BELMONT, MI — An environmental chemistry expert and others on a citizen advisory panel are not impressed with Wolverine World Wide’s plan to clean up its toxic tannery waste dump in Kent County by relying primarily on planting trees over the contamination, saying the proposal basically amounts to doing nothing and calling it by a different name.
Rick Rediske, a Grand Valley State University environmental chemistry professor who co-chairs the Wolverine Community Advisory Group (CAG), criticized the company’s proposal to clean-up the House Street dump in Belmont through a process called “phytoremediation,” which would attempt to use about 4,000 trees to suck up pollutants buried long ago.
During a Thursday, March 18 CAG meeting, Rediske argued that trees naturally enhance the infiltration of rain and snowmelt into groundwater. Clearing the already forested site and planting new trees could exacerbate a large plume extending southeast from the dump to the Rogue River, he said.
That would run counter to goals outlined in a 2020 court-approved consent decree signed by Wolverine, the state of Michigan and Plainfield and Algoma townships.
“It’s not at all effective at reducing and controlling infiltration and actually promotes infiltration,” said Rediske. “There’s really a benefit similar to a ‘no action’ alternative. I mean, there’s really no potential difference between the existing forest and what they’re proposing.”
The state is accepting public comment until April 17 on Wolverine’s draft feasibility study for cleaning up the House Street dump. The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) is holding an online townhall meeting March 31 to discuss the plans.
Wolverine submitted its phytoremediation plan last month following efforts over the winter to promote a limited cleanup and redevelopment of the dump as a nature preserve.
The plan was elevated in a study that compared the feasibility of several options, ranging from a potential $200 million total waste removal to the potential $12 million “phyto-cap” project, which would combine tree planting with small areas of impermeable capping at the wooded 76-acre property.
Wolverine calls the phyto-plan “comprehensive” and says it “uses a combination of two methods to address the remediation objectives under the consent decree, while enhancing the property and area with up to 4,000 new trees and avoiding the deforestation of over 30 acres.”
Regulators at EGLE must approve whatever plan Wolverine proposes and a 30-acre unlined cap is the default option if the EGLE and the company can’t reach an agreement. Capping contamination under an impermeable layer of clay is a common practice at closed landfills and other pollution sites to reduce infiltration from rain and meltwater.
Neither representatives from EGLE nor Wolverine spoke at Thursday’s CAG meeting. The group was convened in 2019 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. State Sen. Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, and staff for U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., were also on the call.
Rediske and other CAG members spoke favorably about a potential $16.3 million option in the study to install groundwater extraction wells connected to an activated carbon treatment system near the dump, and some suggested a second cluster of wells is needed at the other end of the plume to keep the contamination from entering the Rogue River.
The river is shaping up to be a major focus point in future cleanup efforts. Exposure to the chemicals through area drinking water has been addressed through in-home filtration, well use restrictions and new Plainfield Township water mains that started being laid last year.
The Rogue is a tributary of the Grand River, which flows into Lake Michigan. The CAG has previously questioned the adequacy of plans to reduce PFAS entering the river.
“The number one exposure point now is down at the Rogue River,” said A.J. Birkbeck, an environmental attorney who previously helped expose the pollution.
“The next big step is right at the Rogue,” Birkbeck said. “None of these solutions really involve dealing with that directly…. I propose that it would be a good idea to tie whatever is done at House Street with maybe something at the Rogue River.”
Birkbeck said Wolverine is already installing a similar cluster of groundwater extraction wells at its former tannery site in downtown Rockford to reduce pollution entering the river. That installation has been underway for several years. The state is scheduling a public review and meeting on that in May.
Rediske said plume maps show the House Street contamination may already be reaching the Grand River in low concentration. He noted the chemicals can create toxic surface water foam even in low amounts when affected water is agitated. That could create a problem for a long-running project to restore the river rapids in downtown Grand Rapids.
“Even though we might get dilution in the Grand River, there’s a big effort to have the rapids in downtown and I would hate to see that messed up because of PFAS foam,” he said.
Based on studies cited in Wolverine’s plan, it could take a “millennia” for phytoremediation have any measurable impact on the plume, Rediske said.
“It would be very unusual to just let a plume go like this without some type of treatment.”
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