Tag: Environmental Justice

Origially Published in The Grand Haven Tribune in 2019

Finding that legacy pollution on your property is a bit like realizing your house was built on an abandoned burial ground in a bad horror movie: both release potentially harmful, seemingly invisible influences on your life that everyone is too embarrassed to tell you about until after the haunting starts. 

And, like desecrating the grave of a vengeful spirit, you will be the one that reaps the consequences, even if you didn’t intend it. 

This is what makes legacy pollution — of which probably the most infamous right now is PFAS — so terrifying. These are chemicals all around us that we weren’t aware of, and so could affect any of us. In many cases, manufacturers didn’t even know they were harmful until after we put them into the environment. 

Michigan has an unfortunate history with this sort of thing, from the contaminated air that sweeps off Zug Island, to the dioxin still embedded in Tittabawassee River sediment, courtesy of Dow Chemical. 

The issue came to the West Michigan Environmental Action Council’s attention when we were investigating the cleanup of a vapor intrusion site in southeast Grand Rapids in 2016. There, carcinogenic chemicals known as trichloroethylene (TCE) and perchloroethylene (PCE) were leaking up into the air from an old dry cleaner. The state had known about the contamination for a while, but we were just beginning to realize that these chemicals could leak into the air in a vaporized form. 

Only a year before, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had changed their standards as to how much of these chemicals were safe to be around. As a result, the site in southeast Grand Rapids, as well as 4,200 others, became pollution hotspots over time. 

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that the way we use and discover chemicals often lags behind our understanding of what they do to us. That’s what makes this sort of thing possible: These were miracle chemicals that solved an important need. We didn’t have any reason not to use them. In the case of the southeast Grand Rapids site, there’s not even anyone to blame anymore. The dry cleaner stopped operation in the 1990s. 

This makes legacy pollution tricky from a legal standpoint. According to parts 201 and 213 of Michigan’s Natural Resources and Environmental Act, owners and operators are the ones responsible for testing the level of contaminants on their property. However, this requires that you know about contamination on your property. If you don’t, the law doesn’t exactly make clear what happens next. In a lot of these cases, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) keeps records of historical contamination sites, but because of the way the law works, it’s not technically their responsibility to inform you. 

This is the Catch 22 of legacy pollution: We’re expected to test for it when we don’t know that there’s anything to test. If we go with an earlier metaphor, that’s like holding you responsible for finding the cursed archeological site under your house when you didn’t even know people around here bury their dead. You’re a software programmer from Bangalore. 

Fortunately, EGLE and the EPA will intervene like in the case of high-profile legacy pollutants, such as the PFAS at Robinson Elementary School. But there’s only so much that these agencies can do. There isn’t enough funding to test TCE and PCE levels in every former dry cleaner. They have to pick and choose which potential sites seem like they could do the most harm. 

Sometimes mistakes get made. Sometimes harmful substances leak into our lives. 

In those cases, you are the only one who can find out. You are the only one who can draw attention to it. And you are the one responsible for setting it right. 

If you’re concerned that a place you work or live in might have lingering pollution, EGLE keeps a database of potential sites and a map tool. They also host a series of webinars, along with in-person training on a variety of topics. The EPA also recently launched a chemical review status tracker that can help you pinpoint potential sites.