Read the full article by Lauren Edwards (Fox 17 West Michigan)
“PORTAGE, Mich. — The City of Portage announced in a statement that 25 residential water wells are being tested for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl contamination, also called PFAs, that they believe stem from an old landfill site on South Westnedge Avenue.
For years the site has been a large park with baseball fields, a hockey rink, dog park and skateboard area. However, residents in the area said decades ago it was the city’s landfill.
‘Because we had this landfill where it’s something that we needed to test and we were testing it for a period of time,’ said city manager Joe La Margo. ‘Then when PFAS started to rear it’s ugly head, they started recently testing for that back in April.’
La Margo said they have an environmentalist who tested the site and other areas in the city.
According to the press release, they discovered a PFAS contamination in May 2019 at the site. Months later they learned that the PFAS were ‘potentially migrating beyond the boundaries of the site.’
‘It was back in November that we noticed that one of the areas going north, it started to run off of the property, La Margo said during an interview with FOX 17. ‘So we talked to our environmentalist. We contacted [Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy].’
In late January, the wells were tested and the results should return later this week, he said…