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Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Oscoda is a beautiful little town on Lake Huron that, to the eye, is as “Pure Michigan” as any commercial – sandy beaches, sparkling blue water, full of outdoor adventures.
The legendary Au Sable River flows through an area where tourism is king and sports fishing and hunting are part of the attraction.
Only, Oscoda was once the home of a U.S. Air Force base, and that idyllic town now has warnings to not eat resident fish or harvest the deer in some areas, or even touch the strange foam bubbling up on the shore. The Air Force put “forever chemicals” there for decades and now won't make good and clean it up.
“It's really known as a sort of outdoor recreation paradise,” said Garret Ellison, MLive environmental writer. “Unfortunately, you have this iconic river and it passes Wurtsmith Air Force Base. …”
That property is leaching PFAS compounds into groundwater and surrounding waterways. The chemicals help smother fires effectively, repel water, keep things from sticking together. You know some of the brands it has been used in: StainMaster, Teflon, ScotchGard. It also has negative health effects on humans and animals.
In Oscoda, the chemicals were used in firefighting foam. The victims are not only the people whose water and bodies have these PFAS pollutants in them; it’s the economic vitality and the tourism viability of one of the most beautiful places in Michigan.
This is a travesty, and a tragedy. Ellison has for five years covered the complex angles of the story, and the difficulty state and local officials have faced with the Air Force.
“The Air Force has unlimited resources and attorneys can just delay it,” Ellison said. “So, they have been investigating, taking samples, writing reports, taking more samples, writing more reports for years. And the community is just fed up – they’re saying, ‘Look, you know enough now to do something about this.’”
Ellison’s beat, and the PFAS story, is not limited to Oscoda. In fact, Ellison’s coverage of the response to a PFAS crisis in Rockford, near Grand Rapids, illustrates a contrast in approaches and outcomes.
Rockford shares a legacy of PFAS because for decades the chemicals was used in the treatment of leather for shoes by Wolverine Worldwide. The waste from the manufacturing process seeps out of landfills into surrounding groundwater.
However, while Oscoda and the state have been pulling teeth with the Air Force and its attorneys over responsibility and remediation since the state identified PFAS there in 2010, the Rockford area has seen quite a bit of progress in the past year alone.
Drinking water mains are being extended to polluted neighborhoods; safe water is being delivered to homes; one of the major sources is primed for remedial action; and Wolverine is in the final stages of getting approval for extraction wells, to pull contamination from the ground at a former tannery.
The difference is, in Rockford the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a unilateral order for certain cleanup, and the state of Michigan and three local townships were able to negotiate a settlement with Wolverine Worldwide and 3M, which makes the compounds, using new state laws unique to PFAS cleanup.
In the case of Wurtsmith, the counterpart to one federal entity – the EPA – is another federal agency – the Air Force. The state of Michigan has some authority, but it’s limited and continually challenged. Too often, the state is reduced to monitoring and asking the Air Force to do the right thing.
“In Oscoda, the federal government is left to its own devices and its own schedules and its own prerogatives, and nobody is forcing them to do it,” Ellison said, noting that the military has hundreds of bases where PFAS foam was used, and may be wary of setting cleanup precedents.
One force that is being overlooked is that of moral responsibility: Doing the right thing. That’s a precedent that needs to be set, and followed.
The Air Force used Oscoda for 70 years. It is the duty of the Air Force to clean up after itself, and leave this town as pristine as it found it. To hear my full discussion with Garret Ellison on the PFAS environmental crisis, click here for this week’s episode of MLive’s Behind the Headlines podcast.
Editor's note: I value your feedback to my columns, story tips and your suggestions on how to improve our coverage. Let me know how MLive helps you, and how we can do better. Please feel free to reach out by emailing me at editor@mlive.com.
John Hiner Executive Editor Vice President of Content Mlive Media Group
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