Property rights fears dominate coverage of public trust water bill

Last year State Rep. Dan Scripps (D-Leland) introduced legislation that states that Michigan groundwater should be held in public trust and managed for the good of all. The legislation was spurred by concerns that current law allows for the mining and export of groundwater.

Though the recently enacted Great Lakes Compact bans most out of basin water transfers it does not apply in cases where water is exported in containers smaller than 6 gallons and withdrawals by a Nestle-owned water bottling plant in Mecosta County have impacted the local watershed and neighboring properties.

Scripps’ legislation has not made it out of committee but that hasn’t stopped critics from launching a well publicized campaign against it.

The Traverse City Record Eagle reports:

Jim Fuscaldo, a retired scientist and lawyer from Cedar, argues if water is considered in the public trust, it means the state can claim ownership and potentially tax citizens to use water on their own property. It could have implications for homeowners, farmers and businesses, he said.

“It transfers all private property water rights to the state without proper compensation. That’s unconstitutional,” Fuscaldo said. “Regulation of use is different than the unequivocal taking of property. They want to regulate the use, but they are going about it the wrong way.”

Maple City water well driller John Zientek agrees.

“It’s the state taking something away from a property owner without any compensation. I don’t think it’s right to take property rights away,” he said.

Zientek worries the state will not only claim ownership, but may one day look to user fees as a new revenue source, if groundwater is placed in public trust.

Environmental policy expert Dave Dempsey said that the Record Eagle article provides, “a first-class illustration of how some try to smother good environmental legislation in its crib — by throwing around phrases like “new taxes” and “taking away private property rights.’”

In a post on the Enviro-Mich listserv Demspey wrote:

Rep. Scripps’ bill has nothing to do with either, but say it often enough in the news media and people begin to think it might be true. This effort is particularly galling because the bill is a page long and does not have any language that could be seriously translated as authorizing a tax or fee. It only makes the obvious inference and affirmation that since the Great Lakes are a public trust resource, the groundwater that feeds them is protected as part of that resource and reserved for reasonable use by property owners, not for sale out of the watershed or out of the region.