Disaster at the Pine River

Situated in the heart of Michigan, the small town of St. Louis hosted a tombstone designated by the EPA for 31 years. On the banks of the Pine River, the tombstone read: "WARNING DO NOT ENTER. This fenced area was the site of a chemical plant. The ground contains chemicals which may be toxic or hazardous and also contains low level radioactive waste. The area has been capped and secured. TRESPASSING STRICTLY PROHIBITED." Since 1998, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Michigan Department of Environmental Quality have taken several actions to clean up contamination found at a former chemical company plant site and in the adjacent Pine River. Jane Keon, a founding member of the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force, most recently published a memoir on the subject in 2015 entitled Tombstone Town: Left for Dead, Marked with a Tombstone, a Toxic Town Fights Back. Her memoir chronicles the work done by volunteers during the first 16 years worth of clean-up. 

St. Louis' reputation had already been scarred by the 1973 polybrominated biphenyl, or PBB, mix-up where fire retardent had been bagged as cattle feed. Velsicol Chemical Company began as the Michigan Chemical Company in 1936 in St. Louis, Michigan. Velsicol produced many chemicals, including DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) and polybrominated biphenyl (PBB), as well as cattle feed supplements. Velsicol's chemical plant in St. Louis ended its production of DDT in 1958. By accidentally bagging PBB as a cattle feed supplement, Velsicol was responsible for the Michigan PBB contamination event of the early 1970s. The PBB mix-up is often cited as one of the worst chemical and agricultural disasters in American history. Following the disaster, the Michigan Department of Public Health launched an investigation now known as the PBB Registry. The Michigan PBB Registry is maintained by Emory University under Dr. Michele Marcus. The Registry is community-based participatory research in partnership between the PBB Citizens Advisory Board, Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force (CAG), Mid-Michigan District Health Department, Alma College, Central Michigan University, and Emory University. Research estimates that nearly everyone who lived in Michigan's lower peninsula in the 1970s was likely exposed to PBB, approximately 9 million people. Despite its role in the contamination, the plant continued to operate until 1978. 

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"Toxins buried, but alive"

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Cartoon Witch using Pine River Water

Because of the pressure added to the political climate by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and the environmental turn of the 20th century, Velsicol shut the plant at St. Louis in 1978. Following a number of lawsuits and litigation with the EPA, Velsicol was found legally responsible for minimal cleanup efforts. They only paid a $20,000 fine for remediation of the Pine River. The entire plant operation was later torn down; however, left-over contaminated soil and groundwater remained untreated. The only remediation put into place was a clay slurry wall and cap around, and on top, of the contaminated plant site. The preventative measures failed, and by 1997, EPA tests proved that chemicals manufactured at the plant continued to contaminate the Pine River and the groundwater. The emergency removal action fuelled the grassroots movement within the local community, and the Pine River Superfund Citizen Task Force was formed in response. It is an EPA-sanctioned community advisory group (CAG). The CAG’s mission statement reads: “The Pine River watershed in northern Gratiot County, Michigan, has been an environmentally stressed community for more than a century, experiencing cycles of both growth and decline as a result of resource exploitation. We are working to restore the river for the health of the river and the community that calls the river home.” Since 2013, the CAG has collaborated with Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, on health studies for those affected by the PBB contamination event of the 1970s.

The CAG’s function is to oversee the cleanup of the Pine River Watershed, which includes three superfund sites, a radioactive site, and a non-superfund site, which contains mercury and vinyl chloride. The taskforce took its name “Pine River” rather than “Velsicol” to reflect the community concerns with the wider watershed and other sources of pollution and threats to human health. The Pine River cleanup alone—which started in 1998 and ended in 2006—has cost over $100 million. Chemical contamination from the plant affects groundwater, drinking water, soils, and sediment on the property in the Pine River and on residential properties adjacent to the site. The 1998, an EPA proposal for the superfund site stated that "public input on cleanup alternatives and the information that supports these alternatives is an important part of the process." The CAG continues to oversee multiple cleanup projects in the St. Louis area, including a $99.7 million sediment remediation which removed over 750,000 cubic yards from a 32-acre area of the Pine River, the shut-down of the drinking water supply, construction of new wells and main water lines to provide clean water for St. Louis residents, a $3 million cleanup at the radioactive site, and the current in-situ thermal treatment for “Area 1.” Costs for the remediation of the former Velsicol plant site are estimated at $354 million.

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