Erasing water woes a rough task
8-10-09
BY TINA LAM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
FENNVILLE — John Dekker feels like he’s camping out in his own home. He showers with bottled water and drags his laundry to a Laundromat. He can’t sell his house without disclosing its glaring flaw — his well is contaminated.
Neighbor Kari Craton’s fingernails turned orange; her appliances were destroyed. Diana Bennett’s garden is useless.
Some 50 families live near a plume of groundwater contaminated with metals that spread from the local Birds Eye processing plant. At a nearby Minute Maid juice plant, there’s another plume.
In rural west Michigan, food processors have sprayed so much wastewater onto fields that heavy metals seeped into groundwater, contaminating wells. State officials have known of the polluting for at least a decade but, residents complain, moved slowly.
The list of tainted sites keeps growing. And the contamination plumes continue to spread as the Department of Environmental Quality and companies argue behind closed doors over what must be done. Frustrated residents say they’re bearing the costs — altered lives and fear of the water that pours from their taps — even as state and industry officials say there’s no acute health threat. “You’re living with all these problems, but you can’t get out,” Craton said.
Worried residents want help
On the wall of the family business is a collage of photos and awards Dick and Rita Pfister’s son earned in his too-brief life. He died at age 21 of gastric cancer, a disease his parents were told was highly unusual for someone his age.
The Pfisters don’t know whether there is a connection between his death and their home’s metal-poisoned well — with water that got so dark, they couldn’t see the bottom of the tub when they filled it.
What they do know is that juice maker Welch Foods, which sprayed wastewater on the fields across from their home for decades, knew about the tainted water as early as 1980.
After their son’s death in 1999, the couple found in state records a 1980 report by a consultant to Welch noting contamination in some nearby wells, including theirs. The report said the wells should be replaced.
“No one told us,” Dick Pfister said.
It was not until 2006, three years after signing an agreement with the state to fix the problem, that a Welch official showed up on their doorstep, offering to replace the Pfisters’ well.
A Welch spokeswoman declined to comment but said the company is working closely with the Department of Environmental Quality and is addressing problems with wells as they arise.
Recent offers of help
In agricultural towns across west Michigan, residents have found company representatives at their doors or notices of groundwater contamination in their mailboxes in the last few years, even though records show the companies and state regulators have known much longer about the problem.
The state says residents don’t face any acute health dangers, but the long-term risks are uncertain. Industry officials say they are working with state environmental officials.
The wells are contaminated because food processors sprayed untreated wastewater onto farm fields, a common and accepted practice for decades. The theory was that the wastewater would restore nutrients in soil and would be filtered as it percolated into groundwater.
But scientists have determined in the last decade that too much fruit and vegetable waste on soil strips out oxygen, allowing naturally occurring metals and arsenic in the soil to leach into groundwater.
Some streams have been contaminated, killing fish. Tainted groundwater also moves into wells, destroying water softeners, washers, dishwashers and plumbing. It causes orange fingernails and sick pets, residents say. More worrisome to them are what they see as unexplained tumors, illnesses and even deaths.
No health studies have been done to assess whether the contaminants are to blame.
“Boiled eggs turn black inside the shell,” said Kari Craton of Fennville, whose well has been replaced twice because of contamination from the local Birds Eye plant. “If it can get inside an eggshell, what do our insides look like?”
In Fennville, some affected wells have 40 times as much iron as other areas in town.
‘It’s a two-edged sword’
Agriculture is the state’s No. 2 industry, bringing in more than $63 billion last year. Firms that freeze, can and dry foods from asparagus to cherries employ thousands of workers.
Most food processors, which buy local farmers’ crops, use the same spraying methods. Changing decades-old practices and repairing the damage is expensive. And times are tough.
“It’s a two-edged sword,” said Terry Morrison, director of the Michigan Food Processors Association.
Said Eric Chatterson, a DEQ official who handles contaminated sites: “This is a very widespread problem, and some of these plumes cover several square miles. We’re trying to deal with them as fast as we can.”
He said the state must protect its groundwater and follow the law, but it doesn’t want to put processors out of business.
The state has brought enforcement actions against more than a dozen firms for contaminating groundwater and collected more than $400,000 in fines. It’s investigating more sites — there could be more than 30.
The DEQ pushes companies to change their practices, investigate the contamination and provide residents with new wells or city water. But that can take years and involve long legal battles.
A Free Press review of state records found investigations of suspected contamination have dragged out for years. Companies denied responsibility, failed to meet cleanup deadlines and violated state law with leaks, spills and illegal dumping of fruit waste, records show.
The DEQ negotiates agreements with companies in secret, without public input.
At no site has groundwater been cleaned up. Whether that will ever happen is doubtful, DEQ officials say, since some plumes are so large that cleaning them up would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
A push for action
In 2007, Kari Craton was among the first in Fennville to find out from Birds Eye that her well was contaminated. It turned her into an activist, knocking on neighbors’ doors and pressing officials for answers. She said she hasn’t gotten many.
People in about 50 homes just outside town are living with jugs of bottled water, but 150 homes are in the plume’s path. Birds Eye, the town’s biggest employer, has blamed the contamination plume on other sources, but Chatterson said its spraying is the cause.
The state is negotiating behind closed doors with Birds Eye over what to do.
In a statement, Birds Eye said it shares residents’ concern about groundwater and is working with the DEQ to define the extent of the problem and fix it. It plans to spend $3.5 million for a plant to treat its wastewater.
In the meantime, the company is spraying.
The City of Fennville hopes to get about $4 million in state funding to upgrade its water system and extend water lines to affected residents, saving Birds Eye the cost.
“I don’t think taxpayers should be paying to clean up corporate pollution,” Craton said.
Residents are frustrated with the slow pace.
John Dekker, who runs a hot tub business out of his home, said he has thought about walking away. His filters, heat boiler and water softener got so clogged with iron, they don’t work.
“It’s so tiring dealing with this,” he said.
Craton begged environmental activist Erin Brockovich to get involved. Brockovich came to town this spring, and her law firm has announced it will file a group lawsuit on residents’ behalf.
No acute risk, state says
State officials have told the residents of all these towns there is no acute health risk, despite tests showing metals, arsenic and lead above drinking water standards.
A 2007 study by state health officials in Sturgis — where Abbott Laboratories’ spraying contaminated groundwater with metals — said if wells are replaced, there is no current exposure and no immediate hazard.
But the study said it was unknown whether past exposure had hurt health and noted that pregnant women and children were at greater risk.
“It’s a cop-out to say there’s no acute hazard,” said Dr. Michael Harbut, a toxicologist at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Royal Oak. “Asbestos contamination is not acute, either. People don’t die acutely of toxins.” Toxins do damage over long periods, he said.
Harbut said various illnesses can be caused by too much arsenic, iron and manganese, from Parkinson’s disease to liver damage and cancers.
“No 21-year-old randomly dies of gastric cancer,” he said. “This makes me mad. If my family lived in a place where the water contained arsenic and metals exceeding federal drinking water standards, I’d be camping out on the front steps of the state Capitol.”
A law firm in Traverse City has sued several cherry and blueberry processors on behalf of residents faced with groundwater contamination and overpowering odors from the companies’ waste.
“I grew up here,” said lawyer Michael Grant, who represented residents in several suits. “I don’t want us to lose our cherries or blueberries. But these are choices these companies make. They’re cutting corners.”
New well, bad water
In Lawton, Welch drilled the Pfisters a new well, but its water was bad, too.
The DEQ ordered the company to put in another new well this summer.
Welch also installed new plumbing, hot water and a new reverse osmosis system, all ruined earlier. But Dick Pfister said he doesn’t yet trust that his water is OK.
And a neighbor two doors down is starting to have black water and impenetrable orange slime in plumbing, the same symptoms the Pfisters once had.
Under a DEQ permit, Welch is expanding the size of its spray fields to try to spread the waste over a larger area. Pfister said he worries for neighbors.
“I think Welch is a good company, but they’re doing this cheaply,” he said. “They just don’t realize what they’re doing to people around here.”
Years of food processors’ waste turns Michigan’s natural treasures to ruins
Wastewater, disposal cost put some out of business
BY TINA LAM
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
While searching for a lost cow, farmer Charlie Brozofsky discovered in late 2002 that a stream on his property was tainted. The stream, usually clear and rippling, was slimy orange.
What unfolded next was a saga of illegal blueberry waste dumping, which contaminated the groundwater that fed the stream, killing fish and other aquatic life in it.
In Michigan’s prized fruit and vegetable industry, processors have contaminated groundwater with metals and arsenic by spraying wastewater on fields — a 40-year-old practice that has led to polluted wells.
But in some cases, they also have dumped or spilled their waste into streams, marshes and wetlands, damaging them for years to come.
Two companies responsible for dumping the blueberry waste are still arguing with the state over cleaning up the stream, which flows to Platte Lake.
Eric Chatterson, the Department of Environmental Quality official overseeing the cleanup, visited the stream last week. There’s still no life in it seven years later, he said.
“Even leaves don’t decay in there,” he said. Trees along the stream are still dying. The spring that feeds the stream gushes like orange paint.
The fixes are complex and expensive.
Processors, neighbors disagree over solutions
Keith Boyce’s family used to own commercial trout ponds near Honor on property Boyce bought in the early 1970s.
“We had a nice little business there,” he said. “Kids would come catch rainbow trout.” They also sold fish to markets.
That ended in 2003 after neighboring Brozofsky discovered that the stream that fed the ponds was orange, contaminated with what turned out to be sky-high iron.
Boyce, who now lives in Kalamazoo, said the contamination wiped out thousands of small rainbow trout in the ponds and forced the closure of the business.
“We couldn’t see the bottom of the ponds, but the fish were gone,” he said. “It killed us.”
The ponds are now filled in, and Boyce sold the property at a loss. “I was disgusted,” he said.
According to Department of Environmental Quality documents, the pollution came from illegal dumping by Graceland Fruit, a processor in Frankfort that needed to get rid of blueberry juice waste, and Bonney Brothers Pumping Co. of Honor, which hauled 493 tankers of Graceland’s waste and dumped it in a gravel pit from about 1999 to 2003. Bonney had no permit to dump the blueberry waste.
Harmful wastewater
As Michigan food processors are discovering, their wastewater is bad for groundwater, streams and marshes.
It’s laden with sugars and salts that trigger a biological process that strips out oxygen and pulls natural metals in soil into the groundwater. Those metals, in high enough doses, harm fish and other aquatic life.
The waterways can take decades to recover.
Scientists figured out only in about the past decade that the wastewater is so harmful. No one has found a perfect replacement for the decades-long practice of spraying wastewater onto fields to get rid of it.
Companies that contaminate groundwater have to pay to investigate the problem and to clean it up. Then they have to find a new way to dispose of their wastewater.
The problems are expensive.
In Honor, while not admitting fault, Graceland and Bonney paid $250,000 to the state, including $100,000 for damage to natural resources, and an undisclosed amount to Brozofsky in lawsuit settlements. The companies excavated the pit, and Graceland built a $5-million system to treat most of its wastewater.
The two companies are required to rehabilitate the stream, which flows to Platte Lake, by 2013. What that will mean, exactly, is still uncertain.
Graceland’s owner and attorney could not be reached for comment. “We want to make sure what we do to fix the problem doesn’t make it worse,” said Joseph Quandt, attorney for Bonney.
The companies argue that left alone, the groundwater and stream will recover in a few years.
The DEQ and the farmer disagree. The DEQ said the groundwater might have to be extracted and cleaned to cure all the problems.
“They’re going to have to clean it up, that’s all there is to it,” Brozofsky said. “They made a terrible mess.”
‘We got fed up’
The Cherry Blossom plant in Williamsburg, which turns fresh cherries into maraschinos year-round, also got into trouble over its waste.
Starting about 2000, neighbors and the DEQ fought with the company over the handling of its wastewater.
The DEQ slapped violation notices on Cherry Blossom for illegally sending wastewater from a lagoon into ditches, wetlands and a swamp. Neighbors as far as 2 miles away complained of odors, which they compared to rotten eggs or dead animals.
“We got fed up,” said Brad Boals, a neighbor.
The state and neighbors filed lawsuits in 2006, forcing the company to haul its wastewater away in tanks and clean up the lagoon. The DEQ collected $120,000 in fines. Neighbors won $350,000.
According to DEQ documents, there is evidence that Cherry Blossom contaminated residential wells. It was required to do more tests, but the latest report to the DEQ is overdue, so how bad the contamination is and how far it has spread is unclear.
Attorney Michael Corcoran said the company spent more than $1 million in the last three years complying with all the rules — a strain on its bottom line. Cherry Blossom closed this summer. Owner Chris Hubbell hopes to sell it to a new processor, who will have to figure out how to dispose of the wastewater.
Finding a solution
“A long-term solution to the wastewater problem has to be figured out,” not just for Cherry Blossom but for other processors, too, Corcoran said. “People in the business can see this has to be resolved for the whole industry.”
Quandt, who represents a dozen food processors, agreed. “The problem is that people don’t want to fully acknowledge the problem,” he said. “They want to do it like their daddy did it.”
Quandt, who used to work for the DEQ, said he’s trying to educate his clients. Many are recognizing they must change.
The DEQ can’t force that change too quickly, he said. Building a wastewater treatment system can cost $3 million to $5 million, and many processors have such tight margins, they can’t afford it.
Still, the agency must enforce the law.
“If we ignore it, they’re happy to ignore it,” said Janice Heuer, a DEQ engineer who inspects food processing plants in northwest Michigan.
“The solutions will come from them,” she said. “I have a lot of respect for the people at these plants. I think when they realize the extent of the problem, they will work together to solve it.”
Contact TINA LAM: 313-222-6421 or tlam@freepress.com
Additional Facts
Future solutions?
- Inject it into disposal sites, such as old oil and gas wells, deep underground.
- Build treatment systems, similar to those that cities and towns have for treating sewage. Some
plants have spent millions of dollars to do this. - Hook up to city wastewater treatment systems.
- Build pretreatment systems that remove heavy concentrations of sugars and salts, leaving water clean enough to pump into local waters.
- Pay to haul it to city wastewater treatment plants.
- Use less water, or recycle it within the plant. Many plants are trying this.
- Through scientific studies, including some under way at Michigan State University, determine a safe level of spray irrigation that won’t create conditions that harm groundwater.
Tina Lam