Pollute to your heart's content, citizens, because the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is moribund. Budget cuts have left the agency dead in the water when it comes to enforcement (as though it were ever vigorous in that regard). Actions that took weeks or month to clear the agency are now taking years.
So you'd think that the MDEQ would now, more than ever, welcome the diligence of ordinary citizens expending their own resources to hold polluters accountable through the judicial process, as allowed by state law in the form of "citizen suits". (For an example, click here.) You'd think, except that doing so steps on what remains of the MDEQ's bureaucratic toes. No matter how little life is left in a government agency, it'll always muster the might to protect its prerogatives.
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