Post date: Sep 01, 2014 4:29:4 AM
April 12, 2001
1,4-Dioxane Pollutes Ann Arbor Municipal Supply Well
The announcement April 3, 2001, that 2 parts per billion of 1,4-dioxane was found in Ann Arbor's Montgomery Street supply well came as a shock to SRSW.
At this point, the City has shut down the well and is trying to determine the source of the 1,4-dioxane that polluted the well. One possible source is the Pall-Gelman site, another is a nearby abandoned landfill, or it may be from some other source.
We were concerned that the 1,4-dioxane plumes spreading from the Pall-Gelman site but might reach the Montgomery well in 10-20 years. The Montgomery well is about a mile from the nearest edge of the Pall-Gelman contamination as depicted by recent maps submitted by the company.
If the 1,4-dioxane is indeed from the Pall-Gelman site, then that is very bad news for everyone in the Scio Township-City of Ann Arbor area.
It would mean that the Pall-Gelman/DEQ plume detection and mapping has serious shortcomings.
It would raise questions about where else the plume has already gone without being detected.
It would mean that Pall-Gelman's estimate of the amount of 1,4-dioxane left to cleanup is wrong and more will be left to spread if the cleanup is prematurely terminated at the court-established 5 year deadline.
By the way, the 2 ppb detected in the Montgomery well is the same level at which private wells were shut down prior to 1995. While dismantling the "Polluter Pay Law" in 1995, Gov. Engler and the Michigan legislature decided to accept more cancer cases by loosening the standards for all groundwater contaminates. This increased the "acceptable" limit for 1,4-dioxane by a factor of 25 from 3 ppb to 77 ppb. In 2000, it was raised again by another 10% to 85 ppb.