Michigan’s environmental regulatory agency, the MDEQ, may have deliberately misrepresented facts to the public to shift responsibility for petroleum-polluted water away from the Rover Pipeline Company and onto the state’s taxpayers and residents, according to recently released emails.

This comes on the heels of the Flint Water Crisis, where the MDEQ altered test results to suppress evidence of lead in Flint’s water, causing residents to continue drinking lead-tainted water.

These emails show three instances of apparent dishonesty by the MDEQ related to the Rover Pipeline LLC’s fall 2017 release of at least approximately 6.5 million gallons (and possibly as much as ten-fold that amount) of petroleum-tainted water into a watershed that provides drinking water for the city of Ann Arbor during construction of the 42-inch Rover pipeline in northern Washtenaw County. The contamination was confirmed by MDEQ remediation expert Rebecca Taylor on Oct. 12.

First: Appearance of MDEQ permit pre-approval prior to end of short public comment period.

The public was granted a 14-day public-comment period from Nov. 15, 2017 through Nov. 28, 2017 on whether MDEQ should issue Rover a permit to resume work on the contaminated site. This comment period was shorter than MDEQ’s standard 30-day period, and included a four-day Thanksgiving holiday. Yet before even this short comment period was over, throughout the day on Nov. 28, 2017, still within the comment period while comments poured in, Rover’s senior specialist William Barth was already firming up permit plans, and MDEQ Water Resource Division official Jeffrey Surfus gave Rover’s project manager Buffy Thomason an apparent pre-approval for the permit, as if the public comments didn’t matter. (See e-mails below and here: http://bit.ly/MDEQ-Nov28-PrePermit-Correspondence).

Second: MDEQ dismisses water surface sheens as "bacterial", contrary to MDEQ publications.

It is well known that bacterial sheens on water fracture when disturbed, whereas hydrocarbon sheens reconstitute themselves (see https://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-oea-nop-bacteria_378414_7.pdf ). On Nov. 8, a resident filmed a sheen on water in a Rover construction easement reconstituting itself (video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cNY8suxgpE&t=39s). Yet MDEQ official Jeff Pierce and environmental quality analyst Laura Matthews concluded the sheen was bacterial, in part based on information provided by Rover. When the resident challenged their conclusion, citing the video and MDEQ’s own documents, Mr. Pierce emphatically contradicted what is scientifically known about bacterial sheens, effectively protecting Rover from the investigation, remediation measures, loss of permits, and fines that could accompany acknowledgement of a second hydrocarbon spill (see e-mail exchange below and here: http://bit.ly/MDEQ-surface-sheens).

Third: MDEQ says Rover is not liable to pay the expense of determining cause of contamination.

A resident, John Machowicz, challenged the MDEQ’s decision that Rover was not liable to pay the expense of finding out the cause of the petroleum in the millions of gallons of petroleum-contaminated water that Rover construction caused to be dumped into the Little Portage River. In so doing, any discussion of any fines and/or remediation for several days of direct environmental contamination into one of the most pristine waterways in southeastern Michigan has been sidestepped.

MDEQ’s Gerald Tiernan quoted back to him an interpretation of Michigan’s environmental liability laws that completely omitted any wording that would indicate Rover’s responsibility for the contamination incident. The MDEQ has not yet responded to a February 1 legal critique from the group's attorney, claiming serious flawed interpretations by MDEQ of MIchigan's contamination cleanup laws and demanding a reversal of the agency's decision, which shields Rover.

(see Complaint below and here http://bit.ly/MDEQ-18Feb1-LetterTiernan).