Oshtemo Township Restricted Groundwater Zone
KALAMAZOO, MI -- Kalamazoo County officials have established a zone that requires some Oshtemo Township property owners to connect to city water due to contamination from the KL Avenue landfill.
The Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners voted 10-1 Tuesday, Dec. 1 to establish a groundwater restricted zone, which includes areas where groundwater has been contaminated by the landfill plus properties within a 1,000- foot buffer zone.
The 61-acre landfill in Oshtemo Township opened in 1955 and was operated as a private dump, then as the Oshtemo Township landfill and finally as a landfill for Kalamazoo County. It was closed in 1979 after contaminants were found in nearby residential wells, and it was designated a federal Superfund site in 1982.
The KLA Group, which includes Oshtemo Township, Kalamazoo County, the city of Kalamazoo and Pfizer Inc., have worked under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency oversight since 1992 to complete cleanup on the site. Other parties responsibility for the waste have contributed money to settle their liabilities.
Cleanup included placing a multi-layer cap over the landfill to stop any leaching of waste, which was completed in 2006. Officials also have installed more than 100 monitoring wells and have tested hundreds of residential wells, many of them on an ongoing basis. In 2010, the KLA Group paid $1.23 million for water mains to be installed that allowed nearly 60 residential properties to connect to city water.
Officials are especially worried about three contaminants that have been found in higher concentrations than Michigan's standard for drinking water - benzene, tetrahydrofuran and 1,4-diethylene dioxide, said Vern Johnson, environmental health director for Kalamazoo County.
As of now, more than 330 properties in the affected area have been connected to municipal water at no cost to the property owners, and 98 percent of residences in the zone are already connected to the municipal water supply.
With the approval of the groundwater restricted zone, the KLA Group will work with the seven remaining property owners who haven't yet been connected to city water.
The county could grant a waiver for wells that are not used for drinking water if they meet the county's sanitary code requirements and if the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality determines using the wells would not spread contamination.
Johnson said establishing the groundwater restricted zone is one of the steps outlined in the EPA's record of decision for the landfill. He said the county could either establish the zone or place restrictive covenants on deeds for each property within the zone.
Johnson said the KLA Group will continue to work with property owners to address their concerns and get them hooked up to city water.
Authorities will also continue to monitor the plume on contamination and its direction of flow. "It could get larger. It could get smaller as well," Johnson said.
Robert Engels, an Oshtemo Township resident living on Wickford Drive, has concerns about the process. He said his family bought their house two years ago and first heard of the possible contamination when a worker arrived to test the water from the spigot on the side of their house.
Engels said the groundwater restricted zone ends at his neighbor's property, but he has concerns about using his well even though he is just outside of the restricted zone. "We're being affected by it right now because our water's polluted," he said.
At the same time, Engels said, other property owners in the area who have switched from wells to the municipal water supply have expressed disappointment with the hardness of the city water.
Overall, Engels said that people should have more information available to them about the issue and that he's frustrated by the response he has gotten. He said he has had to research himself what the chemicals in the groundwater are and their possible effects.
"I want them to tell anybody who there's even a small chance this could come their way 10 years from now," Engels said. "They need to be informed and they need to know who's responsible for it and they need to have time to have a proper reaction to that."
Moving forward, Johnson said the KLA Group will work directly with property owners in the zone to switch them to city water and those just outside the zone on whether city water is available and whether they want to hook up.
Emily Monacelli is a reporter for the Kalamazoo Gazette. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter.