Residents on another contaminated river want Dow to buy their houses

Residents along the dioxin-contaminated Tittabawassee River downstream from Midland say they wish that Dow Chemical would follow the example of Enbridge and buy their homes so that they can move to less contaminated areas.

Enbridge, the company whose oil pipeline spilled a million gallons of crude into the Kalamazoo River last week, has announced that it is willing to buy 200 homes in the section of river affected by the spill.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the state it’s been decades since dangerous levels of dioxin were identified in the Tittabawassee River. There, under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency supervision, Dow Chemical, the responsible party, is in the process of evaluating properties to determine what “exposure control” measures should be put in place.

To the local group, Tittabawassee River Watch, the contrast in how the two companies are handling human health and property concerns is disturbing.

Over the course of the last 10 years, Tittabawassee River floodplain residents have repeatedly asked Dow to buy their homes or remove their massive dioxin contamination.

Instead of doing the right thing, Dow continues to spends millions on PR and obstructing clean up efforts despite public health warnings to floodplain residents not to let children play in their own yards.

It’s just sickening how some of our residents have been treated by Dow, with no support from elected officials and our community “leaders” in the Great Lakes Bay Region. Other communities seem to have good corporate citizens and leaders. We are sorely lacking here.

Dioxin from Dow’s Midland operations permeates the food chain along the Tittabawassee River and has been linked to elevated cancer levels.