A decades-old contaminated groundwater plume from industrial chemicals in Antrim County is still expanding.
State and local officials said they want to give more residents in the plume’s path the option to connect to municipal drinking water. That could help officials get ahead of possible health risks associated with unsafe levels of exposure to the cancer-causing chemical.
This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
The state has already invested about $32 million for monitoring, mapping, and extending municipal water to homes affected by the plume over the past two decades. And officials are seeking more money to keep up the work.
The contamination stems from a chemical used by a Mancelona industrial plant in the 1960s. Called trichloroethylene, or TCE, the chemical is currently heavily restricted by the Environmental Protection Agency—but there was little regulation or understanding of its health impacts in the 1960s.
TCE was often used to remove grease from industrial equipment, and the company Wickes Manufacturing discarded large amounts of the chemical into the environment, where it seeped into the groundwater over time and has shifted northwest, away from the source site.
The Antrim County plume is one of the largest TCE groundwater contaminations in the country, according to Len Mankowski, a senior geologist with engineering firm WSP, which works with local and state agencies on monitoring efforts.
“The Wickes plume is pretty famous,” he said during a public town hall about the plume last week. “It’s 6.7 miles long, and it’s a mile-and-a-half wide.”
State and local officials have a good understanding of the plume’s dynamics because so much data has been collected over the last two decades, said Agnes Taylor, senior geologist with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE).
“We also are at a point where we’re out in front of the plume now,” Taylor told IPR. “We’ve addressed any immediate and current impacts. We're looking at vulnerable and at-risk areas.”
The greatest risk of exposure to TCE comes from drinking contaminated water. The state says it's identified more than 500 drinking water wells tainted with the chemical, and officials conduct regular testing in the area throughout the year.
When TCE is identified in a well, the state gives bottled water to affected property owners.
“That is a temporary measure,” Taylor said. “Our overall goal here is to make sure that people who do end up in these impacted areas have a long-term solution. Bottled water is not it.”
One solution is to connect residents to municipal water provided by the Mancelona Area Water and Sewer Authority. Taylor said the state is looking for funding this fall to expand the areas where municipal water is available.
The regional health department also enforces a policy that requires developers in certain areas to test their water before replacing or building a well, with the most recent update last spring.
EGLE doesn’t have a plan to clean up the chemical because it says costs for some solutions, like pumping and removing the chemical from water, are too expensive. Officials say connecting residents to a different water source is safer and more cost-effective.
Some residents at the town hall were concerned about the plume’s movement toward other bodies of surface water, like Shanty Creek. The state hasn't detected the chemical there yet.
But Markowski, with the engineering firm, said they plan to install infrastructure to monitor the shift next year.
“Be ahead of it, make sure we know what we’ve got, and then if something does change, we understand it,” he said of the current plan.
As for other bodies of water, like Lake Bellaire or the Cedar River, experts said TCE can break down in the groundwater near the surface and decrease in concentration before evaporating once it enters waterways. Where TCE has been detected in the Cedar River, experts said the levels are still considered safe for swimming or boating.
Still, for some residents, the plume is a reminder of the lasting effects that industry can have in the area, long after factories close. The plume moves, on average, several hundred feet a year.
“We’re left with these legacy problems,” said Fred Sittel, a Bellaire resident and president of the Three Lakes Association. “We’ll have other contamination that began today that’s discovered in 100 years, I’m sure.”
