House hearing on bills to exempt small produce processors from groundwater-discharge permits produces sharp divisions

Lawmakers and witnesses at a Michigan House Agriculture committee hearing on April 1 heard sharply divided testimony on House Bills 5698 and 5699, a package sponsors said would create an exemption so small farms and produce processors that discharge less than 100,000 gallons of wash or cooling water per year could manage that water on-site without a full industrial groundwater-discharge permit.

Representative Johnson (sponsoring with Representative Meerman) told the committee the bills "establish a clear workable framework" that would allow small farms to manage routine wash water without being funneled into permitting designed for large industrial dischargers. He said health and sanitary systems would still require local health-department permitting and that the exemption is not a "carte blanche" to discharge hazardous materials.

Representative Meerman, who spoke at length, framed the bills as relief from a shifting, unpredictable permitting process at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) that -- he said -- imposes long delays and high consultant costs on small operators. Meerman said the bills set a 100,000-gallon-a-year maximum for eligibility and include multiple conditions (no hazardous waste or sanitary sewage, no discharge to surface waters such as lakes or streams, adherence to current groundwater-protection standards, application only to vegetated land with rotation, setbacks from property lines, limitation to 180 days per calendar year, and prohibition of land application during rain or on saturated or frozen ground).

Supporters included Michigan Farm Bureau (Josh Grama, associate legislative counsel), which described the permitting regime as poorly tailored to seasonal or low-volume operations and cited examples of small operators facing substantial added costs. Grama said some permits can take six to 12 months to obtain, engineering and consultant costs can range "$5,000 to $25,000," and a small-winery example showed a $1,800-a-year permit plus monthly testing costs.

Opponents included Clean Water Action (Nicole Kiwi Biber) and the Michigan Environmental Council (Megan Tinsley). Nicole Kiwi Biber said the bill's language is broad and vague about application rates, acreage and verification methods, and warned the exemption risks worsening nutrient pollution and harmful algal blooms. "We are at a pretty emergency state right now with the increase in the green sludge," she said.

Megan Tinsley told the committee the draft exemption would weaken water protections for the roughly 40% of Michigan residents who rely on private wells and that apparent assumptions in the bill -- that small discharges or cooling water pose no risk -- are incorrect. She listed problematic components that can be present in wash water, including nitrogen, phosphorus and elevated biological oxygen demand (BOD), and said permitting helps regulators update monitoring for emerging threats such as PFAS.

Committee members asked technical and enforcement questions: where discharges would be applied (land-application vs. holding tanks), how compliance would be verified if permitting were waived, whether the exemption could be gamed by splitting streams to stay under thresholds, and how the state currently handles very small discharges. Witnesses acknowledged limited existing exemptions and told members EGLE had not appeared at the hearing though it had submitted written opposition.

No vote occurred during the session. The committee clerk read organizations' positions into the record: several environmental groups listed opposition to HB5699 (Sierra Club, Ecological Center, Michigan Lake and Streams Association among others), while industry groups including Michigan Farm Bureau, NFIB, Michigan Cherry Committee and Michigan Cattlemen's Association filed support. The hearing concluded with the committee adjourned and no formal action taken that day.