09/01/2013 - September 2013 Observations
Relating to AnnArbor.com article http://annarbor.com/news/ann-arbor-officials-want-stricter-cleanup-...
Michigan's dioxane cleanup standard was 3 ppb until 1995, when during the Engler administration, cleanup standards were loosened under the guise of making it cheaper to clean up urban brownfields but the standards were applied state-wide. Michigan's dioxane cleanup standard jumped "overnight" to 77 ppb which was adjusted a couple of years later to 85 ppb, among the loosest of all of the states... pretty sad for Michigan that is main steward to 20% of the world's fresh surface water.
In 2010, the US EPA issued a revised "cancer slope factor" for dioxane that should have brought Michigan's standard down to 3.5 ppb, but the DEQ failed to meet its own deadline of December 2012 to make the adjustment and may not meet its postponed deadline of December 2013. (So standards can be loosened by industry supporters overnight, but re-tightening the standards takes years?)
Pall Corporation swooped in at the last minute in 1996 to make a better offer to purchase Gelman Sciences (completed in early 1997), buying intellectual property developed here in Michigan... and walking away from $3-4 million MEGA grant/tax abatement agreements that Gelman had obtained to stay and grow here in Michigan (a slap in the face to the idea of tax abatements to lure businesses here.)
Now Pall has terminated all but its residual cleanup operations here in the Ann Arbor area... and seems to be ready to terminate that.
Pall has removed more dioxane that it claimed was in the groundwater... but refuses to tell the DEQ or the public how much remains to spread.
Pall's dioxane sampling and data handling has been quite sloppy recently... violating holding times for dioxane samples, using an outdated,non-EPA-approved dioxane analysis protocol, failing to provide the DEQ with accurate and complete well log and sampling data, etc.