LANSING – Environmental groups got many of the protections they wanted for groundwater in the state, and business groups got the certainty of knowing how much water they could use under an agreement announced late Monday by the chairs of the two legislative committees addressing the Great Lakes Compact.

The package, which will end up at 12 bills including all of the House bills and all but one of the Senate bills, maintains much of the permitting and water use thresholds that had passed the Senate, but also provides for public input into the permitting process.

Both Sen. Patricia Birkholz (R-Saugatuck Twp.) and Rep. Rebekah Warren (D-Ann Arbor) agreed that the goal was to strike a balance between protecting the state’s water resources and allowing for commercial use of that water.

“Economic development and job creation and protection of Michigan’s world class natural resources are not mutually exclusive goals,” Warren said.

“We wanted to be able to protect our existing water users and we wanted clear rules for new water users,” Birkholz said.

Both said the key to the package is the water use assessment tool, which allows new users to calculate, based on their proposed water use and well location, whether they would have an adverse impact on the ground or surface water in the area. The bill would generally require permits for withdrawals of 2 million gallons per day from inland waters or groundwater and 5 million gallons per day from the Great Lakes, but reduces the inland threshold for some more sensitive areas. And it would prohibit any water use that would affect neighboring wells or reduce flows in neighboring streams.

The package essentially adopts the Senate measures of stream impairment, which would allow reductions of no more than 20 percent of the flow in a cold-water stream and no more than 25 percent in other streams.

Environmental groups were not successful in having the public trust doctrine extended to groundwater, though Birkholz said the bill does acknowledge that groundwater and surface water, which is covered by public trust, are connected.

Warren said that was a loss in the negotiations, but indicated it was offset by the public input allowed through water user committees as well as through the Groundwater Conservation Advisory Committee. The latter would be charged with reviewing the water withdrawal tool and the permitting process to annually recommend adjustments to those processes.

Businesses appeared unhappy with some of the permitting thresholds, but Birkholz said the key for them was certainty. “We have some businesses in the state that want to grow,” Birkholz said. “This gives them certainty how they can go and where they can grow.”

One of those businesses that can grow under the legislation is bottled water. The package would not prohibit export of small containers, 5.7 gallons or less. But it increases the permit fee to $5,000 to cover the additional costs of reviewing those permits, Birkholz said.

Warren said allowing the export of the bottles was a loss on the environmental side, but she said adopting the compact was more important to get those protections implemented regionally.

Both chairs said they expected they had the votes in their respective chambers to pass the bills, and Warren said she expected the nature of the agreement would bring more House Republicans on board.

“We found a place where the largest environmental and conservation organizations and the Chamber and the manufacturers association can all agree,” Warren said.

“This is a significant step forward in water protection,” said Hugh McDiarmid Jr. of the Michigan Environmental Council. He said the Great Lakes Great Michigan Coalition, which had been pushing the House package, supported the agreement, though he expected some individual members would still push for the public trust doctrine adoption.

“We’re supportive of the package, mostly to lock in the conversation we’ve had for six years,” said Mike Johnston of the Michigan Manufacturers Association. “The longer the conversation went, the more uncertainty we had.”

“We have a science-based assessment tool,” said Matt Smeego, legislative counsel for the Michigan Farm Bureau. And he said the package as developed encourages all users, particularly large users, to look at conservation measures.

Business groups also welcomed that the bill was self-implementing and did not allow the Department of Environmental Quality to promulgate rules to further refine its provisions.

The agreement lines Michigan up to be not the last state to adopt the compact, which many had feared, and the first state to adopt all of the related implementation language. Birkholz said the completeness of the package gives the state a competitive advantage. “Some have adopted skeletal laws dealing with it and some of them have not adopted anything at all and they’re starting to have food fights,” she said.

This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com

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