Renew Michigan will allocate $45 million a year to cleaning up existing and future contamination sites, $9 million to solid waste management, $15 million to recycling grants, $5 million to water quality monitoring grants and another $5 million to updating state park infrastructure.
Snyder’s proposal picks up where the 1998 Clean Michigan initiative ended, a $675 million bond aimed at cleaning up brownfield areas across the state.
‘Over the last 20 years we’ve spent that down,’ Hammond said. ‘As of last year, all of the money had been allocated with the program and we were essentially out of brownfield redevelopment money.’
Snyder’s Renew Michigan policy will raise the landfill tipping fees from 39 cents, the lowest tipping fee in the Midwest, to $4.75, generating $79 million a year. That fee may change as the bill goes back and forth between the governor’s office and the Legislature.
Hammond expects the funding mechanism for Renew Michigan will be more sustainable. The state imported more than 10 million cubic yards in 2017 alone, and it doesn’t look like that number will shrink much in 2018 even with a higher tipping rate.
‘We expect (trash) to reduce a little bit,’ Hammond said, ‘but I don’t expect a large drop off from (Canada). The way their waste system is set up, it’s still going to be cheaper to send it to Michigan for the most part. We would have to raise it a lot more.’
Hammond added that the tipping increase will most likely dissuade out-of-state trash imports.
‘I’m guessing we’ll see drop-off from Indiana because the tip fee here will be significantly higher than in Indiana,’ he said, which could prevent the Hoosier state from sending Michigan another 598,361 cubic yards of landfill material like they did in 2017.
Likewise, Michigan’s tipping fee will also out-price Ohio’s current fee, a state that exported 1.4 million cubic yards of trash to Michigan last year.
With so much trash coming into the state, Hammond said it’s possible Michigan is importing more hazardous pollutants.
‘We know U.S. Ecology out in southeast Michigan takes in PNORM, which contains naturally occurring radioactive materials,’ Hammond said. ‘It’s basically a very concentrated radioactive wastewater from fracking, and that is coming in from Pennsylvania.’
Pennsylvania’s tipping rate currently sits at $6.75, making it cheaper to export landfill material to Michigan even if the tipping rate is raised to $4.75…
While gaining environmental clean-up money from imported trash might seem contradictory, Hammond pointed out the funding mechanism is common.
‘Our neighboring state of Ohio does use part of their tipping fee to clean up brownfield areas, as well, so it’s not unprecedented,’ he said.
At $45 million, the biggest chunk of money in the proposal will be allocated to remediate brownfield sites, partly in response to Michigan’s current PFAS crisis.
But will this plan do enough? Will it cover all the costs associated with cleaning up PFAS? Hammond said he’s unsure.”
