Environment
Will changing rules help or hurt the environment?
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By BRIAN BIENKOWSKI
Capital News Service
LANSING — Proposed changes to Michigan’s environmental rules would eliminate red tape and redundancy, the Snyder administration says, but environmental groups say air, water, soil and health protections would be weakened. “The real meaningful changes are more process-related than actual requirements,” said Skiles Boyd, vice president of environmental management and resources at DTE Energy and a member of an advisory committee that recommended he changes. “Some of the processes we go through are too burdensome to get the result that we already know we’re going to get,” Boyd said. But James Clift, policy director at the Michigan Environmental Council, said, “I dissented on changes that I thought reduced the state’s role of protecting public health.”
In January, a committee assigned to make the state more business-friendly proposed 77 recommendations to Gov. Rick Snyder to overhaul environmental regulations. Snyder rejected three of them.