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Buick City Beautification

Will taxpayers pay to clean up Buick City?

Ron Fonger of The Flint Journal reports:

Taxpayers already paid for most of the "new" General Motors, and there's increasing pressure on the government to dig a little deeper to do something more: Guarantee to cover the cost of future environmental cleanups at old plant sites like Buick City.

The Genesee Regional Chamber of Commerce has scheduled an Aug. 26 meeting on the subject here, saying it wants to start a national discussion about how a government promise to take over long-term environmental liability could make the difference between investors buying abandoned properties left with "old" GM or leaving them to sit as they are.

Of course, there is another option:

Russ Harding, a senior environmental policy analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said GM should have been required to re-assume its environmental responsibility for the sites it is leaving behind if it ever regains profitability.

"It's fundamentally unfair for taxpayers to be stuck with that bill," said Harding, a former director of the state Department of Environmental Quality. "I look at this as a lose-lose situation."