DIOXANE Another cleanup agreement with Pall-Gelman reneged on

EDITORIAL

DIOXANE

Another cleanup agreement with Pall-Gelman reneged on

Over the past year, Pall-Gelman Sciences has repeatedly persuaded state and other authorities to give the company more latitude in cleaning up contamination from its Wagner Road plant.

The state Department of Environmental Quality twice relaxed rules governing the discharge of treated, but not pure, water into nearby Honey Creek.

Washtenaw County Judge Donald Shelton set up a completely new program in which the speed of the cleanup - rather than a particular degree of thoroughness - is the critical measure of success.

But no matter how much the requirements are loosened or procedures revised, the Scio Township company can’t or won’t do its part.

DEQ now reports that Pall-Gelman has yet to meet the minimum targets, set back in January, for stopping the spread of the contamination.

That’s troubling in light of the fact that the contaminant - the carcinogen 1,4 dioxane - continues to show up in new places.

It’s troubling in light of the state’s completely ineffective enforcement effort.

Certainly, DEQ’s caution in an April 10 letter to company officials that failure to meet the terms on the latest deal “... subjects P/GSI to stipulated penalties” rings hollow when previous - and still uncollected - penalties exceed $5 million.

Think the company’s New York-based owner, Pall Corp., is worried?

Not likely. On the contrary, it appears there’ll be a new round of wrangling with the company resisting the control DEQ thought it had maintained.

The pattern is plain enough, and it needs to be interrupted.

The public needs an advocate.

And because top officials at DEQ aren’t inclined to take anything resembling a firm stance with Pall-Gelman, it falls to the state attorney general to act on the community’s behalf.

Whether it’s fair to expect Attorney General Jennifer Granholm and her staff to shoulder the whole load hardly matters.

There are violations of legally brokered agreements. There’s a paper trail of threats that leads back to the AG’s office. There’s an active court case. And inaction by the leadership of one state agency doesn’t justify passivity by another.

Voters do have a right to expect the state’s chief law enforcement officer to protect their interests.

Toward that end, Granholm’s office should:

■ Ask the Washtenaw County Circuit Court for the quickest possible hearing in light of DEQ field representatives’ report on Pall-Gelman’s failure to follow the specified method of containing the contamination;

■ Insist that there be real consequences for recalcitrance and a plan for putting the cleanup in responsible hands if the company, now 12 years into the project, continues to falter;

• Pursue an appeal if local courts don’t look favorably on the people’s complaints.

The immediate issue is, of course, the removal or “purging” of enough polluted water to keep the plume of 1,4 dioxane from advancing. That same pollutant has recently turned up in a now-closed-down well that’s part of the City of Ann Arbor’s water supply. And while it’s not clear that filter-maker is the source of the pollutant that found its way into the city well, it is clear that the contamination from the Pall-Gelman property has never been contained, and it’s certainly known to have ruined private wells.

A very real, but more long-term, issue is ensuring a responsible cleanup that will protect the community’s groundwater, remedy damage already done and do so without just shifting the problem from one place (underground aquifers) to another (surface water).

The frustration is that what’s do-able and reasonable keeps slipping. And no relaxation of formerly agreed-on standards seems to be enough.

We have absolutely no interest in saddling any company with unworkable requirements or in “punishing” this one in particular.

However, we have every interest in supporting unambiguous environmental standards and sure enforcement. Once the rules are in place, all the participants need to abide by them. In this case, neither side has; and the environment and the state’s authority have suffered.

'We have reviewed the purge rate... since adoption of the five-yar plan on Jan. 10, 2001. The minimum extraction rate ... has not been met since the plan was adopted.'

- April 10 letter from DEQ to Pall-Gelman and its lawyers