[Editor's note: The following letters and documents are only a part of the groundwater contamination story in Cedar Creek Township. Other information will be added as it becomes available.]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
February 22, 2008.
In the summer of 2006 two workers at Wexford County Landfill started moving twenty-year-old trash from an unlined cell. One of them had to move to a different part of the job site because of severe bronchial complaints.
In March, 2007, the fellow who stayed on the original trash removal job was hospitalized and coughing up blood. He died a month later. He was a peculiar shade of yellow when he died.
In July, 2007, the other worker who had moved to another part of the job site was diagnosed with liver sclerosis due to exposure to toxic chemicals of unknown origin.
I have that medical report along with a stack of other documents. At this time he is being treated for Stage 3 Hepatitis C. The treatment is the same as for cancer. I’ve kept quiet about these stories because of pending litigation involving both environmental and property damage, but it’s time that people know the truth.
Our state DEQ is just as much at fault as the county that operates the landfill and the other industries that’ve dumped their hazardous wastes into it. Under the guise of cleaning up other contamination sites, DEQ has authorized the dumping of toxic cleanup wastes into our landfill.
Wexford’s landfill is not a licensed Hazardous Waste Facility, but workers there are paying the ultimate price because nobody’s looking.
Ron Dextrom, Manton, MI
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The following are documents in PDF format that can be downloaded or viewed separately. Left mouse click to view. To save, right mouse click on the link and select “Save Target As”. Note: These files are quite large and may take some time to view or save.
History of Contaminated Wexford County Dump
20070614 – FOIA Request – Kysor Cleanup Court Documents and Other Cleanup Files
20070813 – Certain Plantiff\’s Response to Wexford County\’s Motion for Summary Disposition
20080111 – Appellant Wexford County\’s Brief on Appeal Oral Argument Requested
20080111 – Exhibits in Support of Cross-Appellants\’ Brief on Appeal
20080111 – Cross Appellants\’ Brief on Appeal Oral Argument Requested
20080731 – Temporary Easement Request
The following are pictures of the waste site.
(1) This is a Recycle Bin being dumped into the landfill instead of going to Waste Management recycle station. The county is saving money.
(2) This pond is an unlined leachate pond that is leaching into all the wells in the area. The DEQ says they don’t need a permit todo this because all this water is supposed to run back down the hill and right back into the 3 wells that pump it up there. Our geologist was there and he said it is running everywhere but.
(3) This is a methane gas explosion in one of the buildings at the landfill they tried to keep a secret because they have gas just flowing into the atmosphere.
Runoff
(4) This is runoff from rainwater [leachate] that runs down to school property. This is also a violation which has been overlooked many times in the history of the landfill.
—————————————————————————————————–
[Editor's note: The following article appeared in Cadillac News and was reprinted in Cedar Creek Voice. I am publishing this article again, as well as some other letters that should go with it.]
| bulgar.no-ip.info | www.nicewallpapers.info |
- Cadillac News, 11/24/08 -
STATE, RESIDENT DISAGREE OVER TAINTED TREES
By Matt Whetstone
A Cedar Creek Township landowner believes the Wexford County Landfill is the source of contaminants he found in trees on his land.
The man says the volatile organic compounds could become airborne and cause further health concerns in a township already facing a groundwater contamination problem.
However, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality believes the contamination did not come from the landfill.
Alger’s findings
After testing six samples from trees on his land in Cedar Creek Township, Donald Alger believes contamination from the Wexford County Landfill is worse than previously believed.
Alger’s testing of the samples found traces of four volatile organic compounds: benzene, styrene, toluene and tetrachloroethylene.
The VOCs were found inside the tree. Alger believes the chemicals also will become airborne, creating another environmental concern in a township already facing groundwater contamination.
The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality does not believe the VOCs found in Alger’s trees originated from the landfill.
Why? Wexford County operates monitoring wells immediately south of Alger’s land. The wells have never been found to be contaminated.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
—– Forwarded Message —-
From: Donald Alger <algerstirling@earthlink.net>
To: rdextrom@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, December 5, 2008 5:55:10 PM
Subject: RE: Cedar Creek Township
Hi Ron,
Thank you for making copies of my paper and passing in to others at
your meeting. I made a letter responding to Matt Whetstone’s article in
the Cadillac News on November 25. It was necessary to add some
information to the article that I sent to Matt. I will try to e-mail you a copy
of this paper with this E-mail. If you don’t receive the copy with this
E-mail let me know and I will mail you a copy.
Don Alger
—–Inline Attachment Follows—–
ALGER STIRLING CORPORATION
4050 PARADISE ROAD
SEVILLE, OHIO 44173
330-722-6181
December 5. 2008
Mr. Matt Whetstone
Cadillac News
P. O. Box 640
Cadillac , MI 49601
Dear Mr.. Whetstone,
Thank you for your article in the November 25th Cadillac News that told
about the finding of poisonous solvents—in our trees and on our
property—in Cedar Creek Township. We hope that your story, the results
of our analyses, and the data we will present in this letter, will
convince MDOT and the residents of Cedar Creek Township that the four
poisonous solvents we detected in our pine and aspen trees did come from the
Landfill. We would appreciate if this letter could appear in the
Cadillac News.
After reading your article, we apologize for expanding—in this
letter—the description of what we believe occurred to cause the delivery of
these four poisonous solvents into our trees, and to explain why these
solvents were not detected by DEQ in the aquifer or in the downstream
wells. However, we felt it was necessary to ensure that these actions
needed to be taken in order to be certain that our work can be
completely understood..
In your interview with DEQ’s Phil Roycraft, he stated that, “the
DEQ believes the contaminants could be from a source much closer to his
(Alger’s) land: US 131. Trees adjacent to the highway can be subjected
to atmospheric fallout from automotive and diesel exhaust”.. Based
upon detailed and extensive testing described in the next paragraph,
we believe that the reader will fully believe that the four poisonous
solvents Benzene, styrene, toluene and tetrachloroethylene, that we found
in our pine and aspen trees, all came from the Landfill and did not
come from automotive and diesel exhaust.
We planted our pine trees during the mid-1950’s and during the
mid-1960’s we developed and tested our invention of learning to grow
Shiitake mushrooms on pinewood with a demonstrated (many times) efficiency of
7%. That is, from one hundred pounds of dry pinewood, we would be
able to grow 7 pounds of dry mushrooms. These mushrooms sell wholesale
for about 1 dollar per ounce. So, it was also important for us to know
whether any chemicals from automobiles and trucks (Diesel fueled)
traveling along US 131 could contaminant our pine trees or our mushroom
products. At the Nuclear Division at NASA Lewis Research Center where I
worked, our division owned a complete chemistry laboratory including
mass spectrometers, gas and liquid gas chromatographs, and other
miscellaneous instruments. I had full access to these instruments and knew how
to use them. During one summer, I performed three thorough analyses of
both pinewood and mushrooms that were grown
on pinewood, and performed analyses at different times during that
year of several pine samples from different parts of our land. During that
whole period of testing, no solvents or harmful chemicals were found
in either the pinewood or the mushrooms. This work was done at least
15 years before the Wexford County Landfill had started to build their
landfill. In addition, during this period, I did several library
searches of information regarding whether other mushroom growers were learning
whether they had experienced any transfer of automotive and truck
exhaust contaminants to their hardwood grown mushrooms. I do not recall
ever finding this type of contamination in the mushrooms grown by these
people. Do you understand now why we believe so strongly that the
solvents we found recently in our pine trees came from the Landfill? Where
else could they come from?
Both John Divozzo and Phil Roycraft believe that the solvents we found
in our pine trees did not come from the Landfill but they have this
belief for a different reason than the one stated by DEQ’s Roycraft in
the preceding paragraph. In this paragraph, Roycraft also says, “We
have wells immediately upgradient of his (Alger’s) property. They’re
all clean—completely clean.” He means that none of our four
poisonous solvents (Alger has found) have been found here. John Divozzo
said, “We would vehemently disagree with him (Alger) because we have been
monitoring wells south of his land.” The reason both men did not
believe that the solvents we found in our trees came from the Landfill
is because—in all of their analyses of water in the aquifer or from
wells downstream of the aquifer—they did not find any of the four
poisonous solvents in these bodies of water that we found by our analyses of
our pine and aspen trees on our land. In
the next paragraphs, we will explain that there are fundamental and
physical reasons why these solvents did not enter these bodies of water.
The four solvents we found in our trees—benzene, styrene, toluene,
and tetrachloroethylene—drain from the Landfill area by two routes. I
will explain these two routes separately.
First, part of all four solvents, move down the hillside in
subterranean channels, their speeds down the hill depend upon gravity and the
mass of most of the rainfall that is falling in the Landfill area. Their
pathways are subterranean channels that have been formed by rainwater
that has fallen periodically on this hill for hundreds of years.
Benzene, styrene, and toluene are solvents that are less dense than the 1
gram/cm3 density of rainwater. Because the solvents are less dense, the
solvents are actually floating on the water as they flow down the channel.
Meanwhile, tetrachloroethylene, which has a density of 1.62 grams/cm3,
is more dense than water and therefore mixes with the rainwater as it
flows down the hill. As the flowing solvents pass by tree roots, the
solvents are attracted by the tree roots and, usually, as much as 90%
(see ref 1) of such solvents enter the tree roots and diffuse to the whole
tree. This is followed by further diffusion
from the tree to the surrounding air.
Second, a small portion of all four solvents did not enter the
subterranean channels, but remained in the sand and gravel filtering system
that exists some 95 feet above the aquifer and moves with the remaining
rainwater into the sand and gravel, hard packed filter, that exists near
the surface of the hill. The three solvents, benzene, styrene, and
toluene are very small molecules and easily pass through the small diameter
pores that exist in this filter assembly. They all diffuse through
the full filter thickness and then begin to float in the water at the
surface of the aquifer. These three solvents stay momentarily at the
aquifer surface, but some water will begin flowing northwest toward the
Manistee river and the height of the surface of the flowing water will
decrease. As this occurs, eventually these solvent molecules will pass
by tree roots and be absorbed into a tree. Of course, as the solvents
are absorbed they eventually reach all of the
wood of the tree and will then diffuse into the surrounding air. These
three solvents will continue to be removed by tree roots as they float
on top of the water and be removed by tree roots as they continually
move toward the Manistee river
Meanwhile, the small portion of tetrachloroethylene that moves with the
remaining water to pores in the sand and gravel filter, will not be
able to pass through the very small pore size—in comparison to the
width of the tetrachloroethylene molecule—which will most probably be
stuck in the pore. Therefore, it is unlikely that any tetrachloroethylene
molecules will ever reach the aquifer. Chloroethylene molecules,
dichloroethylene molecules, and trichloroethylene molecules have all been
found in the aquifer and in wells downstream of the aquifer. However,
the tetrachloroethylene (“tetra” meaning 4) is much larger than all
of the former solvents and apparently cannot pass through the pores of
the filter. That is why none of the tetrachloroethylene molecules have
ever been found in the aquifer or in wells downstream of the aquifer.
In one paragraph of your Cadillac News article, it states,
“Tetrachloroethylene, meanwhile, is a large molecule that gets trapped in the
subterranean channels. This statement is in error. (The only way
tetrachloroethylene can be taken up by a pine tree is by traveling through the
subterranean channels. Otherwise, tetrachloroethylene molecules that
instead try to flow through the pores of the sand and gravel filter
above the aquifer will be caught in these pores as described above. The
only way it can reach the trees is to flow through the subterranean
channels).
Sincerely,
Donald L. Alger
algerstirling@earthlink.net
C:WHETSTONE1205.08
C/Cedar Creek Township Landowners
REFERENCES
1. Westinghouse Savannah River Company, WSRC-TR-2000-00373,
(http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/tr2000373/tr2000373.html)
