Related: Anger, anxiety about PFAS expressed at landfill pollution meeting
“PIERSON, MI — The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is holding a public meeting after recent testing discovered fluorochemicals in the groundwater near a landfill where Wolverine World Wide disposed of toxic tannery waste for years.
The DEQ is holding the 6 p.m. meeting on Thursday, April 26 at the Pierson Village Hall to ‘share our plan to investigate possible offsite contamination,’ according to a meeting flier.
According to the flier, monitoring wells around the Central Sanitary Landfill show per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance, or PFAS, in the groundwater at concentrations above the Environmental Protection Agency health advisory level of 70 parts-per-trillion.
Exposure to PFAS has been linked in human studies to some cancers, thyroid disorders, elevated cholesterol and other diseases.
DEQ geological data shows numerous private drinking water wells within a mile radius around the landfill, including clusters in the village of Pierson and along the shores of nearby Whitefish and Bass lakes…
Public notice is not posted on the Michigan PFAS Action Response Team (MPART) website through which the state is funneling all public information related to the widening state probe into PFAS contamination in groundwater, drinking water supplies, lakes and rivers, wastewater effluent and industrial emissions…
According to documents and former employees, Wolverine began sending sludge from the former Rockford tannery to the Central Sanitary Landfill in the early 1980s. Wolverine began using PFAS-laden 3M Scotchgard to treat shoe leather at the tannery in 1958.
The landfill is rubber lined, has a leachate collection system and is certified to accept industrial waste. Nonetheless, Republic Services stopped taking Wolverine dump site excavation waste last fall at Pierson and the Ottawa Farms landfill in Coopersville.
The Pierson landfill has had groundwater problems in the past.”
Read the full article by Garret Ellison