A status conference in Judge Shelton's chambers is scheduled for Monday afternoon, December 15, 2008. The DEQ and Pall Corp have been in closed-door discussions on how to address the rising levels of 1,4-dioxane contamination in the Evergreen area, its likely migration to the deeper E aquifer, cleanup problems Pall is having in both areas, and whether the Prohibition Zone should be expanded to reduce the cleanup required in the Evergreen Area.
One problem with expanding the Prohibition Zone there and allowing up to 2800 ppb of dioxane to escape is that some of the dioxane may be heading towards Barton Pond where Ann Arbor gets 80% of its water. If the dioxane may be heading there, then the cleanup standard will be 34 ppb... not 2800 ppb or even the current 85 ppb. (Remember that up to 1995, the groundwater cleanup standard for dioxane was 3 ppb ... before all cleanup standards were loosened by the Engler administration.)
A video presentation of this issue before the 12/4/2008 Ann Arbor Environmental Commission is available at
Ann Arbor Environmental Commission 12/4/2008 - Pall/Gelman Site Update
Comment on December 16, 2008 at 11:40am
UPDATE ON 12/15/2008 STATUS CONFERENCE
Although only Asst AG Celeste Gill and Pall lawyer Michael Caldwell were in the status conference with Judge Shelton, after the conference, Mr. Caldwell indicated that the judge told Pall to submit more precise dates for cleanup activities. More on this as official feedback comes through DEQ's monthly submittals.
While waiting in the hallway for the conference to complete, I had some interesting discussions with Pall Environmental VP Farsad Fotouhi. One revelation was that soon after he started working at Gelman Sciences before Pall took over, Farsad did his own calculations of how much dioxane might be in the groundwater based on usage data over the years. This was not submitted to the DEQ. But maybe it should be. More detailed data about when dioxane was used (and released) would be very helpful to those tying to model the contamination.