EGLE outlines scope of contaminated sites, urges steady funding for long-term cleanups

LANSING — The House Appropriations Committee on Environmental, Great Lakes and Energy heard detailed briefings Tuesday from officials at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy on the state’s contaminated-site programs, the scale of known contamination and the need for consistent funding to avoid costly project delays.

Mike Neller, division director for the Remediation and Redevelopment Division at EGLE, told the committee his division manages multiple state-mandated cleanup programs, the Brownfield Redevelopment Program and the state’s role in federal Superfund (CERCLA) sites, and that the work depends on steady appropriations.

Neller emphasized the public-health stakes and long timeframes for many cleanups: “The average time a site is on the NPL is 40 years,” he said, describing National Priorities List Superfund sites as “the worst of the worst.” He also warned that stopping and restarting work raises costs and can allow plumes in groundwater to spread.

State and program context

Neller described four program areas his division manages, including enforcement and oversight under Part 201 of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act (NREPA) for releases to soil and Part 213 for leaking underground storage tanks (LUSTs). He said roughly 18,000 sites appear in the division’s inventory when discussing Part 201, and later showed a map he described as depicting “about 27,000 known sites of contamination that exceed the criteria.”

On those leaking underground storage tanks, Neller said, “We have about, just under 8,000 open releases currently in our inventory,” and noted many date back decades…