Check out the December 15, 2010, AnnArbor.com article on the current Pall/Gelman issue:
http://www.annarbor.com/news/groundwater-changes-could-move-forward-today
... and SRSW's Vice-Chair Roger Rayle's comments that were shown only briefly on the site but are reprinted here:
@Vivienne-- Thanks and thanks to your continuing support for an effective, protective, and community-acceptable Pall/Gelman Site cleanup.
@actionjackson-- If you're talking about the deep injection well Gelman Sciences built in 1981 and used from 1987-1994 to dispose of untreated dioxane purge water, it was supposed to be about a mile deep into a confined saltwater layer. According to an Ann Arbor News article 8/14/94, Gelman sciences quit using the deep well and plugged it because it "was very expensive to operate". However, this was shortly after the US EPA, who administered the deep well program, was surprised to learn that Gelman had been injecting untreated dioxane purge water into the well as well as apparently injecting some chemicals that weren't allowed for that well.
I urge others who have personal experience with the Pall/Gelman Site to enter their comments here... like the gentleman who told me he once dug ditches on the Gelman property but couldn't stay in the trench for more than 20 minutes because of the fumes. (Use an pseudonym if you want to remain anonymous.)
@David Briege--The folks who lived across the street from Gelman Sciences and unknowingly drank dioxane in their well water and breathed dioxane int he mist from the Gelman's spray irrigation were the first victims. They were victimized again in court when they tried to sue Gelman Sciences for mysterious health problems.
@Alan Goldsmith & @mr_annarbor-- It's true that recent city councils and mayors may not be as engaged on this issue as some in the past, but some staff are... notably, Matt Naud, the City's Environmental Coordinator, who was quoted in this article, and citizen reps like Rita Loch Caruso, who is on the Environmental Commission. It's also important to note that the City tried to intervene in the current court case, but Judge Donald Shelton decided to keep the cases separate even though they involve the same environmental issue.
The City of Ann Arbor along with Washtenaw County, Scio Township, Ann Arbor Township, and some citizens are members of the Coalition for Action on Remediation of Dioxane (CARD) which meets regularly to watch over the cleanup and make comments to the DNRE. Not having a local party in the case, we currently provide our comments to the DNRE staff, who pass it up the chain of command, and over to the Attorney General's office, who represents the DNRE in court. So quite a bit gets lost in the process... and with the environmental rule changes from the Engler administration (and perhaps to be extended under the new Governor and AG), it isn't just the fox in charge of the hen house", it's "the foxes are the architects of a new hen house... with special fox-sized holes".
@Kathy-- Thanks, you also know what it's like to advocate for common sense solutions.
@Andy Jacobs-- It was the DNR (later DEQ, now DNRE, soon to be DNR again) that Chuck Gelman fought. At industry groups, he would say he spent $20 miilion to fight the State at the same time Gelman Sciences was telling the stockholders the cleanup was a $5 million problem. Was it the State's fault that Gelman Sciences called "dioxane" something else in their reports to the state? Perhaps, but testimony in the Gelman vs Dow case, showed that Gelman was in violation of the original 1965 Order of Determination that governed their discharge... sometimes discharging hundreds or thousands of times what was allowed.
Be aware that Pall/Gelman has removed more dioxane than they said was down there! ... However, they've never accounted for how much is in the belatedly discovered deep E aquifer and is spreading through our neighborhoods. We want the State to require Pall to provide an annual accounting of how much dioxane is left in the groundwater, like they have a couple of times in the past. That way, everyone can see if the numbers balance with how much dioxane they claim to be removing every year and spot any areas where the numbers don't make sense and need more attention.
We also want electronic copies (in industry standard format) of all datasets used in any Pall/Gelman analyses, claims, or assertions. And we want electronic copies of their submitted maps with the various map layers (well locations, plume iso-concentration contours, potentiometic lines) as separate geo-coded KML layers that can be opened directly by Google Earth. Also, they need to fill in the dozens of missing well log parameters and sampling data that has been available but left off their supposedly complete data submittals. None of these requests are technically challenging although Pall/Gelman's lawyers would be sure to challenge them in court.