Sunday, December 14, 2003

JONATHAN HUNT
THE SAGINAW NEWS

On an August 1979 visit to Saginaw, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin said that if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency couldn't solve the Fremont-Richland water quandary, it would end up as "one of those things."

Residents thought that state efforts had produced little more than "a piece of paper to be stuck away in some file," he said.

A mysterious pattern of bad water in their neighborhood, they feared, had killed house plants, made them sick and caused macabre defects in animals -- a trend they felt deserved a higher-level federal investigation.

Nearly a quarter-century after the EPA study, however, Levin's comments still resonate.

The questions near Hemlock, such as those now about nearby irrigation depletion or dioxin, challenge citizens, businesses and arms of government grappling with problems invisible to the naked eye.

Today's dioxin quest involves floodplain residents, a mammoth company, state and federal agencies, the legal system and even hunters stalking wildlife with night vision gear.

Irrigation depletion, so far, entangles farmers and their trade groups, state regulators, private well owners and the Church of Latter Day Saints.

This octopus of a process first hit northwestern Saginaw County 25 years ago, when residents grew concerned their water was causing illnesses.

The inconclusive Fremont-Richland probe marked an early but memorable attempt to track down a hidden problem -- an effort that foreshadowed the current debate over Dow Chemical Co. and dioxin.

"We could have gotten in there faster (now)," says Dr. James Truchan, a state Department of Natural Resources investigator during the 1970s.

"This whole concept evolved," he says. "The analytical tools are much more sophisticated. We've got a portable tool that you can bring right in there and sniff the air."

Something in the wind?

Truchan, who worked in the environmental enforcement division, believes the heavy focus on groundwater in the late-1970s probe perhaps was misplaced.

"It may have been airborne," he says. "Michigan Chemical Co. was releasing material in the night."

The Gratiot County company, later known as Velsicol, closed its St. Louis plant in 1978.

Strange-smelling breezes used to waft with the prevailing winds, residents say. Carol Jean Kruger, who helped spearhead the Hemlock-area inquiry, remembers the casual comment, "Oh, they must be making shoe polish again."

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tested yard soil and household dust but only found chemicals it said then existed at many homes.

What lies beneath

Much of the testing near Hemlock centered on Dow's brine extraction and disposal operations there.

A Dow slogan, "From Brine to Brilliance," described its system of solution mining, which piped salty water to Midland and extracted minerals to make organic chemical products. Spent brine was then returned to Hemlock and other areas and reinjected to depths of about 4,500 feet.

Brine reinjection began in 1959.

At the heart of the Fremont-Richland water questions lay fears the company pumped in more than just salty water.

Chemical processing did contaminate some brine; in 1969, Dow received a $500,000 grant from the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration to decontaminate and recondition waste brines sent underground.

Dow rebuffed the EPA's 1980 attempt to examine the company's Midland waste brine lagoon. Dow said sand-filtering between the lagoon and disposal wells removed any toxins, and instead the company allowed sampling of wells, pipes and adjacent land.

Test results showed 134 parts per million of arsenic in pond sediment next to a reinjection well near Fordney and Roosevelt. That far exceeded typical naturally-occurring levels, but it's not clear whether waste brine contamination, nearby pesticide use or something else caused it. A 1979 EPA memo said a Dow-developed arsenic compound was used in its brine wells at one time.

Trace amounts of several man-made chemicals turned up in the brine system in the early 1980s, including 2-chlorophenol and hexachlorobenzene. But in 1984, the DNR geological survey division's Allen F. Crabtree said he saw "nothing of great concern at this stage indicating that we have a great problem."

Sandy Mannion, a 58-year-old resident of Ingersoll Township in Midland County, said questions about underground disposal didn't end in Hemlock or when the brine network closed in the mid-1980s.

"It used to smell just horrible," she says of her water, which comes from an aquifer near a reinjection well and the brine line right of way that extends from Midland to near Hemlock.

Rounds of testing on her family's water over the past two decades yielded inconsistent findings. She said officials told her lab contamination of samples helped thwart solid conclusions, though one test found dioxin. Another specific test for dioxin in 2003, however, found none.

No dioxin was detected in the brine system or drinking wells near Hemlock using technology the EPA's Karl Bremer said was state-of-the-art at the time.

How deep is deep enough?

Agency summaries didn't confirm suspected cross-contamination between deep disposal wells and shallower drinking wells.

Salts and dissolved solids occur naturally in mid-Michigan groundwater, and large concentrations of these minerals raised no flags by turning up in drinking wells near Hemlock. Small quantities of industrial chemicals, often not found in follow-ups, didn't either.

The EPA report said: "past practices in coal and oil exploration, well drilling and brine production complicate the geology in this area of the state."

But the study didn't delve very far into the disposal wells nearest the concerned residents.

It checked only pond sediment at the Fordney site and just soil, leaked brine and contents of a valve at the reinjection well at Orr and Swan Creek Road.

The end of an era

Public pressure increased after a series of large surface leaks in eastern Midland County during 1984. A 1985 state consent order closed the aging lines.

"We discontinued the use of brine at the Midland manufacturing site," says Dow spokeswoman Anne Ainsworth.

A field tile containment system at some sites now sends surface water to a company wastewater facility in Midland. Residents call the small structures above the former wells "doghouses."

"The little barns are tied to the remediation system," says Rhonda Klan of the state Department of Environmental Quality's Bay City office.

The structures house electronic and monitoring equipment, she says.

The brine samples she's seen did not reveal extensive contamination by organic chemicals.

"Chloride was by far the most prominent target indicator," Klan says.

Ainsworth emphasizes the company's compliance and the fact that studies found no evidence of cross-contamination.

"The EPA did not connect the resident's concerns with Dow's brine system," she says.

"All of the brine wells were shut down and the pipelines cleaned in accordance with state of Michigan rules and requirements."

John Mier, Dow inorganic products manager during the controversy, says the events happened so long ago he can't recall it.

Other theories

Repeated pipeline spills rather than deep groundwater migration may have contaminated drinking wells in the area, Truchan says.

Minerals present fewer hazards than industrial chemicals but can make water unpleasant for drinking and bathing, a state official said in 1985.

Water with sodium levels above 500 parts per million "would be water that I would assume the average person would find repulsive," said James Cleland of the state Department of Public Health.

A state report shows Dow found high chlorine levels in several residential wells but doesn't mention it in its summary.

And a potential pathway barely considered in late-1970s probes concerns waste brine sprayed on Saginaw County roads for dust control.

"That's where we found all the hydrocarbons," Truchan says, referring to benzene and other compounds detected around Michigan roadsides.

An evaluation by the state Department of Agriculture and Michigan State University attributed some of the sickness in cattle to poor management practices at one farm. However, people reported unhealthy or deformed animals at several sites.

The human health angle

Government assessments of the Hemlock health woes downplayed the likelihood of any geographic disease cluster.

These efforts included an informal health questionnaire and reviews of medical records.

EPA tissue studies from small numbers of livestock and wildlife in the area found no evidence of unusual contamination.

Some area residents still think numbers of illnesses and birth defects around Fremont and Richland townships seem unusually high.

Epidemiologists say they detected a cancer cluster around Breckenridge in Gratiot County in the 1970s but couldn't decide on its cause -- Velsicol air emissions or dust hazards from bean farming.

Dr. Neill Varner of the Saginaw County Public Health Department admits epidemiological studies have been inadequate. He says doctors noticed a spike in thyroiditis in Saginaw County, for example, but didn't follow it up.

"We never made an association," he says. "We dropped the ball."

Today, doctors could measure the "body burden" of specific pollutants in people via a process called biomonitoring.

The state Department of Community Health announced Dec. 3 it will undertake a study in 2004 to measure dioxin levels in residents along the Tittabawassee River, a process Dow says it supports. Elevated dioxin levels in soil don't necessarily translate to high blood dioxin levels in people and animals, the company says.

Night hunters have collected wild game for Dow to allow testing for dioxin in edible portions.

Sign of the times

Bremer stands by EPA results yet credits the Hemlock case with increasing scrutiny at other sites. Residents' concerns caused a ripple that caught the government's attention, he says.

The Fremont-Richland fears mushroomed in 1978, the same year dioxin turned up in Tittabawassee River caged fish, and regulators took a longer view.

"It made us more aware that dioxin had been produced at the Dow facility," Bremer says of the Hemlock situation.

Increased EPA surveillance culminated in a 1984 federal appeals court ruling saying the agency could fly over Dow's Midland operations to gather information.

"There was a whole series of these kinds of contamination problems that came up in the '70s," Truchan says. "Hemlock was part of that time period, but we couldn't come up with anything definitive."

Kathryn Jungnitsch, a Richland Township citizen who helped spark studies, agrees it was a different era.

"They found some things, but they explained them away. We think it was because it was the first big eruption. They really got their feet wet." t

Jonathan Hunt is a staff writer for The Saginaw News. You may reach him at 776-9682.

© 2003 Saginaw News.