Support grows to keep new river dumping site less toxic
 Wednesday, October 11, 2006 Bay City Times
 By BARRIE BARBER TIMES NEWS SERVICE

 A Saginaw County leader will lobby the Saginaw County Board of Commissioners to declare that a Saginaw River spoils site under construction be off limits to ''hazardous or highly toxic contaminants'' outside the Upper Saginaw River shipping channel.

Responding to environmentalist fears and public concern, County Commissioner Tim Novak gained the backing Tuesday of the County Services Committee in a resolution that makes that declaration.

The location, also known as the Dredge Materials Disposal Facility, straddles Frankenlust Township in Bay County and Zilwaukee Township in Saginaw County, part of which wades into the Carrollton Township Democrat's district.

''We need to draw a line now,'' Novak said. ''This facility is being built strictly to keep the shipping channel open so we can move the boats in and out of there.''

Novak said he was reacting to concerns that Dow Chemical Co. may want to dispose of contaminants from its Midland complex at the dredging site. If that's the case, he said, Dow should look at its own property first.

The Lone Tree Council, an environmental group, called a press conference last month to highlight a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency memo last April it said showed Dow had an interest in the spoils disposal site.

A Dow spokesman, at that time, said the company's interest wasn't a secret and sprung from the possibility that a regulatory agency could order the chemical giant to dredge contaminated rivers. It was involved in talks with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the spoils project with the county.

Dow also had contributed between $300,000 to $500,000 to the Saginaw River Alliance, a group of dock owners that gave more than $1.5 million to the $5 million project, the spokesman said in September.

County Public Works Commissioner James A. Koski said federal and state permits do not allow the disposal of hazardous waste or anything other than material from the Upper Saginaw River.

''I have no trouble with (the position) at all because that's all it's been planned for,'' he told committee members. ''You, as the owner, will always have the right to say what goes in there. ... Our goal is to get the river dredged.''

Commissioner Kenneth B. Horn, a Frankenmuth Republican, said he was disappointed and frustrated with the ''unusual alliance'' between the state Department of Environmental Quality and the Lone Tree Council, which he termed ''an extreme left wing special interest group.''

''They've been cozy with the DEQ that they're getting the information before we as commissioners and legislators are,'' he said.

''You create this hysteria over something that doesn't exist. I think is an outrage,'' he told commissioners, adding after the meeting the county never had plans to ship dioxin contaminated muck from the Tittabawassee River. Nor had Dow ever presented a proposal to the county, he said.

''That never, ever, ever was going to be the case,'' he said. Lone Tree, he added, is ''absolutely creating crisis in Saginaw County.''

Michelle Hurd Riddick, a Lone Tree spokeswoman, said the group legally obtained the information about Dow through a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the Chicago EPA office, not the state DEQ.

Using the site for Dow dredgings also was mentioned publicly by a DEQ official at an April 2005 meeting in Bay City.

''That Commissioner Horn would focus on the citizens' right to access information rather than addressing the issue, I think it speaks volumes,'' she said. ''Are we to interpret that citizens shouldn't have this information?

''Commissioner Horn is more concerned with attacking the messenger than the message,'' she added.

''Everything about this site needs to be transparent and all of the documents surrounding this site, whether they come from DEQ or EPA, that information belongs to the people of Saginaw County,'' she said.

Horn said ''pure sunlight'' has highlighted every county conversation about the disposal facility.

But Hurd Riddick questioned why commissioners apparently didn't know of Dow's interest until Lone Tree released the EPA information.

©2006 Bay City Times

For additional articles like this one, go to the Tittabawassee River Watch web site www.trwnews.net for complete coverage of the Tittabawassee River Dow Chemical dioxin contamination saga. . The Newspaper / Media page of our site contains an extensive archive of media articles dating back to January 2002. The source organization's web site link is listed to the right of the article, visit often for other news in our area. The Newspaper / Media page may be accessed by scrolling down to the bottom of the CONTENTS section and clicking on the Newspaper/Media link.