Dioxane plume

More than 130 people who live in Ann Arbor and neighboring townships attended a town hall about the city's dioxane-tainted groundwater Wednesday night.

The plume of contaminated water has been spreading from the former Pall Gelman plant on Wagner Road for decades. 

Over the years, Ann Arbor has had to shut down one of its city wells after detectable levels of the suspected carcinogen was found in them, and a number of homes in Scio Township had to be taken off well water and connected to Ann Arbor's water system because dioxane got into their wells. 

President Donald Trump's proposed budget calls for cutting money for cleaning up Superfund sites by a third. 

But the EPA's new head, Scott Pruitt, has told employees that he's going to make Superfund cleanups a priority.

Activists fighting for the cleanup of a Superfund site along the Pine River in St. Louis, Michigan hope Pruitt will get some more money so he can keep the promise.  It's one of the most polluted Superfund sites in the state.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will begin an examination into the Gelman 1,4-dioxane plume spreading through the groundwater of Ann Arbor and Scio Township. The EPA will determine if the pollution qualifies for federal Superfund cleanup.

Yesterday, Scio Township, which borders Ann Arbor to the west, joined the existing lawsuit against the polluter as a plaintiff. Scio Township joins the city of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County and the Huron Valley Watershed Council in the lawsuit. 

The Ann Arbor City Council has approved spending an additional $100,000 for attorney fees in the state of Michigan's lawsuit against Gelman Sciences.

The city has hired attorneys from Bodman PLC to help negotiate a settlement with the group, which is responsible for polluting Ann Arbor's groundwater with the hazardous chemical 1,4-dioxane.

A lawsuit to force a cleanup of Ann Arbor's contaminated water appears to have set a new precedent. The judge allowed a watershed advocacy group to become one of the plaintiffs. That's despite both the polluter and the state attorney general arguing against it.

The Huron River Watershed Council says no one in the lawsuit was advocating for the river itself, including aquatic life and the risk to people swimming, fishing and boating.

The Ann Arbor City Council wants to intervene in a lawsuit over groundwater contamination in and around the city. The Council unanimously passed a resolution at a special meeting Tuesday night to direct city officials to seek permission from the court to intervene in the case.

The state Department of Environmental Quality has issued an emergency rule establishing a stricter cleanup criteria for 1,4 dioxane, a highly carcinogenic chemical that has polluted Ann Arbor's groundwater for decades.

The plume of contaminated water has been slowly moving in all directions, including towards the Huron River.  It's feared that eventually the contamination could reach Barton Pond, the source of the city's drinking water.

After waiting three years for the state to issue a stricter cleanup standard for the carcinogen 1,4 dioxane, Ann Arbor Township and Scio Township are done.

The two townships, along with the Sierra Club of Huron Valley, will jointly file a petition next month requesting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a preliminary assessment for a plume of contaminated groundwater to become a federal Superfund site.

A frustrated Ann Arbor City Council wants to force a faster cleanup of a plume of groundwater contaminated with 1,4 dioxane.

That's after the chemical was found in surface water near Slauson Middle School.
The contaminated water is slowly spreading under the city of Ann Arbor as well as Ann Arbor Township and Scio Township.  

City leaders say the polluter, Pall Gelman, needs to do a lot more to clean it up.

State officials have a new water contamination investigation on their hands: what is the source of newly-discovered contaminants found in the groundwater near Slauson Middle School in Ann Arbor?

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality discovered the chemicals trichloroethane and chloroform there after conducting tests for a different chemical - 1,4 dioxane. 

The 1,4 dioxane is a known contaminant from the chemical company Pall-Gelman. The plume of 1,4 dioxane is slowly moving underneath Ann Arbor towards the Huron River.

State officials are accepting more feedback on proposed new statewide standards for more than 300 environmental contaminants, including dioxane. 

The last public comment period ended in mid-September.  

This week the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality released revised proposed rules with a new comment deadline of October 18, and an additional public hearing scheduled for October 17 in Lansing. 

State environmental officials say 35 private wells on or near Rose Drive in Ann Arbor had no detectable level of 1,4 dioxane after testing water samples.

It's a little bit of good news in the ongoing saga of Ann Arbor's dioxane-contaminated groundwater. 

A plume of water contaminated with the dangerous chemical is slowly moving under the city towards the Huron River.

State officials want to collect water samples in the West Park area of Ann Arbor due to concerns that groundwater contaminated by a toxic chemical may be seeping to the surface.

The Ann Arbor News reports that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality plans to start the groundwater collection next week.

The chemical is dioxane, an industrial solvent. Federal agencies say long-term exposure could cause health problems, including cancer.

State officials talked about the Pall-Gelman dioxane plume at a town hall meeting in Ann Arbor last night. The meeting was hosted by State Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is proposing to change the state's standard for 1,4 dioxane to 7.2 parts per billion.

That's a ten-fold difference from the current standard of 85 parts per billion.  1,4 dioxane is a known carcinogen. 

The DEQ missed a December, 2015 deadline for issuing updated standards for 308 chemicals, including 1,4 dioxane. 

The agency has issued the new standard for 1,4 dioxane first, likely in response to an increased outcry from Ann Arbor city officials and residents. 

A plume of groundwater contaminated with the highly carcinogenic chemical 1,4 dioxane continues to spread beyond Ann Arbor's city limits, threatening private wells in Ann Arbor Township.

Township Supervisor Mike Moran says he is so frustrated at the lack of  legal action by the state attorney general that it's time for the "nuclear option" -- asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to declare the region a Superfund Cleanup site.

Moran says in March, he will ask his township board for permission to make the request to the EPA.

An official with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality will address water contamination in Ann Arbor at a special meeting of the City Council Monday night at 7 p.m.

A plume of 1,4 dioxane, a carcinogenic chemical, is slowly moving through the city's groundwater.

Ann Arbor City Council member Sabra Briere hopes the state will finally announce how much of the chemical is considered safe.

She says the state has postponed making that rule for eight years. 

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell wants the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to finish the job it started several years ago.

In an open letter to MDEQ director Keith Creagh, Dingell urged the state to finalize stricter cleanup standards for the chemical 1,4-dioxane.

The public might not get to see a new plan to test and track a toxic groundwater plume that's been spreading for years in the Ann Arbor area. 

Pall Corporation is responsible for the dioxane plume. It developed and submitted the monitoring plan to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality – and marked it "confidential."

Bob Wagner, chief of the MDEQ's Remediation and Redevelopment Division, said department officials are asking Pall to explain why the company thinks the plan should be treated confidentially.

As a plume of contaminated ground water keeps expanding in Ann Arbor, the city council wants the state to move faster to protect people from harmful exposure.

To be clear: Ann Arbor drinking water is safe.

But growing swaths of the city’s ground water is no longer a good idea to ingest (and again, the city is NOT getting their water from those areas,) thanks to chemical runoff from years ago.

That chemical compound is 1,4 dioxane and it seeped into ground water between the 1960's and 1980's when a manufacturer stored it in unlined lagoons.