Take Action For Michigan's Wetlands

5 bills, recently introduced simultaneously in the Michigan House of Representatives, are part of a coordinated effort to overhaul how wetlands are protected by the State of Michigan.

1. House Bill 5082 would force the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) to prioritize rapid determinations of wetland boundaries (in 60 days) over careful procedural review when considering permits for impacts to potential wetlands.
2. HB 5501 would undermine Michigan's "No Net Loss" wetland policy by allowing developers to replace destroyed wetlands simply acre-for-acre instead of meeting Michigan's longstanding higher mitigations standards.
3. HB 5502 would exempt human-created wetlands from state protection, even if they perform the same ecological functions as natural wetlands.
4. HB 5536, the most damaging, would require that a wetland must be directly connected to federally-regulated waters in order to be protected by the State of Michigan. Let's be clear: thousands of acres of wetlands across Michigan could be destroyed under this bill.
5. HB 5556 would make it easier for developers to satisfy wetland mitigation requirements through "mitigation bank credits" rather than physical, on-site restoration when impacting wetlands.

Together, these 5 bills threaten dangerous changes to Michigan's wetland laws. They ignore wetland and hydrology science, would reduce oversight of our state's natural resources, make it easier to destroy wetland ecosystems, and increase costs for EGLE to carry out permitting processes.