What’s next for Dow and the dioxin cleanup?

Negotiations between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund Division and Dow ended last week when the EPA slammed the nation’s largest chemical producer for failing to offer a dioxin cleanup plan that would protect human health and the environment.

It’s been known since the 1980s that dioxin from Dow’s Midland facility has spread over 50 miles downstream through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and into Saginaw Bay.

Dioxin, an industrial by-product, is among the most toxic substances known and causes cancer and hormonal and immune system problems in humans. Michigan law requires cleanup of dioxin at levels of 90 parts per trillion. Over the summer,  a sample from the Saginaw River registered 1.6 million parts per trillion — the highest dioxin contamination ever discovered in the U.S.

Continued -Since summer, the EPA has taken on greater involvement, with attempts by the state of Michigan to negotiate a cleanup plan, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) spokesman Robert McCann told Michigan Messenger on Friday.

The  EPA has also criticized Michigan’s handling of the contamination.

In a confidential August 2007 memo released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request by the environmental advocacy group Lone Tree Council, the EPA charged Michigan with giving Dow special treatment. The state wrongly agreed to conduct cleanup negotiations in secret, the EPA said, and negotiations were being handled by politicians, including DEQ Director Steven Chester and Gov. Granholm, rather than by DEQ technicians as is normally done. EPA also charged that Dow had tried to downplay the toxicity of dioxin.

In recent months, the EPA’s Superfund Division twice extended the deadline for the company to produce an acceptable cleanup plan.

Activists with the Titabawassee River Watch said the negotiations breakdown might signal a federal lawsuit in the works against Dow.

EPA did not say what would be their next steps in the matter. Spokesperson Anne Rowan said the agency is now reviewing its options.

Dow spokesman John Musser said the company was “very disappointed and certainly equally surprised and frustrated” with EPA’s move to end negotiations. He said that Dow had been prepared to offer another cleanup proposal.

DEQ spokesman McCann said legal actions against Dow by the state or federal government are a possibility but that legal action is not seen as the quickest way to achieve cleanup.