollution. 

But business groups pushed back against the recommendations. 

Mike Alaimo, environmental and energy affairs director for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, argued that requiring stronger cleanups would financially burden businesses, possibly leading some to shutter or leave the state.

“There's a very real risk in rocking the boat too heavily,” said Alaimo, “and having the unintended consequence of less cleanups, instead of more.”

So far, lawmakers have shown little interest in reforms. 

State Sen. Jeff Irwin and Rep. Jason Morgan, both Democrats from Ann Arbor, last fall introduced several bills that would strengthen Michigan’s cleanup standards. 

Like past attempts at similar legislation, the bills have languished in committee amid pushback from industry.