PETOSKEY, MI -- CMS Land Company believes they've found a local solution to the Leachate problem at Bay Harbor and East Park, but it's being met with some serious concern.
What to do with the contaminated water from the former Penn-Dixie Cement Plant near Petoskey?
That has been the question, and for four years, the water has been shipped to a deep-well injection site.
But CMS Land Company says something else needs to be done, and they believe they've found the solution.
But this solution could mean small quantities of Mercury being diluted into the Great Lakes.
For five years it has worked like this...collect the run-off water that contains mercury from the contaminated land underneath Bay Harbor and East Park, neutralize it in this building, and then ship the result, an average of 150-thousand gallons per day, to a deep-injection well-site more than 50 miles away to Johannesburg. C-M-S Land Company has been in charge, and now, they say it's their belief they've found a better *local solution to take care of the local problem.
"We're proposing to build a $4 million state-of-the-art facility to treat the water that we collect here using the best available technology and then release that water back to Lake Michigan," said CMS Land Company Area Manager Tim Petrosky.
The main contaminant of concern is Mercury. The facility will remove 90 percent or more from the water. That water would then be mixed with clean water to meet environmental criteria before going back in the lake.
"The requirements are very, very stringent, in fact, the release criteria for mercury to the lake is 1.3 parts per trillion," said Petrosky.
Here's an analogy of the parts per trillion guideline. It'd be like placing one drop of contaminated liquid in all of the water of 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools combined.
But Doctor Grenetta Thomassey of the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council says this amount *may seem benign...it could be detrimental, which is why the council doesn't support this solution.
“You mix it with water, and let it go into Little Traverse Bay, and then you come back and you mix it with water, and let it go into Little Traverse Bay, and basically what you got is that exact same amount of mercury all ending up in Little Traverse Bay, so we're not in favor of that, no," said Thomassey.
CMS has submitted an application to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment.
“We look really carefully at mercury because it is one of the few contaminants that is known as a bio-cumulative compound, meaning that it builds up in the environment over a period of time, so we look at that very carefully," said Bob Wagner, the Lake Huron Regional Director of the DNRE.
“We think it's the best solution to environmental, safety, and economic perspective," said Petrosky.
“This is a bad deal. So we are not interested in anything going into Little Traverse Bay if it can be prevented," said Thomassee.
The DNRE will review the application and if the proposed treatment meets the guidelines, they'll issue a draft permit sometime in October or November. After that, they'll seek public comment.
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