Governor Gretchen Whitmer has cleared the way for federal Superfund status for a contaminated groundwater plume in Ann Arbor.
Local officials and advocates have asked that the site be included on the National Priorities List — commonly known as the Superfund list — to bring more resources to bear on site monitoring and remediation.
An industrial solvent, 1-4 dioxane, is spreading beneath western Ann Arbor and Scio Township. It comes from decades of pollution from a chemical company, Gelman Sciences. The plume has forced the city of Ann Arbor to close one of its drinking water wells, and a number of people with private wells had to be connected to the city's drinking water system due the contamination.
Rebecca Esselman is with the Huron River Watershed Council. She said the more than 30 years of court involvement in the battle over the cleanup has largely resulted in "delay and bare-minimum action."
"It's been an incredibly discouraging process, roadblock after roadblock," Esselman said. "So I hope that by putting this in federal hands that we might see a more ambitious cleanup."
Esselman said she remains concerned about delay, since placement on the National Priorities List for Superfund would only be the beginning of a lengthy process of transferring the cleanup oversight to the EPA.
Gelman Sciences is now owned by Danaher. The company has not yet responded to Whitmer's announcement.
