No Environmental Protection!

People in Michigan think that streams and wetlands are protected by state environmental laws. However, these protections DO NOT APPLY if the stream has been "established" as a drain or if a drain, which at one time served an agricultural purpose, now empties out a wetland on the way to making room for more development.

For a partial list of trout streams destroyed by drain actions...

Only 12 sections of major trunks of rivers established as drains are protected in Michigan under the Inland Lakes and Streams Act. 

For "drains" like this, the Soil and Sedimentation Act offers no protection because drain commissioners are their own enforcing agents!  Michigan has its own environmental laws, separate from the EPA.  Our streams must rely on the MDEQ for protection, but a drain commissioner is not even required to notify the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality before widening, deepening or straightening a river such as this "drain" which used to contain fish spawning beds.

The Inland Lakes and Streams Act and the Goemaere-Anderson Wetlands Protection Act were folded into NREPA (Natural Resources Environmental Protection Act) in 1994.  The exemptions for drains were maintained. The original intent was to exempt agricultural drainage only, but in practice, any drain work has come to be exempt from permitting.  This legislature has introduced a new bill which allows drainage for ANY reason that is sought on farms, not just the needs of production agriculture.  This loophole is so wide that even the federal EPA is concerned.