Ex-EPA official worried about Mich. dioxin cleanup
2/11/2009, 2:45 p.m. ET By JOHN FLESHER The Associated Press

(AP) — Federal and state regulators hope a "good-faith offer" from Dow Chemical Co. will trigger a long-sought cleanup of dioxin pollution along a 50-mile swath of waterways and floodplains in central Michigan.

The Midland-based company is expected to submit a proposal this week during closed-door negotiations over cleansing one of the nation's biggest dioxin contamination zones. Dioxins are highly toxic chemical byproducts believed to cause cancer.

The talks are part of a new regulatory strategy that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality say could speed things up. But critics, including the former chief of the EPA's regional office in Chicago, fear the opposite will happen.

"It's a delaying tactic at a minimum and an unnecessary one," Mary Gade told The Associated Press. She says her aggressiveness in confronting Dow was the reason she was fired last May.

Dow has acknowledged polluting the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers, their floodplains, portions of the city of Midland and Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay with dioxins for much of the 20th century, first by dumping liquid wastes and later by incinerating them.

The company has spent about $40 million on studies, sediment sampling and other preliminary work and in 2007 removed tainted soil from four highly toxic "hot spots," one with the highest dioxin levels ever recorded in the Great Lakes region.

Even so, the chemical giant contends the pollution hasn't harmed people or wildlife and has yet to agree with regulators on a strategy for a comprehensive cleanup. State officials have issued warnings about eating certain fish from the rivers.

Some people living along the Tittabawassee, fed up with the delay, have sued Dow. The company, meanwhile, went to court last year after the state demanded testing in Lake Huron's Saginaw Bay, which Dow says is outside its area of responsibility.

Although the contamination problem has been debated since the early 1980s, it wasn't until 2003 that the company and the DEQ agreed to develop a cleanup strategy under provisions of a federal hazardous waste law.

In 2007, Gade used the law's authority to order an emergency cleanup of the four hot spots in the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers. Gade's office then tried to negotiate a cleanup deal with Dow but gave up in January 2008, saying the company's offer was a step backward. Gade was dismissed five months later.

A new twist came last December, when the federal and state agencies agreed with Dow on a new regulatory framework for the cleanup.

Instead of operating under the hazardous waste law, it would be handled similarly to the high-priority cases in the federal Superfund program. Yet it wouldn't be added to the list of Superfund sites, which would take up to two years, said Wendy Carney, a branch chief with the EPA's Superfund office in Chicago.

The switch to a "Superfund Alternative Site" approach will cut red tape and start the cleanup more quickly, Carney said.

"It is not Superfund lite," she said. "It really is the full-fledged Superfund process ... a strong, proven enforcement tool."

The state DEQ endorsed the change and a division of regulatory duties, spokesman Robert McCann said.

Previously, the DEQ was the lead agency under EPA oversight. Under the new plan, the feds would oversee cleanup of the two rivers, their floodplains and Saginaw Bay, with the state taking responsibility for the Dow plant, the adjacent stretch of the Tittabawassee and tainted sections of the city of Midland.

Skeptics fear the new arrangement will mean more foot-dragging and enable Dow to cut a favorable back room deal. They are suspicious because Dow requested the changes in a March 2008 letter to the Bush administration.

"They derailed the existing process because delay is Chapter 1 in Dow's strategy book," said Michelle Hurd Riddick, representing an activist group called the Lone Tree Council.

Gade, now a Chicago-area consultant, said in a phone interview the Superfund Alternative Site framework has less teeth than the hazardous waste law. Switching from one regulatory scheme to another is "highly unusual" and seems likely to require a restart of many tasks, she said.

Carney responded, "While it is not commonplace to switch, it has happened when conditions seemed to indicate that it was the best choice to make for advancing the cleanup."

She insisted the public would not be left in the dark, despite the private talks now under way. They involve not the cleanup itself, but a "road map" for deciding how it will be done, Carney said.

The Obama administration has yet to appoint a chief of the EPA's regional office and has signaled no change of direction in the case.

Dow's proposal is due by Sunday. Afterward, discussions may continue another month. If the company and regulators make a tentative deal, they'll release details and take public comment before deciding whether to adopt it.

The company will meet the deadline for its proposal, company spokeswoman Mary Draves said, declining to discuss its contents.

Regulators pledged to make sure Dow eventually follows through.

"We wouldn't sign off on anything we felt was going to result in anything other than a thorough cleanup," McCann said.

Gade, who grilled former EPA colleagues at a public meeting in Saginaw last month, continues following the case she says cost her her job.

"It's important to me that the spotlight continues to be put on the situation so people don't forget about it or allow it to be shoved under the carpet," she said.

___

John Flesher is the AP correspondent in Traverse City, Mich., and has covered environmental issues since 1992.

 

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.