SB 776

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.

This bill creates the revitalize Wisconsin program, which is administered by DNR and which 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 “spills law”); sites that are subject to the spills law but that are owned by private parties; and sites that are a public nuisance or a tire dump, for which expansion or redevelopment is adversely affected by actual or perceived discharge or environmental pollution.

The bill provides that DNR may not award aid to an applicant under the revitalize Wisconsin program if the applicant caused the discharge or environmental pollution, unless the applicant is a dry cleaner that applied for assistance under the dry cleaner environmental response program before its repeal. The bill also provides that DNR may require an applicant to provide a match, either in cash or in-kind services, for any aid that is awarded under the program.

Activities for which aid may be provided under the program include removing hazardous substances from contaminated media; investigating and assessing the discharge or environmental pollution; removing abandoned containers; asbestos abatement; and restoring or replacing a private potable water supply.