MONTAGUE, Mich. — On this Earth Day, students from a local high school chemistry class are raising awareness of alleged contamination from a decades-old manufacturing plant.
60 years ago, residents in the town of Montague noticed something was wrong with their water.
“Everyone around here has a well, so a series of houses were put on city water from the city of Montague, there were a couple of houses that were given special charcoal filtration systems,” said Marisa McGlue, Outreach Coordinator for Chemours Environmental Impact Committee, or CEIC.
It’s believed to be a result of environmental contamination from a plant placed there decades ago.
“So Dupont started in the 50s and shut down in the 90s, they made a variety of things including neoprene and acetylene, which helped to produce that enormous lime pile,” explained McGlue.
Chelsea Bender teaches honors chemistry at the high school. She says, the enormous pile of lime works into the water, and is currently leaking into a lake right next to White Lake. Saturday, students from her class took matters into their own hands, raising awareness with an Earth Day walk. They say, contamination is not only concerning for them, but also for future generations. Which is why it's important to figure out exactly what’s in the water and come up with a solution.
“For this, we would want the landfill removed, and we would want all the sediment testing to come back so we really know what's in the water that we need to be fixing,” said grace Torsch, 10th grader.
They expect the results to come back in five to ten days, then they’ll review it.
“We got some chemicals out here that are potentially harming people and harming the ecosystem, and I think cleaning it up and having something done about it will help our community thrive,” said Eric Brown, 11th grader.
Negotiations are still going on between the Hazardous Waste Section of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy and the Chemours Company, a DuPont spin-off that took control of the property in 2015. Whatever the two parties decide, a public hearing will be scheduled to air their agreement.
CEIC is seeking to be involved in that process before any agreement is reached. Here is what it would like included in that agreement:
(1) Removal of all the unlined landfills and chemical spill areas that still exist in the site's sandy soil. Stop the leaking of chemicals into White Lake and Pierson Creek.
(2) Controlled testing of sediments in Pierson Creek and Sadony Bayou beyond Chemours' property boundaries.
(3) Cleanup of Mirror Lake.
(4) Testing of soil under the concrete slabs at the former manufacturing area.
(5) Ensuring there are no leaks in the plant's water pipeline to Lake Michigan. If there are, test the soil underneath.
(6) Cleanup of the property so there are no deed restrictions.
(7) Permanent conservation of portions of the property, including the parcel along White Lake.
(8) The gold standard of the CEIC objectives would be a dredging project that would remove the bayou's toxic sediments and restore the creek's flow into White Lake.
For more information — or if you’d like to get involved — you can send an email to makeitrightchemours@gmail.com
