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Pall To Dig Test Well In Western Part Of City

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Day
5
Month
August
Year
2003
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Pall to dig test well in western part of city

Pumping to start in Maple Village Center

BY JOHN MULCAHY

News Staff Reporter

Pall Life Sciences will begin digging a ground water extraction well Aug. 11 in the parking lot of the Maple Village Shopping Center, the company’s attorney told a judge Monday.

The company will begin test pumping Aug. 25 to see if the spot is a good one for pumping and treating groundwater from a deep aquifer contaminated in the 1980s with 1,4 dioxane. If the tests show the site is suitable, a second extraction well may be necessary in the Maple Village parking lot.

Pall attorney Mike Caldwell said the spot appeared to be “fairly ideal” for pumping the contaminated water.

The well will be part of a study that includes deciding on the best option for disposing of treated water from the deep aquifer. Options include re-in-jecting it into the ground or shipping it back to Pall’s headquarters near Wagner and Liberty roads in Scio Township, where treated water from aquifers closer to the surface is already being released into a tributary of the Huron River.

Pall is under court order to clean up a large plume of the suspected carcinogen in ground water in west Ann Arbor. The deadline for getting the 1,4 dioxane levels below the state standard of 85 parts per billion is July 2005.

Addressing both Pall representatives and the attorney for the state Department of Environmental Quality, Judge Donald Shelton said he wanted a comprehensive plan by February.

“The next time we meet, I want both of you to be able to come in here and say we (have) the big plan, the feasibility study, and this is what we ought to do,” Shelton said.

Robert Reichel, attorney for DEQ, told Shelton that DEQ expected Pall to have its feasibility study and a cleanup proposal or proposals finished by Oct. 17.

DEQ would then allow a period for public comment and a final plan could be ready by February, Reichel said.

“What we anticipate is that there will probably be a (combination) of approaches,” Reichel said.

One of those may be a system that pumps ozone into the ground water. The ozone would decontaminate the water.

After the hearing, Roger Rayle of Scio Residents for Safe Water expressed skepticism about the promise of a comprehensive plan because, he said, the extent of the contamination plume has not been precisely determined.

Pall’s predecessor, Gelman Sciences Inc. used 1,4 dioxane to make medical filters and stored wastewater containing the contaminant in unlined lagoons and sprayed it over lawns at its facility until the mid 1980s. The contaminant was first found in ground water in 1985.

Pall took over Gelman, and responsibility for the cleanup, in 1997. Dissatisfied with progress, the DEQ took Pall to court in 2000 and Shelton ordered the five-year deadline for completing the cleanup.

A previously undetected plume of the contaminant was discovered in a deep aquifer in

2001 after a small amount turned up in a well used by the city’s water system. That well was then closed. The deep aquifer plume is the one under the Maple Village Shopping Center.

John Mulcahy can be reached by e-mail at jmulcahy@annarbornews. com or by calling (734) 482-2829.