EPA: Tests of green spill beside I-696 show serious pollution

Bill Laitner | Detroit Free Press

Initial test results of soil and water samples taken from beside I-696 in Madison Heights — where a green gusher of polluted water spurted earlier from a freeway wall — showed “high levels of multiple contaminants" in the soil and groundwater.

State and federal pollution officials said Friday that the samples of soil and groundwater were taken from beneath and near a former metal-plating factory, whose site is directly up the freeway embankment from the spot where a bright-green gusher of polluted groundwater began spurting from a freeway wall during the afternoon rush hour on Dec. 20.

The site, on eastbound I-696 about a half-mile before Dequindre, led to an emergency environmental cleanup last weekend. The right lane of the freeway in the area, as well as the exit ramp at Couzens, will stay closed indefinitely while workers remain on the site, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Transportation said Friday.

Next week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will begin extracting dozens of soil borings as part of an effort to determine how seriously the soil is contaminated and how far the contamination has spread with flows of rain and groundwater, according to a news release Friday from the recently renamed Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy — or EGLE.

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“Electro-Plating Services is responsible for contaminated liquid that migrated off-site onto the Interstate-696 freeway shoulder last week," prompting the emergency clean-up, said the release. Tests of water samples taken from storm sewers near the site showed levels of hexavalent chromium at 0.14 milligrams per liter, slightly higher than the standard for safe drinking water of 0.10 milligrams per liter, the release said.

Hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium-6, is the same highly toxic, cancer-causing chemical that a giant California utility let contaminate drinking water, according to a lawsuit brought by activist Erin Brockovich, whose David-versus-Goliath battle became a movie in 2000 starring Julia Roberts.

“You don’t want to touch it — you don’t want to go in that building,” EPA investigator Tricia Edwards, at the site on Monday, told a Free Press reporter and photographer.

Flows into the storm sewer eventually enter Lake St. Clair, many miles away, and by then the concentrations of contamination would be “well below detectable levels although still a significant concern for incremental accumulation in the ecosystem,” the release said.

Tests also showed high levels of contaminants were found in the groundwater flowing out of the freeway embankment, including hexavalent chromium, trichloroethylene (TCE) and cyanide — all chemicals previously used in the metal-plating factory; and soil tests of samples from the freeway embankment also showed hexavalent chromium, as well as "multiple heavy metals and other contaminants," although at levels below the threshold considered hazardous for human contact, the release said.

It continued: “Regulators continue to work on the site daily during the holiday weeks, conducting the following activities: daily vacuuming of nearby storm-sewer catch basins; maintenance of sump pumps that are collecting contaminated water, both from inside the facility and outside on the highway embankment; daily monitoring of air quality in the building, and preparing for the impact of expected rain and freezing weather."

Electro-Plating Services was issued a cease and desist order from EGLE (then called MDEQ) in December 2016, “due to extreme mismanagement of hazardous waste that posed an immediate and substantial threat to the community,” according to EGLE.

In 2017 and 2018, the EPA conducted a $1.5-million emergency cleanup, removing the hazardous chemicals and pumping contaminated liquid from an earthen pit in the basement of the facility. In November 2019, the company owner Gary Sayers was convicted of operating an unlicensed hazardous waste storage facility, sentenced to one year in federal prison, and ordered to repay the EPA $1.5 million for cleanup costs.

According to a state of Michigan official at the site Monday, last year’s cleanup removed the “imminent threat” to health and safety. But investigators didn’t figure on the basement of the factory gradually becoming a hidden reservoir of contaminated liquid, growing with rain and groundwater to become a small geyser seeking an outlet.

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Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com