EPA testing soil near river
 Saturday, April 05, 2008
 JUSTIN ENGEL THE SAGINAW NEWS

 Not all the residents of a riverside Saginaw neighborhood see eye-to-eye when it comes to the dioxin debate, but they agree on one thing:

It's time for closure.

Catherine A. Faunce and John K. Brown live 10 houses apart on Riverside Drive, a private road straddling the Tittabawassee River and the focus of a new chapter in the dioxin dispute.

Both their properties have undergone various tests by several agencies over the years. Scientists, government agencies and corporations alike have prodded their land.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is the latest to enter the fray.

Federal officials remain vague about details surrounding the soil sampling under way. A spokesman said a February disclosure about ''an elevated dioxin level found in a residential soil sample'' discovered by Midland's Dow Chemical Co. in November prompted the initiative.

''We just want (a resolution) to come to fruition,'' Brown said. ''Whether it needs to be cleaned up, whether it's fine, we just want to know.''

The EPA would not disclose names or addresses of the participants, but The Saginaw News discovered testing under way in the Riverside neighborhood, just east of Green Point Nature Center. The targeted homeowners are willingly submitting to the testing.

Faunce, a 75-year-old retired Michigan Bell Telephone Co. personnel director, spent Friday morning pumping flood water out of her basement as contractors from Weston Solutions Inc., a national company, used drill-like tools to extract soil from her backyard.

''I don't care what they test,'' Faunce said. ''Just as long as they don't make me move.''

She moved into the home after Saginaw's flood of 1986 with her husband, Dale C. Faunce, who died in 2006.

''The flood drove people out,'' Faunce said. ''We saw that as an opportunity. It's the most beautiful place on the earth to live.''

The trade-off were days such as Friday, when high waters seeped into her basement and federal contractors arrived on her land.

It wasn't an unusual situation for Faunce.

In 2005-06, Dow cleaned 330 households along the Tittabawassee River on Midland and Saginaw county properties that the DEQ deemed contaminated.

State officials dubbed them ''priority one'' areas, meaning that the properties were flooded in spring 2004 and presumably were contaminated with dioxin levels above 1,000 parts per trillion. Crews reseeded patches of lawn, laid topsoil, paved walkways and cleaned carpets.

State guidelines require corrective action on environmental contamination measuring above 90 parts per trillion. Michigan's state average for dioxin in soil is 7 parts per trillion.

Faunce also had her property and body tested for dioxin levels as part of the $15 million University of Michigan exposure study, which showed dioxin contamination in riverside residents had more to do with age than pollutants Dow deposited in the waterway largely at the turn of the 20th century.

Faunce said she was satisfied with the results and remains frustrated that the debate didn't end when scientists unveiled the study's results in 2006.

''That's how radical the people are,'' she said. ''It's just like they want to put Dow Chemical down.''

Brown is a bit more skeptical. The 47-year-old wholesale representative for Munro American, a Hot Springs, Ariz.-based shoe company, said Dow ''has been dragging their feet for too long'' concerning dioxin.

So he wasn't disappointed two weeks ago when EPA agents arrived at his doorstep.

''It's a little scary when federal government plates pull up to your driveway,'' said Brown, who lives at the home with his wife, Kara L. Harris, director of education at the Saginaw Art Museum. ''They seem pretty determined to find out what's going on.''

Brown said he's tired of hearing ''one extreme to the other'' from environmentalists and Dow officials.

''The truth lies somewhere in the middle,'' he said. ''I hope we can make a decision with what (the EPA) finds.''

As of Friday, Brown's home remained on the agency's to-do list. They expect to complete the entire sampling initiative within two to three weeks. v

Justin Engel is a staff writer for The Saginaw News. You may reach him at 776-9691.

©2008 Saginaw News
 

For additional articles like this one, go to the Tittabawassee River Watch web site www.trwnews.net for complete coverage of the Tittabawassee River Dow Chemical dioxin contamination saga. . The Newspaper / Media page of our site contains an extensive archive of media articles dating back to January 2002. The source organization's web site link is listed to the right of the article, visit often for other news in our area. The Newspaper / Media page may be accessed by scrolling down to the bottom of the CONTENTS section and clicking on the Newspaper/Media link.