HARING TOWNSHIP — The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, also known as EGLE, is announcing an expansion of more testing of private wells in Haring Township for the presence of PFAS.
Brandi Wheeler with EGLE said they are expanding to make sure there’s not more people impacted.
“The sampling from Haring Township, and the advocates have provided some other cyclopure samples from citizens in the area, which give us reason to believe that we haven’t found the edge of the people’s influence here,” said Wheeler.
She said some 21 homes and 9 businesses West of Plett Road and north of East 13th Street have been identified by EGLE as needing additional testing-at no cost to the owners.
“You start out in a small area and then you kind of expand until you can understand what’s happening there,” said Wheeler.
She said owners will be notified by mail soon. The list just finalized on Wednesday.
Susan Giftos, co-founder of Cadillac Advocates for Clean Water, said she’s not surprised.
“We’ve known about the wastewater treatment plant being located on Platt Road. We know that they accepted leachate from the landfill. It’s all the liquid stuff that’s collected from the landfill. The county was sending it to the wastewater treatment plant. I recently found out it had been sent there since the 1970s,” said Giftos.
Giftos said she suspects that might have something to do with the presence of PFAS since they didn’t test for these ‘forever chemicals’ back then.
Wheeler said they are looking into that theory.
“We are looking into that. We’re looking through records, historic records there. Looking at a lot of the background information and all of the current sampling that comes through. So that is being looked at for a potential source for this,” said Wheeler.
Wheeler said they still don’t believe there’s a smoking gun but that’s why it’s necessary to expand their testing.
“They’d also tell us a little bit more, hopefully, about where the PFAS is, kind of what depth it is showing up and help us kind of narrow down any additional investigation that might be needed for it,” said Wheeler.
Giftos is also hoping the expansion will help Haring Township secure grants to help with clean-up.
“I know Haring just met with some PFAS destruction technique companies and I think right now they’re just trying to collect as much information as they can,” said Giftos.