Governor Vetoes Dioxin Legislation

WSGW NewsRadio 790 Wednesday, 28 December, 2005

Local lawmakers including State Senator Mike Goschka are highly critical of Governor Jennifer Granholm's veto of legislation requiring the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to conduct testing on property before labeling it a facility. The Brant Republican says home and business owners in the Tittabawassee River floodplain risk losing much of their property value as the D-E-Q investigates the extent of dioxin contamination from Dow Chemical in Midland.

Goschka says the measure put before the Governor would have allowed a property owner to consent to a facility designation in the absence of testing only if the property owner and the D-E-Q agreed to that. The Governor said in her veto message that the legislation would have delayed environmental clean up, saddled the state with higher costs and let polluters avoid responsibility for paying for clean up work. But Goschka acknowledged that if nothing comes of that then there is no other alternative. The legislation came in response to D-E-Q testing in the Tittabawassee River flood plain to determine the extent of dioxin contamination stemming from Dow Chemical's Midland complex.

Environmental activists like Chairman Terry Miller of the Bay City-based Lone Tree Council say they're ecstatic and very pleased with the Governor's veto of the Homeowner Fairness Protection Act. Miller believes the Governor's action will benefit residents both locally in the Tittabawassee River flood plain and across Michigan.

Miller predicted that the issue of whether the state should require testing of individual parcels before declaring them facilities will be hotly contested as part of the upcoming gubernatorial and state legislative races in 2006. Miller says attention needs to be refocused on specific clean up plans to be submitted by Midland-based Dow Chemical.
 

For additional articles like this one, go to the Tittabawassee River Watch web site www.trwnews.net for complete coverage of the Tittabawassee River Dow Chemical dioxin contamination saga. . The Newspaper / Media page of our site contains an extensive archive of media articles dating back to January 2002. The source organization's web site link is listed to the right of the article, visit often for other news in our area. The Newspaper / Media page may be accessed by scrolling down to the bottom of the CONTENTS section and clicking on the Newspaper/Media link.