16 years is long enough, judge says in Pall matter

News Staff Reporter

Saying the community doesn't have another year to wait, Washtenaw County Circuit Judge Donald Shelton declared Wednesday that he will issue an order within 60 days on the clean up of the 1,4 dioxane contamination originating at Pall Life Sciences.

After hearing the arguments, Shelton said it appeared the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and Pall were at an impasse over most issues. He noted the case has been in court for 16 years.

"I see no common position other than that we ought to study it some more," Shelton said. "Frankly, we don't have another year to make a decision on what the step after next will be."

Shelton gave both sides 21 days to answer some questions he had posed, and to submit any further material they felt was relevant, before he issues an order. "I believe only the ruling of this court can move the process along," he said.

Shelton's statement came at the end of a hearing in which the two sides presented their plans for cleaning up 1,4 dioxane that has been spreading through aquifers into groundwater under Scio Township and Ann Arbor since the 1960s.

The pollution was discovered in the mid-1980s, but originated years earlier, when Pall's predecessor, Gelman Sciences Inc., dumped water contaminated with dioxane into unlined lagoons and spread it on lawns.

The DEQ's recommendation includes additional extraction wells at Pall's facility on Wagner Road and near the Maple Village shopping center to stop the mass of the plume from spreading. The plan also calls for extraction wells and underground pipes to carry polluted water from several neighborhoods near Veterans Park in Ann Arbor. Those neighborhoods are over the contamination's "leading edge."

Many residents of the neighborhoods oppose the part of the plan that involves wells and pipes in their neighborhoods.

Pall's plan calls for an extraction well, treatment and reinjection of treated water into the ground at or near Maple Village, but no wells or pipes in residential neighborhoods.

The DEQ said it would allow Pall's plan if the company met a set of six conditions within a year, such as the closing of wells that might be affected by untreated water.

Several members of Protect Our Neighborhoods, a residents' group opposed to the DEQ's "leading edge" extraction proposal, expressed concern about Shelton's intentions.

"I don't feel any more at ease, maybe less at ease in some respects," said Jeffrey Hutsler, who noted that Shelton had seemed to take the DEQ's conditions for Pall's plan off the table, which might mean Pall's plan can't be adopted.

Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje, who attended the hearing, said he opposes the plan to drill wells and put pipelines in the residential neighborhoods.

"It's something I believe is totally uncalled for and unfair at this point," Hieftje said.

Scio Township resident Roger Rayle, a long-time activist in the push for a cleanup, said he wasn't sure if the community was any closer to a solution to the problem after Shelton's statement.

"It depends on whether the judge sees the facts or not," Rayle said.

Mitchell Adelman, DEQ district supervisor for the Jackson district office, said if Shelton rejects the idea of giving Pall a year to meet the DEQ's conditions for Pall's own plan, then the DEQ would favor its own plan, which includes drilling in the neighborhoods.

"I think that's essentially what it comes down to," Adelman said.

Farsad Fotouhi, Pall corporate vice president of environmental engineering, said he was happy with Shelton's apparent readiness to make a decision.

"In the past, we had a lot of difficulties in implementing any plan," Fotouhi said. He acknowledged that Shelton could order Pall to follow the DEQ's plan, but said that would be "better than what we have today."

John Mulcahy can be reached at jmulcahy@annarbornews.com or (734) 994-6858.

© 2004 Ann Arbor News. Used with permission