Help Assure That Gelman Won't Add to Pollution

LETTERS

Help assure that Gelman won't add to pollution

Most good entrepreneurs are risk takers. But pollution prevention and environmental cleanup programs should not necessarily be entrusted to the risk takers. For some 20 years, Gelman Sciences Inc. took unnecessary risks in disposing of its toxic effluents, and it got caught polluting billions of gallons of groundwater. Then Gelman chose to spend millions of dollars of corporate resources and risk future costs fighting to cut back on its cleanup responsibilities every step of the way.

In 1993, citizens proposed a small change to Gelman Science’s cleanup proposal that would guarantee the protection of groundwater while allowing immediate and faster resolution of GSI’s 28-year-old, 1.4-dioxane pollution problem. The citizen-initiated change calls for treating the purged water down to 0-3 ppb before discharge to Honey Creek. This change would cost Gelman Sciences only $40,000 to $100,000 extra per year, a small fraction of their record profits.

Gelman’s responses have been to try to circumvent the citizens' position with bureaucratic maneuvers, to try to buy off a few citizens, and to resume previously used tactics of disinformation and obfuscation. GSI continues (to) spend corporate resources to fight against the citizens and their elected representatives, even if the fight costs more than doing a proper cleanup. This public-be-damned approach is short-sighted and threatens to undermine GSI’s rosy growth potential.

It also appears that Gov. John Engler’s weakened DNR is ready to approve a change in GSI’s permit that will put Scio and Ann Arbor drinking water at risk.

So once again, it is necessary to ask an even widergroup of citizens to take time out of their busy schedules and help assure that Gelman Sciences is not allowed to further contaminate Honey Creek, Scio Township’s ground-water and Ann Arbor's main water source, the Huron River.

Roger Rayle

Scio Township