michigan working on Great Lakes laws

But sometimes legislators' logic eludes me:

State Sen. Gerald Van Woerkom, R-Norton Shores, told about 75 people at a town hall meeting Thursday that adding public trust doctrine protection to groundwater amounts to regulatory overkill. He said groundwater already is protected under Michigan's 1963 constitution, which extended public trust protection to all waters of the state.

So -- we don't need to protect it because it's already constitutionally protected? Then why not affirm that existing protection in a statute?

And:  Republicans fear the public trust doctrine could give the state ownership of the water and hurt industries that rely on water to make a wide variety of products.

Give the state ownership? It already owns the water on behalf of all citizens. What opponents would do, intentionally or not, is transfer ownership held by the public under centuries of common law to private parties, creating a gold rush for water 'rights.'

http://blog.mlive.com/chronicle/2008/01/parties_split_over_water_withd.html