Legislators Proposal: Residents are Innocent Until Proven Guilty...

...under a legislation proposed by our local elected State officials... or as The Saginaw News reports, Legislators seek tougher'facility' designations. The current Michigan DEQ administration declared all residents along the Tittabawassee River 100 year floodplain guilty of owning a facility... which is described as property filled with hazardous waste.

Russ Harding, former Director of DEQ, recently stated that the regulation, when written during his administration, was never intended to punish residents. It was intended to designate property where industries intentionally dumped hazardous waste. Congressman Moolenaar and Senator Goschka introduced the current legislation to correct the shortcoming in that bill.

This seems to be a problem for Michigan environmental groups, most of whom represent extreme viewpoints. For local environmental extremists like Gary Henry, who wrote another venomous letter to the editor of The Saginaw News (printed yesterday), this new legislation apparently presents a threat to their grand goal to 'get Dow' for whatever reason they have. The revised legislation would allow him and his friends to declare their backyards a 'facility' if they so desire.

Mr. Henry and his cohorts just learned from their revered Dr. Linda Birnbaum that the dioxin in their backyards probably has no effect on the amount of dioxin in their bodies. Dioxin does not easily absorb into the skin; dioxin disintegrates in sunlight; Dioxin in our bodies is almost entirely caused by the amount of animal fat in our diets, and is probably the same as in other people's bodies where there is no known reason to have dioxin in the soil.

MDEQ already has way too much control over our personal property in Michigan. They have already persecuted residents for making changes to their property... be it beach, dunes, farmland or, as in Freeland, our backyards. Nobody knows who is next. Changing the current legislation just might make it a bit tougher for them to go after your residence.