ANNAPOLIS (AP) — House lawmakers yesterday approved Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s bill to encourage developers to clean up polluted industrial sites known as brownfields.
In a rare display of bipartisan cooperation, House members passed the Senate bill without debate and sent it to Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican.
Most of Mr. Ehrlich’s legislative initiatives still are awaiting action as the Democrat-controlled legislature moves toward its scheduled adjournment Monday.
Delegate Maggie L. McIntosh, a Baltimore Democrat who played a major role in developing the bill, said such legislation would have statewide implications but would help especially in Baltimore and Allegany County.
The Department of the Environment has overseen the restoration of 1,500 acres of brownfields since 1997, mainly by giving buyers incentives to clean up the sites and put them back into use. Mr. Ehrlich proposed the bill to encourage use of more brownfields sites by streamlining regulations to remove hurdles to development.
The sites are considered ideal for development because they usually are in urban areas near major highways. But many sites sit vacant for years because their owners go out of business, and potential developers fear that they could be subject to costly lawsuits for pollution they didn’t cause.
The brownfields program protects developers from liability for pollution caused by previous owners if they follow an approved cleanup plan.
Miss McIntosh said the bill also guarantees that people living near sites that are to be developed will know what chemicals polluted the soil.
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Senate Republicans failed yesterday to strip a $30 annual fee for septic tank owners from Mr. Ehrlich’s so-called “flush tax” bill, advancing a version that the governor opposes.
If the Senate approves the legislation in a vote today, it will return to the House and could move as early as tomorrow to a conference committee, where leaders in both houses will try to reach a compromise.
Mr. Ehrlich opposes charging septic owners the same fee as residents with sewer lines.
He, instead, is calling for a study on the issue, saying administrators don’t know how much a fee should be or how to impose it on the state’s 420,000 septic tank owners.
The “flush tax” would raise money for $1 billion worth of sewage plant upgrades by collecting the fee from homeowners with sewer lines. House and Senate lawmakers kept that measure intact but amended the bill to include a fee for using septic tanks — money that would go to grants for septic tank upgrades and programs to restore cover crops.
Most Senate Republicans oppose including septic tanks in the bill, saying pollution from tanks is a small part of the overall dumping of nitrogen into the Chesapeake Bay.
The Senate’s version of the bill gives the state Department of the Environment a year to come up with a way to bill homes with septic tanks, but Republican lawmakers argue that the fee shouldn’t be imposed if the state doesn’t know how it will collect it.
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