EPA officials pledge transparency with long-term dioxin cleanup plans

SAGINAW — At a community meeting on dioxin contamination in the Saginaw River watershed, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials Wednesday night committed to sampling local municipal water systems for dioxin and posting up-to-date fish consumption advisory signs — two key and immediate community concerns that have been examined in depth by Michigan Messenger.

Bharat Mathur, an EPA regional administrator, told the crowd of around 150 people that the agency had previously decided that the municipal water supplies for Bay City, Saginaw and Midland were unlikely to be impacted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ navigational dredging of contaminated sediment currently underway in the Saginaw River.

However, Mathur said, in response to local concerns, this week he directed EPA staff with work with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to sample the water systems for dioxin. “Just a couple of days ago I asked our folks to go ahead and sample it,” he told the crowd at Saginaw Valley State University.

Rick Karl, an EPA community involvement coordinator, said that the agency will also work with state officials and with Dow Chemical (NYSE:DOW), the source of the dioxin contamination, to ensure that up-to-date fish advisory signs are posted around the effected areas of the watershed. Dow, which has sponsored local fishing festivals, and the state of Michigan have been at an impasse over funding for signs that reflect the need for caution in consuming fish from the dioxin-tainted watershed.

Karl said that EPA will find funding for the signs if necessary.

These short-term commitments by the agency may be the most concrete examples so far of its new focus on transparency and listening — both items were specifically requested by residents in the contaminated area.

Throughout the presentation Wednesday, EPA officials projected a tone of openness and repeatedly promised to solicit input and participation at every step of the process. Some acknowledged distrust and hard feelings over past EPA handling of the dioxin contamination.

But no matter the tone, and for all the talk of swift cleanup, the process of addressing the contamination that stretches from Dow’s Midland plant into Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay is still in its earliest stages.

The agency is still in the phase of investigating the nature and extent of the contamination. Current negotiations with Dow involve procedural issues, like how to organize data and investigations of the contamination and what rules will govern interaction between state and federal agencies and the company.

Although actual cleanup work could begin within a year at some points along the Tittabawassee River, which feeds into the Saginaw River, the agency does not foresee even beginning evaluation of Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay before 2012.

Bob Sussman, special counsel to EPA director Lisa Jackson, emphasized that cleanup standards are not up for negotiation with Dow.

“Obviously, the science on the health and ecological effects of dioxin is central to decision we will make about the stringency of cleanup,” he said. “We felt in looking at this site that we needed to make a commitment to accelerate our science.”

Sussman called the current EPA dioxin cleanup standard of 1,000 parts per trillion “out of date” and promised that the agency would produce reports on dioxin toxicity and cleanup standards by the end of this year. Some local dioxin hot spots have registered levels as high as 1.6 million ppt.

Although the agency is months away from even beginning discussions about cleanup on any part of the river, EPA Superfund Project Manager Wendy Carney said that the agency can force emergency cleanup of highly contaminated sediments, especially those in highly trafficked areas.

Carney said that the agency has not identified a set level of contamination that would trigger emergency cleanup but would continue to take action when sampling reveals “extremely” high levels of contamination. In 2007, EPA ordered emergency removal of 600 cubic yards of Saginaw River sediments after samples revealed contamination at 1.6 million ppt.

It is unclear to what extent the agency has considered the need for emergency clean-up actions at dioxin-contaminated homes along the Tittabawassee River.

Mathy Stanislaus, the recently confirmed deputy director of Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and director of the federal Superfund program, said that his department has determined that temporary relocation of residents of the dioxin-contaminated Tittabawassee River floodplain is not necessary.

Stanislaus promised to provide more details about how the agency made this determination.

After the meeting Tracey Easthope, environmental health director for the Ann Arbor-based Ecology Center said that she feels EPA is being responsive to community concerns.

“We will see what happens,” she said. “I told each of them that we are going to hold their feet to the fire.”