Don’t threaten Michigan’s revitalization success

here are rumblings these days in Lansing, and if you listen close enough, you might pick up the faint echoes of the early 1990s. Back then, cleanup and redevelopment of contaminated commercial and industrial properties in neighborhoods throughout Michigan were at a standstill. Responsible parties who were willing to clean up contamination didn’t know “how clean is clean,” and few wanted to buy and reuse contaminated properties because existing environmental law made it too risky and uncertain. At that time, a buyer could be held liable for the cleanup simply because they acquired the property. is fact alone was enough to render many urban and commercial/ industrial properties unaddressed and o limits. is prompted a coalition of Michigan Urban Core Mayors to demand changes to encourage cleanup and reuse of these properties.

In response to this mounting crisis, in 1995, the Legislature created Part 201 of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act, which provided cleanup standards grounded in risk-based protections for human health and the environment and legal protections to buyers of contaminated property if they assumed due care obligations. In addition, Part 201’s causation-based liability standard and other provisions impose liability on anyone who is responsible for an activity that causes contamination — a true “Polluters Pay” law.

It is undisputed that Michigan’s brown eld cleanup and redevelopment program, deeply rooted in Part 201, has resulted in tens of billions of dollars in new investment, an expanded local tax base, and tens of thousands of jobs at brown eld sites in Michigan, while keeping the liable party on the hook for the costs of cleanup. Part 201’s due care obligations for new, non-liable owners created an additional e views and opinions expressed are those of the writers and do not necessarily re ect the views or positions of RACER Trust.

Tsource of funding to protect human health and the environment. And risk-based cleanup standards based on land use created more certainty and accelerated cleanup activities across the state.

Some will argue passionately that no amount of pollution is acceptable and that we have no way of really knowing the long-range implications of contamination in our air, land, and water. We respect those arguments and those who make them. But we also recognize that unless we achieve a zero-waste society, human activities will cause impacts on the environment. Today, because of Part 201, an innocent buyer has legal protections that reduce the risks of investing in community redevelopment. Do we want to undermine that objective when it is so important to urban revitalization? Would we seriously consider rewinding to a time when we unfairly held innocent buyers responsible for a problem they didn’t cause?

To us, the key was, and is, risk management, both from environmental and economic perspectives. We are not suggesting that economic concerns are more important than public health and the environment, and we are acutely aware that some communities may endure disparate environmental impacts. is is not an either/or scenario.

Urban revitalization also leverages prior public and private investments in underutilized infrastructure, maximizing the utility of those assets and avoiding signi cant additional costs for duplicate infrastructure in greenelds while protecting green space.

It seems to us there’s a fundamental disconnect at play having to do with who ultimately bears the responsibility for cleanup costs if the responsible party cannot be found, is bankrupt, or has dissolved. Michigan’s brown eld program is recognized across the country as one of the foremost urban revitalization successes. If it has not done enough in the eyes of some, do not undermine it — nd new ways to make it better.

We encourage careful thinking — going backward from Part 201 will not solve the orphan site funding problem but would cause havoc and seriously undermine concerted bipartisan e orts to rebuild Michigan’s underserved urban areas. We learned — and the Urban Core Mayors and their constituents experienced — that strict environmental liability su ocated property sales and urban reuse.

Why try today what history taught us decades ago does not work?