After Thanksgiving the Michigan legislature resumed for a three-day lame duck session, the period after the election but before newly elected lawmakers take office in January. For the most part, this year’s lame duck session was “lame”, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t moments of political gamesmanship. During this time, the Sierra Club was watching for movement on legislation around the solid waste package rewrite (referred to as “part 115”), Underground Storage Tanks and the bad aggregate mining bill. Below is a summary of how these three pieces of legislation played out during the lame duck session.
- Aggregate mining: SB 429-431, would remove local control over sand and gravel mining and create an EGLE regulatory process instead. Sierra Club worked hard to oppose these bills even with changes made in the house. Fortunately, due to failed negotiations, we were able to successfully stop this bill from making it to the House, where it died.
- Part 115 rewrite: A package of bills aimed to overhaul our solid waste laws. Sierra Club supported the bill package in its original form; however, the American Chemistry Council and Dow Chemical worked to disrupt a brokered bill package that took years of negotiation. They added a last-minute amendment that would define incineration processes like gasification and pyrolysis as "chemical recycling." This last-minute handout to the plastics industry undermined the original intent that this bill package was primarily about expanding recycling. This amendment greenwashes waste incineration and the Sierra Club is opposed to PR efforts by industry to sugarcoat incineration. This amended change forced the Sierra Club to remove its support for the package. Both the Senate and House passed the solid waste reform package with the added language. The bills are now on the governor’s desk, where we will be asking for a veto.
- Underground storage tank setbacks: SB 1169 - Sierra Club opposed this bill as it was written. The bill would have codified setbacks for installing new underground storage tanks (USTs) from drinking wells. However, the bills contains problematic language that creates a huge loophole for the setbacks and would allow industry to easily obtain variances to install new USTs closer to drinking water wells. While the bill was pushed hard by the gas station industry, we were able to successfully stop this bill in the House.
Look for a full legislative recap in our next edition of the newsletter. Sierra Club will be using the rest of the year to build our legislative priorities for the 23-24 legislative session, build power under a new 2023 pro-environment majorityc andschedule meetings with newly elected lawmakers to connect our priority issues with their constituents.
If you have any questions about the legislative program or want to be a legislative advocate in your community please contact Tim Minotas at tim.minotas@sierraclub.org or Christy McGillivray at christy.mcgillivray@sierraclub.org