Statement Regarding Natural Resource Mining Ordinance
There has been a lot of confusion about the reason the Township is rewriting the provisions of the Township Zoning Ordinance related natural resource extraction (“mining”). The purpose of this statement is to set forth some background on this matter.
The authority of a Michigan municipality to engage in zoning comes from a statute called the Michigan Zoning Enabling Act (“MZEA”). To have a valid zoning ordinance, a Michigan municipality must follow the requirements of this act. Unfortunately, under the MZEA, the Michigan Legislature has largely preempted the authority of a municipality to regulate mining. This happened after our current ordinance language was adopted. As a result of this, the current language of our ordinance is no longer compliant. In order to have enforceable mining regulations going forward, the Township must amend its zoning ordinance to comply with the requirements of state law. If you would like to see the relevant statutory language, you can find it here: MCL – Section 125.3205 – Michigan Legislature (see paragraphs 3-6, particularly).
The Township Board is considering new ordinance language related to mining only because it is necessary to comply with current state law. The Township is committed to doing everything it can to protect the interests of its citizens. However, doing nothing would mean that a party that wanted to engage in an extraction operation could seek to have our ordinance struck down on the grounds that it does not comply with the Michigan statute that allows us to engage in zoning. The result of that would be that be no regulatory control over such an activity.
The Township Planning Commission began working on updated mining regulations for our Zoning Ordinance last fall, and the Township Board put a moratorium on new applications for mining in place that is intended to run until those new regulations are complete. The new language was developed in consultation with the Township Attorney in order to make sure that the ordinance will be very defensible should it be challenged in court. The Planning Commission held a public hearing on the new language and recommended it to the Township Board for approval in June of this year. The Township Board will hold an additional public hearing on the matter on August 10th (you can find the text of the proposed new regulations here). The Township Board must vote to pass the language at two separate meetings to make it law. The Board may modify the language recommended by the Planning Commission if it chooses, prior to passing it.
It is important to remember that approval of the new ordinance language does not have the effect of allowing any particular mining operation. Rather, it sets up the application process under which a proposal to engage in an extraction operation will be evaluated. An applicant that wants to engage in natural resource extraction on any particular property will need to seek both a conditional use permit (which requires a public hearing for neighbors within 500 feet of the parcel in question) and site plan review. The Planning Commission, as the reviewing authority, will evaluate whether the proposed activity can comply with the criteria set forth in the MZEA, basically, whether very serious consequences would result from the activity. If those consequences are foreseeable, then such an application would have to be denied. If they are not, then it would have to be approved, but conditions could be attached to the approval to ensure that such problems do not arise.
It is fair to say that most municipal leaders in Michigan wish the Legislature would trust its communities to come up with the rules best suited to that community in matters like this. In the case of natural resource extraction, as in an increasingly broad number of areas, our Legislature has severely limited our local municipalities’ ability to act. We hope that, within those constraints, we have come up with an ordinance that will both stand up to judicial scrutiny and allow for a rigorous review process that will protect with Township’s residents when it comes to individual mining applications that may come in the future.