Although I alone am responsible for the substance of the following statement, I appear here today representing not only myself but also Richard Delene of Baraga County. Fortunately, Richard decided that indefinite residence in the Ingham County jail, as a guest of Judge Giddings, Attorney General Kelley and the Department of Environmental Quality, was an excessively high price to pay for the opportunity to reiterate personally his contempt for environmental regulation and enforcement in Michigan, just as it was too high a price to pay for attendance at his daughter's wedding last month. As indicated by the greater than 30,000 signatures on Delene support petitions presented to the governor last year, the shade of Richard Delene does not appear before you unaccompanied. With me this evening, in person as well as spirit, is Dennis Pape of Menominee, who assembled the illustrated portfolio accompanying my statement and will provide somewhat greater detail on several of the cases which I will highlight.

Four years ago, as a then-member of the Michigan House of Representatives, I raised with the Natural Resources Commission my doubts and those of many members of the public concerning the integrity of State's environmental policies and their administration. Since several of you were present on that occasion, my statement this evening can be rather telegraphic.

FIRST, government has placed itself above the law. In 1992 I focused on environmental contamination at military facilities. On that occasion, I cited:

• Camp Grayling - Evidence of ground-water contamination, attributable to National Guard activities (disposal of unexploded ordinance, etc.), threatening the Manistee and Au Sable Rivers; uncontained fires on artillery and aerial firing ranges, threatening residents of the Gutherie Lakes area of northern Crawford and southern Otsego Counties.
• Kinchloe, Wurtsmith and K. I. Sawyer Air Force bases and the Kinross Manufacturing site, where unabated contamination represents not only an environmental threat but also severely compromises the conversion of these facilities to civilian uses which would mitigate the adverse impact of their closures on isolated rural economies.

Since that time a number of additional sites have come to public attention:

• In 1992 I revealed the existence of a DDT dump created by the U.S. Forest Service near Robbins Pond, in the Ottawa National Forest in southern Ontonagon County. Despite initial denials of its existence, followed by claims that the dump could not be located, this site has subsequently been assessed and remediated.
• The DNR's own Calumet Field Station is a site of soil and potential groundwater contamination which languished for years without remedial action.

Tonight I would focus specifically on one site:

• The Air Force's Rayco Missile Base, located in the Hiawatha National Forest in Chippewa County, closed over 20 years ago, is a site of serious soil and groundwater contamination, the remediation of which has been and continues to be a fiasco, with evidence of serious misconduct, if not corruption, on the part of cognizant officials.

In all of these cases the stance of the cognizant state agency, initially the DNR and now the DEQ, can be described, at best, as one of somnolent passivity. While it might be contended that the state's power over federal agencies is limited, a bureaucratic mutual-protection racket offers a more compelling explanation for the state's malign neglect of these governmental despoliations of the environment.

Here I formally request that the DEQ actively investigate the performance of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its contractor in the environmental remediation of the former Rayco Missile Base and take a generally more active stance vis-a-vis environmental depredations attributable to federal and state government activities.

SECOND, "the law" for some is not the law for all. In 1992 I focused on:

• Antrim gas wells and pipelines in the northern Lower Peninsula, the serious environmental consequences of which have been reduced as a result of aroused public opinion.

Since that time other, in many cases more egregious, examples have come to light:

• As a result of high-level political intervention, specifically that of Lieutenant Governor Connie Binsfeld through James Cleary, then DNR deputy director for environmental protection, revealed as a result of information which I provided to the Detroit Free Press, permits for the construction and operation of the Wood Island Landfill in Munising Township were granted despite wetlands' consequences and unmitigated soil and groundwater contamination at the nominal developer's adjacent industrial facility. This landfill may now have been sold, possibly to United Waste Systems, which made a significant commitment payment to developer John Hendrickson.
• For over 20 years, despite repeated notifications from low-level environmental officials that a permit was required, Manistique Papers has operated an unlicensed sludge dump in wetlands adjacent to the Indian River, just upstream from the City of Manistique's water-system intake. Now resembling the white cliffs of Dover and approaching the status of one of the man-made wonders of the world, this site was originally established as a dump for allegedly PCB-contaminated wastes excavated from the company's deinking lagoons. Executives of other paper companies who have seen photographs of Manistique Paper's dump have invariably commented that they would be in jail if they had constructed anything similar. Interestingly, Manistique Papers was recently the recipient of State of Michigan recycling funding to expand its operation.
• As best documented by Traverse Magazine, progressively higher-level pressure was brought to bear on DNR(EQ) enforcement officials who had initiated action against the Giddings and Lewis Foundry in Menominee for serious levels of lead emissions, endangering not only employees but also residents of the surrounding neighborhood.
• Solid waste regulations have been used to "encourage" the sale of independent public-authority and private landfills to politically-well-connected national and international operators. With the encouragement of then-Senator John Pridnia in a Capitol meeting, substantial financial penalties were written off when the Crawford-Otsego Public Authority Landfill was transferred to Anthony Soave's City Management Corporation in a sale negotiated and signed by a county commissioner who was simultaneously negotiating the sale of his private garbage-hauling firm to City Management; "coincidentally," deputy director Cleary then took early retirement and (with at least one member of his family) became a Soave employee. As indicated by the Department's continuing treatment of City Management's Crawford County landfill, for favored operators laws covering such matters as flow control and disposal of prohibited substances are enforced weakly if at all. Following an avowed policy of monopolization and vertical integration in smaller geographically isolated markets (notably, in Michigan, the western and central Upper Peninsula and the Traverse City area), with predictable consequences for prices (and profits), United Waste Systems has even been able derive tax-exempt financing from the Michigan Strategic Fund to further its predatory expansion.
• City Management Corporation was granted permits for the massive expansion of its Sumpter Township (Wayne County) landfill, despite wetlands' and other concerns. Ironically, solid-waste regulator James Sygo rationalized this permit by the township's need for funds to "drain swamp land" and install sewers. (So much for "federally-protected wetlands"!)
• Convicted felon Norman Pestka was granted a permit to construct a landfill in Duncan Township's school forest in Sidnaw (Houghton County) despite the fact that the landfill would destroy wetlands adjacent to a significant tributary of the Sturgeon River, a federally-designated Scenic and Wild River. In fact, wetland permits were granted after the wetlands had been effectively destroyed. This prospective landfill has subsequently been sold to United Waste Systems.
• Despite the state's remediation expenditure of over $12 million to deal with ground water contamination at John and Robert Runco's Waterford Township (Oakland County) landfill, the state's efforts to impose liability on the owners has languished for years. Evidence of the laundering of assets through City Management Corporation was ignored until an associate and I, at our expense, traveled to Florida and obtained documents from a readily accessibly court file. Meanwhile John Runco, Anthony Soave's City Management Corporation and various associates have been able to obtain permits for their Romulus hazardous-waste injection well despite suggestive evidence of financial impropriety involving Jeffrey Egan and the City of Detroit's police and fire pension funds.
• Adding insult to injury, the DEQ would have extended to landfills exemptions from real and personal property, sales and use taxes in an egregious interpretation of industrial pollution-control legislation, rationalized in large measure by importation of out-of-state waste. This move has been temporarily stalled only as a result of the public attention which I and others focused on the issue.

It might be objected that many of these outrageous situations are attributable to deficiencies in the law rather than in administration. To a degree this is true. Michigan has no "good character" or "fitness" requirement for solid and toxic waste operators. Because New Jersey has such requirements, Anthony Soave decided to withdraw City Management's application to do business in that state. However, deficiencies in the law provide an inadequate explanation for the egregious situations documented above, and they fail to explain why deficiencies in the law have not been publicized by those resonsible for its administration.

Only the pathologically deluded and deranged can escape the conclusion that the application of the environmental laws is a consequence of the volume of funds flowing through one's PAC accounts, of one's mother's friendship with highly-placed officials, of the governors and (U.S.) first ladies whom one entertains, of the politically well-connected law firms which one retains, ...

In this context, perhaps, the Department's relentless pursuit of Richard Delene, over a period of more than six years, at an expense to the state which has now mounted into the millions (despite the claim of only a few thousand, as made by the Department to the Baraga County Board of Commissioners), can be understood. All independent experts who have examined the Delene wetlands' enhancement project have concluded that Richard Delene did not violate the substance of Michigan's wetlands' laws, and even the charge of technical violation is refuted by the provisions of the law governing the award of permits by default. However, Richard Delene did not "buy" protection. Richard Delene had (an entirely justified) "contempt for authority" (statement of Claude Schmidt to the Corps of Engineers when urging its rejection of Delene's earliest applications).

The State's pursuit of Richard Delene is the "fig leaf" which is used to hide the lack of integrity in the state's environmental policies, administration and enforcement. The pursuit of Richard Delene demonstrates to the public the lengths to which the government will go to enforce the law. And, it is a warning to others of the potential costs of not playing by the rules established by what Rep. Greg Kaza refers to as the "governing class," which employs its power to the benefit of those whose support is necessary if that governing class is to retain its power.

I do not address this indictment to you as a demand for change. True reform will come only when the public comes to understand the true depravity of the system. However, that understanding will be fostered when directly affected members of the public and directly involved public officials, especially lower-level officials, decide that they will not play their assigned roles and expose the corrupted nature of the process.

Unfortunately, as Richard Delene and I can testify, such a decision requires a degree of irrationality, indifference to personal consequences. Fortunately, some of us do, indeed, possess that modicum of irrationality.