Hopes climb amid talks to clean contaminated ‘Mt. PCB’ in Kalamazoo

 By Keith Matheny

Gazette Introductory Note

The article below gives a fine picture of the efforts of Kalamazoo citizens to get rid of “Mt. PCB,” a massive pile of toxic trash left behind when a wealthy corporation pocketed its profits and moved away.  This story repeats itself again and again across the nation.  Such toxic trash dumps  are supposed to be cleaned up by the EPA “Superfund.” The Superfund was initially effective because it had money.  Its funds came, logically and sensibly, from a corporate income tax and excise taxes on hazardous substances like petroleum and chemicals.  When funding for the Superfund expired in 1995, Congress did not renew it.  Instead, we now have a “plan” that funds cleanups like the Kalamazoo PCB mess by the largesse of a stingy Congress and by attempting to collect the money from “primary responsible parties.”  The “responsible parties” part usually involves more litigation than cleanup and leaves locals with the trash and the tab.  In short, we’ve created another opportunity for corporate welfare where the rich reap the benefits and avoid the cleanup while taxpayers are stuck with the bill.–Hardly Waite.

KALAMAZOO — John DeKoff lives only a few hundred yards from a mound of 1.5 million cubic yards of potentially carcinogenic, toxic material. And he prefers it stay right where it is.

“I want it left alone,” he said of the nearby hill — visible over his shoulder in his backyard — made of materials contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, chemicals used in paper recycling and other industrial processes and known to cause cancer in both animals and humans.

“PCBs attach themselves to the soil,” DeKoff said. “When you start digging into it and moving it around, it dries up and blows in the form of dust. I think a worse short-term problem would be dust, getting it in the air.”

Many of DeKoff’s neighbors have a different view. They want what one called “Mt. PCB” out of the neighborhood as soon as possible. Every

Portage Creek and Kalamazoo River Superfund Cleanup Area

few houses nearby has a yard sign reading: “Message to EPA: Cleanup, not coverup.”

The mound is at the location of the former Allied paper mill on the banks of Portage Creek, about a mile south of downtown Kalamazoo. It was one of several former paper mills in the area that for decades in the 20th century let their untreated wastes flow downstream, eventually into the Kalamazoo River and on into Lake Michigan.

The years of unabated pollution from Allied and other paper companies created one of the nation’s largest EPA Superfund sites, an 80-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River from west of Battle Creek to Saugatuck on shores of Lake Michigan.

Some residents say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency previously considered the Allied site only as a temporary holding spot for PCB-contaminated paper wastes until a long-term disposal site was determined. But now the EPA is considering making the Allied landfill the permanent home of the PCBs, as removing them to an approved landfill might cost more than $300 million by their estimates.

“We knew it was dirty, stinky, that sort of thing,” said Jim Reibel, who’s lived nearby since 1956. “But nobody had any idea it was poisonous.”

‘We have a mess’

EPA officials are expected soon to announce a preferred alternative for dealing with the Allied site through release of a feasibility study.

James Saric, EPA’s on-site coordinator for the cleanup effort, said in early May that the study would be released “probably in a month or two.” The EPA did not respond last week to a request for an update.

Allied neighbors say the EPA’s decision could set a precedent for needed decontamination efforts along the rest of the river and elsewhere, with EPA choosing the least expensive and not necessarily the best solution for those living nearby.

“We’re saying, ‘Clean it up. And you people in other parts of the country, you watch what we’re doing, because they will probably do this to you,’ ” said Sarah Hill, a professor of anthropology at Western Michigan University, local resident and member of the Kalamazoo River Cleanup Coalition, a group of community residents seeing a full restoration of the polluted areas near their homes.

Complicating matters, dams along the river allowed PCBs to accumulate behind them over decades. Several of the dams were partially or completely removed in recent years, as they were no longer being used for power generation or other purposes. That’s led to changed river flows that are eroding river banks loaded with PCB contaminants, re-polluting the river.

“We have a mess, and it’s a big project for cleanup,” said Jeff Spoelstra, sustainability coordinator for Western Michigan University.

The Michigan departments of Environmental Quality and Community Health have issued fish eating advisories for fish caught on the Superfund segment of the Kalamazoo River, saying women and children should avoid eating various fish species from the river such as bass, carp and catfish, depending on the location where they were caught.

Hope for a tailor-made solution

Nearly a quarter-century of Superfund remediation costing more than $65 million has only put a dent in the problem. By some estimates, the cost of a thorough remediation will top $2 billion.

Who will foot that bill is uncertain, as holding responsible the perpetrators of the mess is proving elusive. After trading hands multiple times, the company that last owned Allied Paper Inc., Millennium Holdings LLC, a division of Lyondell Chemical Co., went bankrupt in 2010. The company was ordered to provide $50 million for cleanup of the Allied site and another $50 million for cleanup elsewhere along the Kalamazoo River.

“It’s lunacy to think that would pay for it all,” Hill said.

As other contamination hotspots on the river were resolved through capping materials with plastic, clay and earthen layers and leaving them in place, and because such a remedy would fall within the $50 million available from the Allied bankruptcy, many in the community expect that’s the plan that’s coming from EPA for the Allied site.

But city officials don’t accept that as a solution.

“It’s not going to happen here,” Kalamazoo Mayor Bobby Hopewell said. “They need to listen to us, how we do things differently here, and find other solutions. Just because you’ve done this in the past, let’s learn from our past.”

Bruce Merchant, the city’s recently retired director of public services who continues as a Kalamazoo consultant, said city officials have significant concerns about the Allied pile’s proximity to groundwater and Portage Creek. EPA testing has shown no contamination leaching into the groundwater, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually, Merchant said.

“This site is within a half-mile of our largest well group for the city of Kalamazoo, servicing about 120,000 residents of Kalamazoo County,” he said.

Ironically, anyone filing for regulatory permission from EPA to create a toxic landfill at the Allied site to store PCBs would be rejected “because it sits on top of an aquifer; because it sits next to a creek; all kinds of things that would violate its own rules,” Hill said.

The EPA’s delay in releasing a feasibility study for the Allied site, as well as the agency’s willingness to meet with officials from The Environmental Quality Co., are positive developments, Hopewell says. Environmental Quality Co. officials have indicated they can remove the Allied materials and take them to their specialized landfill off I-94 near Belleville for more than $100 million less than EPA has projected.

“(EPA) haven’t said that these poisons are going to be removed, but they have been moving a little differently than they normally do,” Hopewell said. “That gives me all kinds of hope.”

Many options, but limited funds

Further downriver, in Allegan County, some question the fight to remove the Allied landfill.

“If they get the kind of cleanup they want, it could jeopardize a meaningful cleanup downstream,” said Dayle Harrison, Saugatuck area resident and president of the nonprofit Kalamazoo River Protection Association.

There’s a limited amount of money available, and areas from Plainwell downstream are “almost completely contaminated” with PCBs, he said. Money could best be spent at the Otsego, Trowbridge and Allegan city dams, where the toxins have accumulated, he said.

But the Allied area residents’ fight — which has garnered support from Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow as well as Republican U.S. Rep. Fred Upton — is using up political capital, energy and time, Harrison said.

Hill, of the Kalamazoo River Cleanup Coalition supporting the Allied landfill’s removal, said instead of bickering over insufficient cleanup funds, citizens should push for a reinstatement of the taxes that once supported Superfunds.

The Superfund trust fund was initially funded through excise taxes on petroleum, chemicals and other hazardous substances, and an environmental corporate income tax. Those taxes expired in 1995, and the program has since been funded through general revenues and the elusive chase of “primary responsible parties.”

“When we start nickel-and-diming cleanup, we are fighting with each other on things we should be unifying about across the country, going to our elected representatives and saying put more money into the system,” she said.

Source:  Detroit Free Press.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Micropores, Minipores, Molasses and Iodine

by Gene Franks

Filter carbon, the most basic ingredient of numerous water treatment devices,  is a manufactured product.  It is made from base materials like coal (bituminous, sub-bituminous, or lignite), coconut shells, wood, peat, fruit pits, nutshells and more.

Each of these substances has unique characteristics that make the resulting carbon perform uniquely.  For example, lignite carbon and carbon made with certain woods are best at removing colors like tannins from well water; coconut shell carbon is known for its ability to remove disinfection by-products and volatile organics; bituminous carbon gets the “best all-around” prize for doing almost everything pretty well.

There is a reason why each carbon product is uniquely suited for specific jobs.

The base material is prepared for use as filter carbon by a special activation process that involves high temperatures in a low-oxygen environment,  followed by high pressure treatment with steam, carbon dioxide, or acids.  The goal of activation is to produce a product with a complex pore structure that has a strong attractive power for organic molecules. It is the size and arrangement of the pore structure that makes each carbon uniquely suited for the reduction of specific contaminants.

Carbon makers have rating systems to measure their products’ performance.  These rating criteria are many: ash percentage, bulk density, abrasion number, and peroxide number, for example.  In regard to pore size, which we are concerned with here, the main classifiers are the molasses number and the iodine number.

The molasses number measures carbon’s large pores, know as macropores,  which are officially defined as pores with a diameter of 0.01 microns (1,000 angstroms).      The higher the concentration of macropores,  the higher  the molasses number.

On the other hand, micropores, which have a diameter of less than 0.01 microns,  are considered when assigning the carbon its iodine number.  The iodine number expresses the milligrams of iodine than can be adsorbed by one gram of activated carbon.  Iodine is a very small molecule and it takes carbon with small pores to adsorb it effectively.

carbon pores illustration

Carbon with a high molasses number is best at adsorbing organic contaminants with a high molecular weight; a high iodine number indicates that the carbon will be good at removing contaminants with a very low molecular weight.

Water Filtration, a training and reference book published by the Water Quality Association,  uses the analogy of a parking lot to explain how organic chemicals are adsorbed on filter carbon. I’m going to paraphrase:

The inside surface of the activated carbon particle can be viewed as a large parking lot for organic molecules.  Further, one can view the large molecules as semitrucks, and the small organic molecules a compact cars. . . . If most of the pores in the activated carbon are micropores (small parking spaces), the semitrucks are going to have a difficult time moving inside the parking lot, and they will have difficulty finding a parking site which fits.  But, the compact cars will have an easy time.  [This parking lot has a high iodine number.] Second, if the pores are mostly macropores (large parking spaces),  the semitrucks will be able to get around fine, but it will be an extremely inefficient way to park compact cars. [This lot has a high molasses number.] If there are only a few roads connecting the various areas inside the parking lot, the cars will all pile up,  and the roads will act as a bottleneck.  Ultimately, a large number of small cars can be parked, but the parking lot will fill slowly.  This is what happens if there is not a suitable mix of micropores and macropores [as would be the case with a well balanced, bituminous carbon].

One final thing to note is that there are miles and miles of roads and lots of parking spaces in a relatively small amount of carbon.  It is estimated that a teaspoon of activated carbon has a total surface area equal to a football field.  That’s why carbon is a prominent ingredient of almost all water treatment devices that aim at reduction of chemicals, disinfectants, colors, odors,  and much more.

The Pure Water Gazette’s Famous Water Pictures Series

The Cuyahoga River Fire Pictures

Cuyahoga River on fire in 1952.  This fire was the worst of the Cuyahoga fires. This picture and others created a demand for action.  (Click picture for a larger view.)

Cuyahoga River Fire

by Michael Rotman

Pure Water Gazette Introductory Note

When water catches fire it gets people’s attention. We’ve all seen pictures recently of burning well water, laced with methane from hydraulic fracturing operations. So far, these spectacular displays have provoked only a timid “more studies are needed” response from environmental regulators. We may need a Cuyahoga River event to get the country’s attention.

The Cuyahoga River at Cleveland caught fire at least 13 times in the past two centuries.  The first recorded fire was in 1868. The “most fatal” was in 1912, when five people were killed. The final fire, 1969, although it wasn’t the biggest or the worst of the Cuyahoga fires, played a big part in the advancement of the environmental reforms of the 1970s and was even instrumental in the creation of the Clean Water Act.  The 1969 fire came at a time when the country was ready to listen.

All the Cuyahoga fires (the 1952 fire was the worst) were the result of numerous petroleum spills,  the dumping of fats and greases by slaugherhouses, acids from steel plants, and dyes from paint plants.  There were also a lot of picnic benches, screen doors, automobile tires, boxes, and other combustible debris washed into the river by rains.  Add to that much untreated human sewage from the Cleveland-Akron area, which may not have burned but certainly contributed to the stench.

Here is an account of the fires from a Cleveland historian. We’ve added the pictures and captions.–Hardly Waite.

The story of the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969 – the event that sparked pop songs, lit the imagination of an entire nation, and badly tarnished a city’s reputation – is built more on myths than reality. Yes, an oil slick on the Cuyahoga River – polluted from decades of industrial waste – caught fire on a Sunday morning in June 1969 near the Republic Steel mill, causing about $100,000 worth of damage to two railroad bridges. Initially the fire drew little attention, either locally or nationally. The ’69 fire was not even the first time that the river burned. Dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century, the river had caught fire on several other occasions.

Photo of the 1948 Cuyahoga Fire.  (Click picture for a larger view.)

The picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire that ended up in Time Magazine a month later – a truly arresting image showing flames leaping up from the water, completely engulfing a ship – was actually from a much more serious fire in November 1952. No picture of the ’69 river fire is known to exist.

Throughout much of Cleveland’s history, water pollution did not trouble the city’s residents too much. Instead, water pollution was viewed as a necessary consequence of the industry that had brought the city prosperity. This attitude began to change in the 1960s as ideas associated with what would become known as environmentalism took shape. In 1968, Cleveland residents overwhelmingly passed a $100 million bond initiative to fund the Cuyahoga’s clean up. Also, by this time deindustrialization was somewhat alleviating the pollution problem, as factories closed or cut back operations. Ironically, the city and its residents were beginning to take responsibility for the cleanliness of the river in the years before the infamous fire of 1969.

U.S. Steel plant belching untreated chemical discharge into the Cuyahoga in 1965.  (Click picture for larger view.)

The ’69 fire, then, was not really the terrifying climax of decades of pollution, but rather the last gasp of an industrial river whose role was beginning to change. Nevertheless, Cleveland became a symbol of environmental degradation. The Time article contributed to this, as did the notoriety of Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes. Stokes, who was the first black mayor of a major city when elected in 1968, became deeply involved with the issue, holding a press conference at the site of the fire the following day and testifying before Congress – including his brother US Representative Louis Stokes – to urge greater federal involvement in pollution control. The Stokes brothers’ advocacy played a part in the passage of the federal Clean Water Act of 1972. In Cleveland, a number Cleveland State University students celebrated the inaugural Earth Day in 1970 by marching from campus to the river to protest pollution.

Even though it has been misunderstood, the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire did help bring about positive change. The river’s water quality improved during the following decades, and business investors capitalized on this by converting parts of the Flats’ abandoned industrial landscape into an entertainment district featuring restaurants, nightclubs, and music venues.

Much of the industry that both made Cleveland rich and caused its river to burn may never be coming back, but Clevelanders are meeting this challenge by reshaping their city to reflect its current realities.

The Cuyahoga Today Is Fireproof.  Environmentalism Works.

Text Source: Clevelandhistorical.org

China’s largest algal bloom turns the Yellow Sea green

by Karl Mathiesen

Water News in a Nutshell.

 

In a Nutshell:  China’s Yellow Sea is turning green with massive growths of algae, which clog beaches and suffocate marine life.  Industrial and agricultural discharges of nitrates and phosphates are the suspected cause. The algae blooms are harmless to humans and swimmers don’t seem to mind them.

The largest algal bloom ever recorded in China has turned the Yellow Sea green and may be related to pollution from agriculture and industry.

Officials in the city of Qingdao had used bulldozers to remove 7,335 tonnes of the growth from beaches according to the Xinhua news agency.

The phenomenon has become an annual occurrence in the region over the past six summers. This year’s incident has swathed 28,900 sq km (11,158 sq miles), twice as much as the previous biggest bloom in 2008.

The algae, called Enteromorpha prolifera, is not toxic to humans or animals.

However the carpet on the surface can dramatically change the ecology of the environment beneath it. It blocks sunlight from entering the ocean and sucks oxygen from the water suffocating marine life.

Tourists at a beach covered by a thick layer of green algae in Qingdao, China.

The algae thrives on an abundance of nutrients in the sea. University of Cambridge and EnAlgae Project researcher Dr Brenda Parker said that the Chinese bloom may well be linked to industrial pollution.

“Algal blooms often follow a massive discharge of phosphates or nitrates into the water. Whether it’s farming, untreated sewage or some kind of industrial plant that is discharging waste into the water,” she said.

The recent explosion of the algae pointed to a dramatic change in the ecosystem which was probably not natural.

“That would probably be an indicator that something is a little bit unbalanced,” said Parker.

She said that the 2009 example algal bloom on the Brittany coast was a similar example of a human-induced algal bloom.

Source: The Guardian.

Gazette Fair Use Statement

Removing Methane from Water Means Venting It to the Atmosphere

We hear a lot about methane in well water, especially as a side effect of the gas recovery process known as hydraulic fracturing.  We hear a lot less about how to get rid of it.

Atmospheric aeration is essentially the only treatment for methane in well water.  Methane is not filterable or removable chemically. Atmospheric aeration involves allowing the methane gas to escape to the atmosphere. Pressurized aeration tanks, though vented, will not work well for methane, and you run the risk of creating a bomb.

Exposing the water in an atmospheric tank means that water pressure will be lost and a repressurization system consisting of a pump and usually a pressurized pump tank will be needed.

Here’s a discussion of the whole issue from the Minnesota Department of Health:

Aeration is the process of mixing air into water and venting the gas to the outside atmosphere. Aeration can remove methane, as well as other gasses such as hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell).

Treatment devices range from the simple to the complex. The simplest is to use a pressure tank without a bladder or diaphragm, often referred to as a “galvanized” tank. An air release valve, vented to the atmosphere, releases the methane. This system is relatively simple and inexpensive, and does not require a second pump or tank, but is relatively inefficient at treating large volumes of water or removing large quantities of methane.

A more effective, but more complicated, system is to add an aspirator or aerator to the inlet of a water storage tank. An air pump or compressor will speed up the methane removal, but adds expense and maintenance.

Waterfall, diffusion, or mechanical aerators are devices that more effectively mix air with the water, resulting in more rapid and efficient removal, but increased cost and maintenance. Some systems involve a storage/treatment tank system with spray aerators enclosed in the tank. Use of an unpressurized treatment tank will require two pumps and two tanks – a well pump and a re-pressurizing pump, and a treatment tank and a pressure tank. Retention times of several minutes are typically needed to allow release of the methane. Air separators, similar to devices used on hot water heating systems to remove air, have also been used to remove methane.

Vents, air release valves, and other mechanical parts can fail, or freeze if not properly installed and maintained. Systems that use a nonpressurized tank may be subject to airborne contamination of the water supply if not carefully installed and maintained. All systems should be designed to be sanitary, avoid cross connections, and be vented outside.

For more about methane, see Pure Water Products’  Water Treatment Issues page.