Reinventing the 'Wheel'

Despite 15 years of efforts, a Lansing Superfund site's legacy lingers

?Drums of toxic chemicals and gooey black ponds were among the pollutants found in pits behind Motor Wheel Corp. in North Lansing in 1970. Water pollution in nearby municipal water wells was discovered in 1982—at that time the pollution plume was contained in a small area in the underground glacial aquifer.

From 1938 until 1978, Motor Wheel used its backyard for disposal of paints, solvents, pesticides, debris, lead, benzene and xylenes.

According to the suppressed report, the Ingham County Health Department cited Motor Wheel for illegal dumping in 1983. The department was worried that chemicals could trickle deeper into the Saginaw Aquifer—the drinking water source for more than 90 percent of county residents.

But clean-up efforts didn’t begin until after a 15-year legal battle between the companies involved—Goodyear, owner of the Motor Wheel site, and W.R. Grace, a fertilizer company. These two companies were found to be more than 98 percent responsible and were forced to pay almost $30 million to clean up the area.

Placed on the EPA’s Superfund list in 1986, the Motor Wheel site is still being cleaned up.

As a result of these toxic chemicals, the Lansing Board of Water and Light was forced to close down 10 municipal water wells located in the pollution plume.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has been flushing the wells with high-pressure water to get rid of the contaminants. “The contaminated water is routed to a treatment plant located onsite and then treated before it’s drained into the Grand River,” said Robert Franks, the state’s project manager of the Motor Wheel site.

People living in the Motor Wheel area drink bottled water because they believe their tap water is contaminated. (It isn’t. The water is no different from the rest of Lansing’s water since all the water from the 110 city wells is mixed together in two conditioning plants and redistributed across the county.)

The long version of the water quality report says, “W.R. Grace’s behavior in Lansing is similar to its conduct in Woburn, Mass., (site of the John Travolta movie, “A Civil Action”) insofar that it has often chosen to litigate rather than work to resolve the pollution problem.”

Because of “astronomical” soil clean-up costs (in the hundreds of millions of dollars), as part of remediation, the companies were required to cover up the contaminated soil with layers of clay “to prevent people from coming into contact with the toxics,” Franks said.
Several years ago, Franks said inspectors tested some of the defunct soil. “It was a bright pink—we don’t know what chemicals were in it to cause that eerie color.”

Mike Allen, environmental toxicologist at the Ingham County Health Department said that “there is no set protocol for analyzing the 41 domestic wells around Motor Wheel (wells that directly pull from the polluted Saginaw Aquifer), because they are not on city water.”

Health Studies of Motor Wheel’s Neighbors and Employees Lacking
Promised follow-up cancer studies by the Michigan Department of Public Health (now the Department of Community Health)—of neighbors or of employees at the site—never took place.

In 1989, the Michigan Department of Community Health looked for residents living nearby the Motor Wheel site on North Larch Street who had private water wells. They found 41. Three years later, the department conducted a preliminary health assessment.

This was excluded from the Health Department short report. The PEER report explained that more seven years ago, a resident living about a half-mile from the Motor Wheel site requested that the Community Health Department conduct a health assessment due to “a high incidence of various sorts of cancer among the people of her neighborhood.”

In the department’s response, it explained that “a health statistics review of cancer incidence in the site area (would be conducted) to determine if an increase in cancer incidence may be associated with site contamination.”

“We found no exposure pathway (of toxic chemicals) to any private wells,” said Brendan Boyle of the Community Health Department. “Therefore, there was no reason to conduct a further study of possible health statistics in the area.”

A large amount of vinyl chloride was found throughout the Motor Wheel site. Vinyl chloride is a known human carcinogen and liver toxicant if consumed above the standard of two parts per billion set by the EPA.

“If exposed to large amounts of vinyl chloride,” Linda Larsen, a state toxicologist, said, “people can experience nerve damage or liver cancer. Tips of fingers could turn white and hurt. There also could be a sensitivity to cold weather."

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