New process considered for taking on dioxin

By Tony Lascari of the Midland Daily News
 Published: Friday, November 7, 2008 12:22 PM EST

 A possible new arrangement for cleanup of Tittabawassee River contamination from The Dow Chemical Co.’s Michigan Operations site signals a shift from learning about the pollution to permanently correcting it.

Dow has until Monday to respond to a joint proposal from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to begin a Superfund Alternative Site process.

As part of the agreement, the parties would recognize the Tittabawassee River, Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay as an interconnected system that needs a systemwide process for corrective action, MDEQ Senior Policy Adviser Frank Ruswick said.

“It allows us to do remedial actions from upstream to downstream, rather than here or there where we happen to hit a hot spot,” Ruswick said.

The system would help prevent recontamination, Ruswick said. It would take advantage of recent cooperation between Dow, MDEQ and EPA.

“It’s under consideration by Dow,” company spokesman John Musser said. “I don’t think any decision has been made yet.”

MDEQ officials hope the plan could include sediment traps downstream to stop the spread of contamination.

“Sediment traps would be a component of the sitewide management strategy,” MDEQ geologist Al Taylor said.

Also, the plan would still allow for residential areas downstream that faced extreme levels of contamination to see immediate cleanup work if necessary, officials said.

“The new approach is intended to be action oriented,” said Ralph Dollhopf of the EPA, ensuring that any hot spots would be dealt with “sooner rather than later”

If an agreement is made to enter the Superfund Alternative Site process, it would lead to a complicated, expensive cleanup effort that could last years but offer good solutions, Taylor said.

“We really only want to do this once,” he said.

That the parties involved are considering an agreement is seen as a success by most involved in the decades old issue of what to do about dioxin, furan and other contaminants in the local river systems.

Michelle Hurd Riddick, of The Lone Tree Council, said there have been several agreements in the past that were supposed to offer solutions to the pollution in the river.

“I hope for the resources and the people of our watershed this is the final way forward,” she said.

The detailed sampling and mapping in the Tittabawassee River has been “phenomenal,” Hurd Riddick said.

“I think the Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay are entitled to the same level of sampling,” she said, so the resources also could be restored.

Dow has done its own sampling in the Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay, and has submitted a work plan for further sampling with the MDEQ, according to Greg Cochran, Dow’s Michigan Dioxin Initiative director.

There is a lot of information that can point to where to investigate contamination in the future, but Dow does not want to take responsibility for cleaning contamination from other companies, Cochran said.

Taylor said officials hope contamination levels in the Saginaw River and Bay will be documented well enough before work on the Tittabawassee River begins to see if the upstream work is impacting downstream contamination levels.

If an agreement is going to be made between Dow, MDEQ and EPA, the public will have input at the beginning of the process and will get to comment on the plan before final approval. Ruswick said this would provide an appropriate level of public input in the complicated negotiation process.

If Dow chooses not to enter into the agreement, MDEQ and EPA will consider its other options for enforcement cleanup, Ruswick said.
 

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.