State Rep. Paul Opsommer announced the introduction of legislation to help curtail the enormous expense of cleaning up methamphetamine labs, a cost that frequently falls to landlords or other property owners who were unaware the practice was taking place on their premises.
Many standard insurance policies do not cover any type of restoration, forcing property owners to cover the expense which can reach $30,000 or more. Someone renting a home can run a small “one pot” lab that can be difficult to detect, and summer homes or remote properties are sometimes broken into and used for a short period of time. The chemical remnants used in the meth manufacturing process cause such hazardous environmental conditions that many property owners cannot clean on their own and threatens them with potential condemnation.
“Neither Gratiot or Clinton County are immune from this problem, and my office has been contacted by area constituents who have experienced this problem firsthand or heard of similar cases in neighboring areas,” said Opsommer, R-DeWitt. “Other funds used to exist to help these people, but in researching the issue it appears that the money has dried up or is only available to municipalities.”
House Bills 5394 through 5396 would not use taxpayer funds but would instead deposit a small amount of money from the Michigan Asset Forfeiture Program into the Domestic Reimbursement Utilization Grant (DRUG) fund for partial grants of up to $5,000.
“Obviously, the bills are written so that anyone who participated in the meth production would not qualify,” Opsommer said. “I think it is more than fitting that a portion of the assets we take from drug dealers should go back towards helping some of their innocent victims.”