Repealing the dry cleaner environmental response program and creating the revitalize Wisconsin program. (FE)

What it would have done

Summary by the Legislative Reference Bureau, the Legislature's nonpartisan drafting office. It's their wording, not ours.

This bill eliminates the existing dry cleaner environmental response program and its associated fund and council and creates the revitalize Wisconsin program, which is administered by the Department of Natural Resources.

The revitalize Wisconsin program created under the bill provides aid, in the form of grants or direct services to local governments, dry cleaners, and private parties, to address the discharge of a hazardous substance or the existence of environmental pollution on the government's or person's property. Aid may be provided for sites for which the site's owner or operator applied for assistance under the dry cleaner environmental response program before its repeal; brownfields; sites that are exempt from the state's hazardous substance remediation laws (often called the “spill law”); and sites that are subject to the spill law but that are owned by private parties. The bill defines “private party” to include a bank, trust company, savings bank, or credit union; a developer; a nongovernmental organization; and an innocent landowner. The bill defines an “innocent landowner” as a property owner that either 1) acquired the property prior to November 1, 2006, has continuously owned the property since the date of acquisition, and can demonstrate, through documentation, that the discharge or environmental pollution being addressed was caused by another person and that the property owner did not know and had no reason to know of the discharge or pollution when the owner acquired the property;

Who's behind it

2 senators are its authors⁠. All 2 are Democrats.

17 more lawmakers signed on in support⁠.

What it would cost

State agencies filed a cost estimate. Each opens as a PDF from the Legislature.

• Fiscal Estimate From DNR