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Thursday, July 7, 2016

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com NEWS

superfund designation, we would 
probably require a large amount 
of community input and a full 
understanding of how successful 
(the) EPA has been with respect to 
other dioxane sites in Michigan, 
what we could hope to achieve by 
obtaining 
that 

designation and 
frankly 
what 

risks we’d run 
by doing this.”

Scio 

Township 
Supervisor 
Spaulding Clark 
— who supports 
a 
superfund 

designation 
— 
told 
the 

Daily 
before 

the 
county’s 

vote that whether a superfund 
petition is ultimately pursued 
may rest with the city of Ann 
Arbor’s decision. Clark also said 
he has more confidence in the 
EPA than the DEQ to manage 
the contamination, and that he 
believes concerns about loss in 
property values are unfounded 
because affected properties still 
have access to public water and 
that the contamination has been 
long-known to realtors and home 
buyers.

“If both the county and the 

city have no interest in making 

this a superfund site, my guess is 
it won’t happen,” Clark said. “I 
think the reality is that Ann Arbor 
Township and Scio Township are 
awaiting a decision by Ann Arbor 
Township and the county as to 
whether they want to get into 
this.”

Although the DEQ and Pall 

Corporation — which acquired 
Gelman — have maintained a 

network 
of 

monitoring 
wells to track 
the 
plume 

since 
1992, 

Washtenaw 
County 
locals 

have 
long 

been 
critical 

of the state’s 
response, 
and the Flint 
water 
crisis 

re-energized 
public 

attention in January.

In March, the DEQ promised 

to revise groundwater safety 
standards for 1,4-dioxane to 
be in line with EPA cancer risk 
guidelines, which would grant 
the Michigan Attorney General 
standing to take new legal 
action against Pall Corporation 
for more thorough cleanup and 
remediation 
activities. 
In 
a 

June interview, Robert Wagner, 
chief of the DEQ Remediation 
Division, told the Daily the 
new regulations are on track 
to be submitted to the state 

legislature for approval in its 
9-month timeframe.

Nonetheless, 
a 
persistent 

dissatisfaction with the DEQ’s 
bureaucracy was visible in the 
county 
commission’s 
meeting, 

particularly with Commissioner 
Yousef Rabhi (D).

“We’re 
dealing 
with 
an 

organization that has ignored 
us for too long … that has set 
timelines and then broken their 
timelines, and I personally have 
no interest in continuing to be 
fooled by an organization that 
isn’t being held true to its own 
standards,” Rabhi said at the 
County Commission session. “I 
don’t believe it is the fault of the 
staff on the ground … but the DEQ 

is fundamentally flawed in its 
structure; the DEQ does not serve 
the people of Michigan, it serves 
the interests of the polluters and 
the corporate interests.”

The 
County 
Commision’s 

Wednesday resolution also called 
for Governor Rick Snyder (R) 
to expedite the passage of the 
new water standards by the state 
legislature. 

State Rep. Jeff Irwin (D–Ann 

Arbor), 
who 
represents 
most 

of Washtenaw County, told the 
Daily in late June that, despite 
his past frustrations, he has been 
encouraged by the DEQ’s latest 
efforts and believes a rush to 
petition for EPA intervention 
would undermine this progress. 

However, Irwin also noted he 
does not have a firm position on 
superfund designation.

“I am as frustrated as anybody 

else about how the cleanup has 
been administered around the 
Gelman site, and I think the DEQ 
is part of that frustration,” Irwin 
said. “But I feel as though they’ve 
finally started to move in the right 
direction for this cleanup, and 
now that they’ve been working 
with us as partners, it might be a 
bad time to shift to a new partner. 
(The EPA) might be better, the 
EPA might take the situation more 
seriously, but they also might not, 
and they may also take a long time 
getting to the point that the DEQ 
has now been brought to.”

GROUNDWATER
From Page 1

“The question of 
whether or not to 
seek superfund 

status is a 

complicated one”

1-250 ppb

250-1,000 ppb

1,000-2,000 ppb

2,000+ ppb

Ann Arbor Dioxide 

Plume Map

Source: Scio Residents for Safe Water

