MAYOR CHRIS TAYLOR recently posted an “update” concerning public safety, the city’s finances, parks, trees and the environment, to his Facebook page. In the course of updating the public about the feared contamination of the Huron River and Barton Pond—which provides 85 percent of our drinking water—by a plume of the suspected carcinogen 1,4 dioxane, Taylor engaged in obfuscation and misinformation.
He wrote: “No 1,4 dioxane from the Gelman Plume has ever been detected in Ann Arbor’s drinking water. We need to do absolutely everything we can to keep it that way.”
In 2001, 1,4 dioxane was detected in one of the city’s drinking water supply wells on the Old West Side. The well was closed.
Taylor also wrote: “Right now the state standard of 85/ppb is weaker than what the federal government says is safe.”
At 35/ppb, the cancer rate for the oral ingestion of 1,4 dioxane is 1 in 10,000. Ann Arbor has a population of 112,000.
Where carcinogens and suspected carcinogens are concerned, no amount is completely safe. It becomes, instead, a question of how many additional cases of cancer are acceptable, the so-called quantitative estimate of carcinogenic risk.
Based on the errors of fact, public policy and toxicology in his “update” about the 1,4 dioxane contamination, Mayor Taylor should not have taken it upon himself to “update” the public on the 1,4 dioxane plume. He should have turned to an expert in the field, of whom there are many, locally.
Between 1966 and 1986, Gelman Sciences, owned by Charles Gelman, used wastewater containing the toxic chemical to spray the company’s lawns. The wastewater was also stored in unlined lagoons. The 1,4 dioxane seeped into the groundwater and contaminated the groundwater in parts of Ann Arbor, Scio and Ann Arbor townships. The Washtenaw County Circuit Court issued an order to prevent the digging of wells to limit exposure to groundwater in what is called the PZ or Prohibition Zone, but the plume is expected to reach the Huron River in 12-15 years.
While running for re-election in 2013, Council members Warpehoski and Briere crafted a resolution which read, in part: “That the City of Ann Arbor City Council urges the MDEQ to act responsibly and protect the public health and environment of Michigan under the authority delegated to the State under the Clean Water Act.” Chris Taylor, then a Ward 3 Council member, voted in favor of the resolution. Either there was no response from the MDEQ to the City Council’s resolution or Council members chose not to share the response with the public.
County environmental analysts have said there are not enough monitoring wells to track the spread and direction of the 1,4 dioxane plume. Council members have studiously ignored the issue or, like the mayor, fallen back on “happy talk.” In 2013 Briere and Warpehoski argued that additional data and modeling were necessary to predict the plume’s direction and expansion. They’ve not pushed to allocate funds or proposed any collaboration with Washtenaw County officials to see that the modeling is done.
The Gelman Plume clean-up is one of the longest running in the U.S. and ranked among the worst environmental hazards in the state. Ann Arbor wouldn’t know that from the lack of attention to the critical issue by local, county and state elected officials.