Furan results ‘unusable’ in EPA’s Saginaw-area water sampling

In June, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agreed to test the municipal water systems for Saginaw, Midland and Bay City for a range of contaminants. The move, as Michigan Messenger reported, was a response to citizen concerns that navigational dredging in the Saginaw River could stir up dioxin-contaminated sediments that could contaminate city water supplies that draw from Saginaw Bay. Dioxins and furans from Dow Chemical’s Midland plant are known to have contaminated the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers and the bay.

But residents who hoped that sampling would confirm that their drinking water is free of dangerous contamination will need to wait longer for information about furan levels.

In a press release issued Monday evening, EPA announced that contamination in the laboratory that tested the water rendered the furan results unusable.

In a phone interview Tuesday morning, Jim Plassard, manager of the dioxin testing department for SGS North America — the company that conducted the furan testing — explained that contamination in one of the components of its water testing system resulted in false positives in furan samples over a two-week period this summer.

“We’ve corrected the problem,” Plassard said. “Those sorts of things happen. Normally you would re-extract a sample. We ask clients to provide us with ample amount of sample. In this case we were not able to test it again. We encourage retesting.”

EPA stated that this week, it will resample the the water supplies for Bay City and also for Midland and Saginaw — which share a common water intake but maintain different filtration operations — and have the water rechecked for furan contamination.

Tuesday morning, the agency posted a 235-page report detailing the water sampling process and the results of tests for more than 120 contaminants.

This round of sampling, which was conducted in late July after the dredging season was over, is expected to provide baseline information about water quality in the area so that when dredging resumes in the spring, further sampling can show whether the activity impacts water quality.

EPA says that the results for chemicals other than furans were below the agency’s “maximum contaminant levels which ensure municipal drinking water supplies are safe.”

The report, however, notes that state and federal agencies have not established safe levels for many of the chemicals that were found in the water.