Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Issues & Ale discusses 1,4 Dioxane Contamination tonight at Bill's Beer Garden


UPDATE: due to weather, this event has been moved to tomorrow, June 2nd. 

Michigan Radio's Issues and Ale will be at Bill's Beer Garden tonight to discuss a topic very near and dear to my heart: the contamination of Ann Arbor's groundwater with the carcinogen 1,4 dioxane by Gelman Sciences. By way of background, in the 1960s Gelman Sciences' plant in Scio Township began pumping wastewater into a holding lagoon behind their facility on Wagner Road. This was legal at the time, but the lagoons did not hold. By the mid 1980s groundwater tests showed elevated levels of 1,4 dioxane. In the 1990s two things happened: Gelman Sciences was sold to Pall Corporation and a consent judgement between the city, Michigan DEQ and Pall Corporation set up terms of a clean up. You can read more about this history of Gelman Scientific groundwater contamination on the Ann Arbor Chronicle.

Recently, the DEQ has proposed reducing the acceptable level of 1,4 dioxane in drinking water from 85 parts per billion (ppb) to 7.2 ppb. This brings us to tonight. Lester Graham is hosting a panel discussion at Bill's Beer Garden from 6:30 to 8:00 discussing our lovely dioxane plume and possibilities for remediating this problem. You wont want to miss it.

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