Permits guide
A demolition in Michigan is notifiable even when the building contains no asbestos at all — and the four-unit residential exemption falls away where the work is publicly or commercially driven. Ten working days’ notice, $100 per original notification under MCL 324.5519(3), and the name of the inspector who covers Saginaw County.
Most people planning a demolition think about the container, the machine and the dump. The thing that actually trips jobs up in Michigan is a form.
Michigan’s asbestos notification rules are not shaped the way almost anyone expects. The headline fact is this: a demolition is notifiable even when there is no asbestos in the building at all. Not notifiable if asbestos is found. Notifiable, full stop, with a clock on it. And the residential exemption that people reach for — “it’s just a house, we’re fine” — is bounded in three separate ways, one of which has nothing to do with the building and everything to do with who is driving the project.
This article sets out what we were able to read in the federal and state program material, says plainly where we could not establish something, and gives you the phone number of the inspector who covers Saginaw County. It is background for planning a job. It is not advice about your particular building, and it is not us offering to handle asbestos.
This is where out-of-state templates and half-remembered advice go wrong immediately. Asbestos in Michigan is split between two departments:
Two notes on names. EGLE was previously the Department of Environmental Quality, and plenty of older documents and live state web addresses still carry the old initials. The agency today is EGLE. And MIOSHA sits under LEO, not under LARA — LARA is the department that handles construction codes and the Bureau of Fire Services. Send an asbestos question to LARA and you have sent it to the wrong building.
The notification form is a joint one. EGLE’s own fact sheet refers to the inspecting contractor having to be listed on the joint EGLE/LEO notification form, and EGLE’s published fee schedule distinguishes notifications submitted as EGLE only, as both EGLE and LEO, and as LEO only. So it is one form serving two agencies, with different fee treatment depending on which of them it is going to.
EGLE’s fact sheet on understanding the asbestos NESHAP lists, among the things the notification requirement applies to, “Demolition activities below the thresholds (even for facilities with no asbestos).”
Read that against the thresholds in the next section and the structure becomes clear. The square-footage and linear-footage thresholds govern renovation. A demolition is notifiable regardless of how little regulated material is present — including none.
That is the opposite of how the duty is usually described in conversation, which tends to run: get it tested, and if it comes back clean you are clear. Testing is its own requirement, covered below. The notification is a separate duty with its own clock, and “it came back clean” does not remove it for a demolition.
For renovation work, the thresholds are stated on the amount of regulated asbestos-containing material — RACM — involved:
Those are small numbers in practice. One hundred and sixty square feet is a modest run of ceiling, a boiler room, a stretch of old flooring and the mastic under it. If you are gutting a building rather than knocking it down, this is the measurement that decides whether you are notifying.
Here is the exemption, in the words of EGLE’s fact sheet. It covers “residential buildings having four or fewer dwelling units that are under private control or ownership.”
Three limits are built into that one sentence, and every one of them is a live question on real jobs:
And one inclusion that surprises nearly everyone: residential dwellings intentionally burned for fire training are covered. A donated house used for a burn exercise is not sitting in the residential exemption.
The sentence to never write, and never believe, is “houses are exempt from asbestos rules in Michigan.” They are exempt within four units, under private control or ownership, and outside publicly or commercially driven demolition. Three conditions, all of which have to hold.
Publicly driven demolition is a documented activity in this county, which is simply a fact about where the exemption’s edge sits locally.
The Saginaw County Land Bank Authority exists under the Michigan Land Bank Fast Track Act, 2003 PA 258, MCL 124.751 to 124.774, and was set up through an intergovernmental agreement between the state authority and the County Treasurer, with member appointments running from an effective date of 6 January 2006. The County Treasurer chairs it by virtue of office. Its board seats are defined by constituency, and one of them is held by a resident of Buena Vista Township.
Michigan’s State Land Bank Authority publishes a table of its program awards. That table records two awards to the Saginaw County Land Bank Authority: $200,000, awarded 20 March 2023, and $2,500,000, awarded 1 September 2023. Statewide, the State Land Bank Authority states it has removed more than 3,300 structures since 2010. We are not publishing a local structure count, because we did not find one.
We state all of that as public information and nothing more. We are describing where a federal exemption stops, not any relationship between this business and any government body. If you are working on a project with a public element, the asbestos question is one to settle early rather than at the end, because the exemption you might have relied on for a single-family house may not be available.
EGLE’s fact sheet is direct about this: “The Asbestos NESHAP requires that a thorough inspection be conducted for all renovations and all demolitions.”
Three operative details sit under that sentence. Inspections must be completed before work starts. The inspecting contractor must be listed on the joint EGLE/LEO notification form, which means the inspection has to be arranged before the notification is filed, not after. And visual-only inspections are not acceptable, unless the building is primarily steel and concrete or is otherwise unlikely to contain asbestos.
Sequence, then: inspect, notify, wait out the clock, demolish. Anyone building a schedule in the other order is building it wrong.
The notice periods, as published:
The fee comes from statute. EGLE’s published asbestos fee schedule states that “MCL 324.5519(3) requires a $100 fee for each original submitted Notification”, with $10 for a revision. That is the same for an EGLE-only notification and for one going to both EGLE and LEO; a LEO-only notification is not charged the $100 or $10 submittal fee, and fees owed to MIOSHA are not paid through MiEnviro. The schedule we read was dated April 2025, and it records that revisions to notifications submitted before 2 April 2025 are not charged a fee. All fees are non-refundable.
Then the line that deserves to be on a planning checklist in bold: “If the fee is not paid, the Notification and/or the revision to the Notification is not considered submitted.”
Put that next to a ten-working-day clock and the scheduling risk is obvious. An unpaid fee does not produce a late notification — it produces no notification, which means the clock never started. Ten working days is also two calendar weeks on a good run, and longer across a holiday.
EGLE’s own asbestos landing material notes that contact information for the asbestos NESHAP program varies by geographic region and county, so a generic state number is the wrong answer to a county-specific question. From EGLE’s published asbestos program contact list:
Start with the county inspector. That is the person whose area your job sits in. Program material and contact lists are revised periodically, so confirm before you rely on a number you read anywhere, including here.
We looked for the City of Saginaw’s demolition permit requirements and fees and we could not find them.
That is a genuine gap with a specific cause. The City’s own website is closed to automated reading on every path except its homepage. The City’s code of ordinances is published in full by its codifier, and we read a good deal of it — but the chapter-level pages for building regulations and property maintenance render as headings with no text, so the sections that would carry a wrecking or demolition permit provision were not readable to us. We also checked the state’s jurisdiction list for who enforces which construction code where, and the extractable text of that document stops alphabetically before Saginaw County.
So: we are not telling you a demolition permit is required, and we are not telling you one is not. We do not know, and a dumpster company guessing at a permit requirement is how people end up with a stop-work order. Call the City of Saginaw at (989) 399-1311 and ask. If the job is in a township, ask that township — and bear in mind that township building functions in this area are often contracted out to private firms, so the office you need may be an extension number rather than a department.
The same restraint applies to fee amounts. We publish none, for any jurisdiction, because we verified none.
Set the asbestos question aside and a demolition still generates a pile that municipal collection in the City of Saginaw will not take. That is not a sales line; it is the City’s own ordinance.
City Code § 50.06 lists materials not to be collected. Subsection (C) names “Stones, bricks, plaster, shingles, lumber, demolition materials, building materials, concrete, sand, gravel, and earth.” Subsection (I) names “Material resulting from contract work”, with examples given as “landscaping, tree trimming, construction or demolition, or work done by utility companies.”
Between those two subsections, essentially everything a demolition produces is outside the City’s collection service. The ordinance does not require you to rent anything — it states what the City will not pick up, and what you do about that is your decision. Note also that § 50.06 does not mention appliances, stumps or bulky items; we are not going to tell you it does.
And if the debris sits out front while you decide: § 94.068 deals with trash, abandoned property or building materials on the street right-of-way next to a property. An enforcement officer posts a weatherproof notice of at least 8 by 10 inches stating that the material is improperly stored and “must be removed within 72 hours from the date of this notice”, mails a copy to the property owner per City Assessor records, and after 72 hours may cause the trash to be removed, with the City’s removal costs assessed and levied against the premises.
All three of those are City of Saginaw provisions. They are not county rules and they are not township rules. The City’s code was marked current through Ordinance O-274, effective 2 October 2025, when we read it. For the other twenty-nine county subdivisions we established no refuse ordinance at all, and we are not going to invent one.
What a container is for, on a job like this, is the material that is simply heavy rubble and framing. Mixed demolition debris is dense, so the usable question is rarely “how big” but “how heavy before it has to go.” Brick, plaster, concrete and wet timber reach lawful road weight well before they fill a large box, which is why the right answer on a demolition is often a smaller container swapped more often rather than the biggest one on the list.
Call (989) 272-9034 and describe the structure, the material and where a truck can get in. There is no quote form, no booking screen and no account — the phone is the whole system. We are not in a position to tell you whether your building needs a notification, and we will not pretend otherwise; that call goes to EGLE.
More on this site: demolition debris, concrete and heavy debris, construction dumpster rental, and the sizes most often used on a tear-down, the 10 yard and 20 yard. Related reading: what the City of Saginaw will not collect, three fire codes, seven miles apart and which government am I in? Outbound: Michigan EGLE, Michigan LEO, US EPA.
Talk to a real person
Call (989) 272-9034 and say what the material is, where the box would have to sit, and which community the address is in. Where the answer turns on a rule we could not read, you will be told that and pointed at the office that can answer it.
Call and ask what the board looks like today
From this guide
For a demolition, yes. EGLE’s fact sheet on the asbestos NESHAP lists, among the activities the notification requirement applies to, demolition activities below the thresholds even for facilities with no asbestos. The square-foot and linear-foot thresholds govern renovation work; a demolition is notifiable regardless of how little regulated material is present, including none at all. This is the single most commonly missed point in the whole scheme, because the duty is usually described as though a clean test result ends it. A thorough inspection is separately required for all renovations and all demolitions, and it has to be completed before work starts, with the inspecting contractor listed on the joint EGLE and LEO notification form. Confirm your own job with EGLE before you schedule anything.
EGLE’s published asbestos fee schedule states that MCL 324.5519(3) requires a $100 fee for each original submitted notification, with $10 for a revision. That applies to an EGLE-only notification and to one submitted to both EGLE and LEO; a LEO-only notification is not charged the $100 or $10 submittal fee, and fees owed to MIOSHA are not paid through the MiEnviro Portal. All fees are non-refundable. On timing, renovation and demolition notifications go in at least ten working days before work begins. Watch one line in particular: if the fee is not paid, the notification or the revision is not considered submitted. An unpaid fee does not make you late, it means the ten-working-day clock never started. The schedule we read was dated April 2025; confirm current amounts with EGLE.
Only within limits, and there are three of them. The exemption covers residential buildings having four or fewer dwelling units that are under private control or ownership. So a five-unit building is covered by the rules, not exempt. The exemption is framed around private control or ownership. And it falls away where the demolition is for urban renewal or part of a public or commercial project, which means a publicly driven demolition of an ordinary house is a different case from an owner knocking down their own garage. One further inclusion catches people out: residential dwellings intentionally burned for fire training are covered. The sentence to avoid is houses are exempt in Michigan. Four units, private control, and not publicly or commercially driven, all three at once.
EGLE’s published asbestos program contact list names the Saginaw County asbestos NESHAP inspector as Steve Kidder, reachable at 517-243-4492 or KidderS@Michigan.gov, listed under Asbestos NESHAP Inspectors in EGLE’s Air Quality Division, Field Operations. The general program line is the EGLE Environmental Assistance Center on 800-662-9278. EGLE’s own material notes that contact information for the program varies by geographic region and county, so the county inspector is the right starting point rather than a generic state number. The worker-safety side sits with MIOSHA, under the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, not under LARA. Contact lists are revised periodically, so confirm the number before you rely on it.
We could not establish that, in either direction, and we are not going to guess. The reason is specific. The City’s own website is closed to automated reading on every path but its homepage, and on the City’s codifier the chapter-level pages for building regulations and property maintenance render as headings with no text, so the sections that would carry a wrecking or demolition provision were not readable to us. The state list of which agency enforces which construction code where stops alphabetically before Saginaw County in its extractable text. So we publish no permit requirement and no fee amount for any jurisdiction here. Call the City of Saginaw on (989) 399-1311 and ask. If the job is in a township, ask that township, and expect the building function to be contracted out.
No, and the City says so in its own ordinance. City Code § 50.06 lists materials not to be collected. Subsection (C) names stones, bricks, plaster, shingles, lumber, demolition materials, building materials, concrete, sand, gravel, and earth. Subsection (I) names material resulting from contract work, with examples given as landscaping, tree trimming, construction or demolition, or work done by utility companies. Between them, that is a demolition pile. The ordinance does not require anyone to rent a container; it states what the City will not collect, and the response is the property owner’s choice. Note also that § 50.06 does not mention appliances, stumps or bulky items. These are City provisions only, and the City’s code was current through Ordinance O-274, effective 2 October 2025.
In the City of Saginaw there is a provision for that, and the cost lands on the property. City Code § 94.068 applies where an enforcement officer finds trash, abandoned property or building materials on the street right-of-way next to a property. The officer posts a weatherproof notice of at least 8 by 10 inches stating that the material is improperly stored and must be removed within 72 hours from the date of this notice, and mails a copy to the property owner according to City Assessor records. After 72 hours the officer may cause the trash to be removed, and the City’s removal costs are assessed and levied against the premises. Note who pays: the property owner, not whoever generated the material. This is a City provision and we established no equivalent for any township.
Keep reading
Michigan’s landfill prohibitions are not a uniform list, and summarizing them produces false statements. Here is EGLE’s list entry by entry — plus the ten-tire threshold, the license Michigan does not issue, and why the City’s rules are a separate question.
ReadFor a container on your own driveway we found no City of Saginaw permit provision. For a container in a City street we could not establish whether one is required or who issues it. Here are the sections we read, what each actually governs, and the number to call.
ReadThe sizing question has a prior question attached: what City Code § 50.06 says the City will not collect. Here are the five sizes, the weight limit that overrides volume, job-by-job guidance, and what we will not put a number on.
Read
