Toxic water turns sidewalks brown

GRAND HAVEN, Mich. (WOOD) - Bob Lyon's yard was the envy of his neighborhood. His well water was full of nutrients -- and it was free. But while the iron-rich water was keeping his grass green, it was turning his sidewalk brown.

Then, seven years ago, the state sent him a warning letter, but not about the iron.

They were "telling me that I couldn't pump any more of my water because of contamination," said Lyon, who lives on Slayton Avenue, east of U.S. 31.

The state Department of Environmental Quality mailed the warning to more than 1,400 homeowners in Grand Haven, in an area east of U.S. 31 and north of roughly Grand Avenue.

It's the state's largest mass notification for a contaminated site.

The property owners are among 6,700 across Michigan, including nearly 4,200 in West Michigan, who have received notices that their groundwater is contaminated -- usually by pollution migrating from neighboring industrial sites, according to a 24 Hour News 8 analysis of state records.

In Grand Haven, the groundwater is loaded not only with iron, which turns everything brown, but with a cancer-causing chemical.

"They told us there was something in the water," recalls Ginger Creasy, of 1000 Pennoyer Ave., in the center of the plume. "I forgot what it was, but told us not to be drinking it."

Such a plume usually is not a health concern for places like Grand Haven, which has city water. That's the same with many of the plumes of pollution in West Michigan.

But in Grand Haven, some of the 1,400 residents in the plume use private irrigation wells, so-called stab wells, tapping into the carcinogen, state DEQ officials said.

"They could be spraying their lawns with vinyl chloride," said the DEQ's Abigail Hendershott, who oversees the state's response to the Grand Haven pollution. "They could be spraying their gardens and stuff like that."

Or, she said, they could be drawing cancer-causing vapors into their own basements.

The state started an investigation about a decade ago in Grand Haven behind the former Ottawa Steel plant on Woodlawn Avenue, between U.S. 31 and the old high school. They were looking for oil in the groundwater after reports that Ottawa Steel had been dumping oil there years ago.

They found oil, then dug deeper and discovered something far worse -- vinyl chloride.

Vinyl chloride is bad stuff. It often comes from industrial cleaning solvents that have leaked or were dumped.

The state still doesn't know where it came from -- in fact, it has identified up to 22 possible sources -- but one thing is certain: It wasn't Ottawa Steel, state records show.

The state drilled monitoring wells to determine how far the vinyl chloride had spread. What they found: The highest levels, nearly 4,000 parts per billion -- about 2,000 times higher than the allowable level -- were in an area near U.S. 31 and Taylor Avenue.

"In our hot zones, it's pretty hot," Hendershott said.

The contamination has spread in groundwater that creeps through sand and gravel, just six feet underground in some areas. The plume bottoms out about 30 feet deep, atop a layer of clay, Hendershott said.

"All the vinyl chloride seems to be kind of pooling along that clay layer, and then running toward the Grand River to the north," she said. She said it's likely reaching the river, though in small enough amounts that it is not an environmental problem.

Some neighbors had their own suspicions about the cause of the plume.

Clayton McCastle said his father-in-law worked at a machine shop not far from Ottawa Steel in the 1950s. The company, he said, injected chemicals into the ground.

"He said, 'If at anytime it ever happened in the future, you had problems, it would probably come from that area,'" McCastle said.

The state in 2002 took the unusual step of notifying neighbors. Usually, notification is left to the company responsible for the mess. The state hosted a public meeting, drawing 50 to 75 residents, Hendershott said.

The state offered to cap private wells in the neighborhood, at no cost. One or two homeowners took up the offer, Hendershott recalls.

"I do wish the people would have been a little bit more concerned about it," she said.

McCastle, of 914 Grant Ave., said he stopped using his sprinkling well. "I thought it was wise to unhook when they told me to," he said. "That's why they're public service people. I believe them."

McCastle said an official told him the contamination hadn't spread to his part of the neighborhood. He still sees crews testing water from monitoring wells on his street, including one in front of his home. If any tests were positive, officials promised to tell him, he said.

However, tests taken for the DEQ in 2001 show slightly elevated levels of vinyl chloride in the monitoring well in front of his home, and levels more than 1,000 times what is allowed in a monitoring well just a few doors down from him, according to documents obtained by 24 Hour News 8.

The Creasy family, on Pennoyer, never stopped using its well, even after