NGWA Award Questioned

Email to NGWA regarding 2010 NGWA award to Pall Corp:

To: ngwa@ngwa.org

To Whom It May Concern at National Ground Water Association:

Regarding:

Ground Water Remediation Award

Pall Corp. will receive this award for its Groundwater Remediation Using Innovations and Advancements in the Remediation of Groundwater Contaminated with 1,4-Dioxane project. This award demonstrates excellence in restoring contaminated groundwater or overdrafted groundwater resources.

Who at NGWA researches these awards?

Pall(/Gelman) has restored the "contaminated groundwater or overdrafted groundwater resources" at the Gelman Site in Scio Township/Ann Arbor??? Here are images of what has happened at the site since Pall took over in 1997.

If you want to give them an award, how about one for removing and partially treating more 1,4-dioxane from the groundwater than they said was down there? ... or one for their hard lobbying to let an undetermined amount of what's left spread unremediated to contaminate more areas?

Based on recent sampling results, one area where the dioxane may end up is in Barton Pond, where Ann Arbor gets over 80% of its water for about 125,000 people. By their lack of due diligence in determining how much dioxane is in the groundwater, which ways it is going, and how fast, Pall missed a deep contamination layer which spread to contaminate one of Ann Arbor's supply wells which provided 5% of its water. Some of that deeper plume looks like it may be heading towards Barton Pond, yet that particular Evergreen Subdivision area is one at which Pall is planning to terminate remediation... ironically, part of the very same remediation the NGWA award addresses.

Giving Pall Corp a NGWA award at this point baffles most here, considering that Pall has yet to do an effective, protective, and community-acceptable cleanup.

Visit the first 4 or 5 links on www.srsw.org to see more information on the Pall/Gelman site.

--Roger Rayle--

Co-Founder & Vice-Chair, Scio Residents for Safe Water (SRSW), a 501(c)(3) non-profit

Member, Coalition for Action on Remediation of Dioxane (CARD), a coalition of local local governments and citizens