Area Toxic Dump Fought
MILAN - Augusta Township, a sparsely populated rural community 12 miles south of Arm Arbor, could very well be the home of a new $45 million hazardous waste disposal facility.
The Envotech Corporation, a privately-owned company, has plans to erect a commercial incinerator/landfill complex on 375-acres adjacent to the town of Milan. Highly toxic solid and liquid chemical wastes would be trucked in and then incinerated. The residue ash would then be buried in specially designed, plastic-lined cells.
The development would be available to commercial industries and open to the public. The facility would be large enough to handle the majority of Michigan's hazardous waste with room enough to import more from other states. This would make it second in size only to the Chemwaste landfill, the largest in the nation, in Emelle, Alabama.
Milan Citizens Against Toxic Substances (MCATS) is a grassroots organization of over 300 members actively fighting the construction of the proposed faculty. They claim that incineration and landfill techniques are outdated, extremely dangerous and stressful toward the environment. They see their job as one of informing surrounding communities about the imminent dangers of possible groundwater contamination, toxic emissions and poisoned soils which would deteriorate the quality of life in the area.
"Why should Augusta Township, which is primarily a farming community, be the site for the U.S.'s second largest toxic dump, when the community itself is responsible for less than 1% of the state's toxic waste?" asked Kim Dunbar, chair of M-CATS in a recent interview. "You never see toxic waste dumps in the back yards of corporate heads, in the yards of the people who are making all the money."
The site itself has been chosen by Envotech because of its geological composition. Between the surface soils and the bedrock is a layer of clay 70 feet thick. This has created an almost impermeable condition, inhibiting rain, runoff, and surface water from filtering quickly into the ground.
Envotech believes these clay soils will enhance their landfill storage cells, creating a secondary buffer against leakage. The location also offers good proximity to the Detroit metropolitan area, where 90% of Michigan's waste comes from. Furthermore, the site is situated in an isolated community of few people.
While Envotech perceives the area as an excellent choice, M-CATS has problems with the location of the proposed facility on many levels. "Envotech wants to put a waste facility on a site that is already contaminated. That doesn't make any sense," says Dunbar referring to the now-defunct Arkona dump, a 40-acre sanitary landfill run by Michigan Disposal on the site during the '70s. Michigan Disposal, an affiliate of Envotech, was charged by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) with the unauthorized burial of chemical waste. According to the DNR, the site has not been cleaned up and the environmental contamination from the Arkona landfill violates a number of federal and state laws. The site is now on the Michigan 307 list of contaminated Michigan sites.
M-CATS claim that surrounding populations would face serious health risks because fragile ecosystems would be altered. The real impact, however, would be felt by the immediate township residents. Much of the population of Augusta Township relies heavily on groundwater and the land itself has been classified as "prime farm land" by the U.S. Geological Survey. The Environmental Protection Agency has stated that: "All landfills will eventually leak." In other words it is just a matter of time before the groundwater in Augusta Township is poisoned, said Dunbar. "Hazardous waste doesn't go away just because you bury it, it stays forever in its toxic form."
M-CATS also questions the suitability of the environment to tolerate the proposed stress this new facility would bring. Even with the most advanced technology, toxic chemical compounds would be emitted from the incinerator's stack. These emissions would be at the wind's mercy. "Ann Arbor is only 15 miles away," said Dunbar. "It would also be heavily exposed to toxic fallout." This fallout could contain many carcinogenic compounds, some being dioxins and furons, substances which M-CATS says have no acceptable threshold. Milan Township officials readily admit that evacuation of the area's 15,000 residents is something it isn't prepared for.
According to a spokesperson from Basset and Basset, a public relations firm hired by Envotech to handle all Communications, the company is still conducting environmental impact tests. The formal process will begin when Envotech submits an application to the state and a Michigan DNR Site Review Board to assess all health and environmental risks. "The DNR informed the company [Wayne Disposal Inc., an affiliate of Michigan Disposal and Augusta Development Corp.] in May that this situation [code violations at the Arkona landfill site] must be addressed before any application for permission to use the site for hazardous wastes will be considered," (The Michigan Daily, 9/20/89).
M-CATS believes the application will be submitted some time this fall. M-CATS wants to solve the problem, not just cure the symptoms. They believe the solution is to reduce the amount of waste produced at the source. The Michigan DNR and Michigan Chamber of Commerce said in a 1967 Hazardous Waste Management Capacity Needs Report: "[There is general agreement that the preferred waste management strategy is to avoid or reduce its generation at the source." According to the report, source reduction can lower waste disposal costs, reduce environmental impact, and conceivably lower material input costs for an operation.
This puts the onus on the generators, the industry that creates this waste as a by-product. With better mangement practices industry could cut down on the amount of waste produced. This might entail equipment re-design, process re-design or product reformulation. According to a study cited by environmental scientist, Dr. Hans Posselt of the Augusta Environmental Strategy Committee (AESC), European countries generate only one-tenth as much toxic waste, on a per capita basis, as the United States.
M-CATS has also pointed to recycling and treatment (rendering hazardous waste harmless by combining it with other materials) as other examples of preferred management practices. What is strikingly evident, though, is that landfill and incineration techniques are considered the least desirable.
M-CATS believes their fight exemplifies how small, determined citizen's groups can fight multimillion dollar corporations M-CATS says, there is no compromise for them and that they will not rest until the proposal is withdrawn. They don't expect it to be easy. "Some communities in our position have fought for years before they won," states Dunbar. "We will, too. Michigan doesn't need another landfill. That's the last thing this state needs."