SB 116 Summary

• Amends Michigan's Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act to require remedial actions to achieve cleanup criteria for unrestricted residential use and restore affected aquifers to state drinking water standards, unless technically infeasible.

• Establishes four cleanup categories (residential, nonresidential, limited residential, limited nonresidential) with the residential category as the default unless technically infeasible, in which case the most stringent feasible category applies.

• Authorizes use of alternative compliance methods for venting groundwater including alternative monitoring points, ecological demonstrations, modeling demonstrations, and site-specific criteria, with detailed standards for each approach.

• Allows persons to impose land or resource use restrictions through restrictive covenants and institutional controls when full cleanup is technically infeasible, with specific recording and notice requirements to the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

• Makes venting groundwater provisions retroactively applicable, allowing persons with existing response activity plans or court orders entered before June 20, 2012 to pursue, alter, or terminate activities based on the new statutory provisions.