Governor Gretchen Whitmer’sbudget proposal released on Thursday includes roughly $40-million in grants to help protect infrastructure from climate change.
The funding is to help local governments prepare against torrential rainfall, high water levels, and heat islands - which can occur in cities.
Budget director Chris Kolb said the Governor’s new budget is intended to help local communities.
“Our communities need our help to start to address this. So this plan will allow them to plan for the future and provide relief for their situation on the ground through the infrastructure grants as well.”
$10-million of the funding would go towards planning with the remaining $30-million going towards the infrastructure projects themselves.
Charlotte Jameson is with the Michigan Environmental Council. She said previous administrations might not have mentioned climate change by name for fear of the political ramifications.
“I think it is incredibly important that we are linking these things and telling that story because that is what is driving a lot of that extreme weather.”
Jameson said the Council will push for the funding to be put towards long term planning rather than emergency response to climate-related disasters.
“If we aren’t funding planning and really getting out in front of the issue and anticipating the impacts and anticipating how we can better prepare for these impacts than we’re going to be in a place where we’re just running from one extreme weather emergency or another.”
Another $20-million will go towards rapid response of environmental contamination.
Budget Director Kolb said the funding will go towards contaminated properties that arise outside of EGLE’s annual planning process.
“This is a fund to help the state rapidly respond to contamination situations like we saw with the green ooze on 696.”
The Governor’s budget also proposes $5-million be put towards energy efficiency and renewable energy projects at state facilities.