Cadillac Advocates for Clean Water are trying to piece together how the city of Cadillac has found itself with an emerging PFAS or forever chemical situation.
The grassroots organization was formed back in December after PFAS were found at unsafe levels in Cadillac’s Industrial Park area.
The group’s co-founder, Susan Giftos said she started the online group back in December after noticing that a lot of people had many unanswered questions.
She said what they discovered is extremely concerning.
“It’s what we suspected for a long time. And as we have more information coming in, it’s becoming more and more clear. There has been a lack of transparency in numerous cases. And it would appear that there’s been a focus on protecting industry over protecting the health of the community,” said Giftos.
Giftos said she has a handful of people filing FOIA after FOIA, digging into how Cadillac ended up with PFAS in the Industrial area and why it took so long for people to know about it.
“I think that the information just wasn’t passed along to the city council. It wasn’t passed along to the community. I don’t think they wanted us on the radar at all because it would entail a lot of additional cleanup,” said Giftos.
Giftos said that raises a lot of questions.
City manager Marcus Peccia was the chair of the Local Development Finance Authority for years.
and utilities director Jeff Dietlin is the director.
The LDFA is in charge of clean-up in the Industrial Park area and was formed back in the 1990’s.
Giftos said there were so many instances they’ve uncovered where information was not shared, for example:
“In 2010 and 2020, the EPA has been doing five-year reviews on the Kaiser clean-up site, and we’ve learned that the 2010, the 2015 report, they were never passed along to the city council by the city manager,” said Giftos.
Giftos said those reports had critical information that clean-up needed to be done to protect the community.
“The 2020 report in particular mentioned that the EPA thought that the city should task for fast because it was an emerging contaminant, and the LDFA voted that down and chose not to do that,” said Giftos.
She said bylaws also weren’t followed, meetings weren’t being held, and the LDFA board fell out of compliance with the EPA.
Giftos is hoping the report will fill in some of the blanks they have been trying to get from the city, claiming the city has not been transparent until they were forced to be.
Giftos said she hopes this will help facilitate change and remove the distrust between residents and the city.
“We just need transparency. The whole community needs transparency. They need answers. They need help. They need somebody to advocate for them. And they’re frustrated and they’re scared,” said Giftos.
To check out more about the timeline and documents uncovered, please click here.