EPA seeks feedback on proposed settlement with Dow Chemical

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is seeking public review of a proposed agreement with Dow Chemical that establishes a process for evaluating dioxin contamination in Saginaw Bay, the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers and their floodplains.

The agreement comes after months of confidential negotiations involving Dow, EPA and the state of Michigan, and represents the first proposed settlement between the Obama administration and the chemical giant responsible for contamination of Michigan’s largest watershed. But it’s hardly the first attempt by the state or federal governments to deal with the problem.

“For those involved all these years, this is the fourth public comment period on yet another version of how Dow will move forward,“ said Michelle Hurd Riddick of the Lone Tree Council.

Environmentalists and residents of the contaminated zone are looking for evidence that the EPA — which assumed responsibility for overseeing cleanup of the area in May — will be able to speed progress on a pollution problem that has dragged on with Michigan unable to get the company to fully investigate the scope of the contamination it has caused.

EPA has promised tough, swift and transparent actions to address the dioxin contamination which EPA Director Lisa Jackson has acknowledged as a threat to public health.

In June the agency began confidential negotiations with Dow over how to proceed.

In the proposed Administrative Order on Consent released by the agency for public review on Oct. 16, the EPA lays out a strategy for completing characterization of the contamination and states that if Dow fails to comply with the terms of the agreement it will force the company to act, and levy fines.

The agency has promised to consider feedback about the proposal before finalizing it and has opened a public comment period that will last until Dec. 17.

EPA has scheduled a public forum on the proposed agreement for Nov. 5 at Saginaw Valley State University’s Curtiss Hall at 7pm.

The agency has also funded a review of the proposal by a third party environmental consultant selected by the Lone Tree Council — Dr. Peter L. DeFur, president of Environmental Stewardship Concepts, an environmental consulting firm that specializes in working with citizen groups focused on dioxin and PCB contamination.

The proposed agreement involves hundreds of pages of information.

DeFur has established a website where he will post his review of the proposed deal between the government agencies and Dow.

In a summary of the agreement, EPA said: “Cleanup options, including sediment disposal locations, cleanup technologies such as dredging, capping, etc., and relocation, [and] Cleanup levels were not part of this settlement. …These items will be considered later in an open and transparent public process.”

EPA has stated that it expected the cleanup process to extend through 2018.

Dioxin, an intensely toxic byproduct of the chemical manufacturing process, is among the most dangerous of the many chemicals that have polluted the watershed downstream from Dow’s Midland facility.

The dioxin contamination zone stretches 52 miles from Dow’s Midland complex, through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers and into Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay. It includes hundreds of residential properties, farm fields, municipal parks and the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge. The state has issued warnings against eating of fish or game from the dioxin zone and residents of the Tittabawassee floodplain have been warned by the state to avoid contact with the soil around their homes and to wear protective masks while doing yard work.

The presence of dioxin in the watershed has been known since the 1970s, and the contamination is migrating into the Great Lakes system, but cleanup so far has been mostly limited to the removal of a few hot spots, stabilization of pollution river banks, and vacuuming and landscaping around homes in the contaminated floodplain.

Dow has also spent millions on philanthropy, political contributions, lobbying, and studies by scientists at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.