09/13/2006

Polluted water problems persist

Residents adjust lifestyle to avoid contaminated water

BY CRAIG McCOOL

mccoolrecordeagle@sbcglobal.net

Record-Eagle/Douglas Tesner
Diane Simancek pours bottled water into ice cube trays. She can’t use water from the tap because the well that supplies her Schuss Mountain Village home is contaminated by a polluted plume of groundwater.

BELLAIRE — Diane Simancek keeps a gallon jug of water in the refrigerator and another by the kitchen sink.

Several empty jugs are crushed for recycling. The few remaining full ones are in a box by the basement stairs. It's time to arrange for more state-funded bottled water for drinking and cooking.

"I'm down to my last case, and I just wanted to know when I could expect my next delivery," Simancek says into the telephone.

A pause while she is put on hold, and then an exasperated look passes over her face.

"They're telling me to call their office in Grand Rapids," she says and hangs up.

She and her husband, Robert, finished building their retirement home last fall in the Shanty Creek resort, right in the path, it turns out, of one of the largest groundwater contamination plumes in Michigan.

Bob Wagner, director of the Department of Environmental Quality regional headquarters in Gaylord, told a local group of concerned citizens at a recent meeting that the plume "continues to surprise" officials, and not in a good way.

"We've not had one so big, so expansive, and continuing to expand," Wagner told members of ACUTE — Antrim County United Through Ecology.

Five miles long and nearly a mile across at its widest point, the tricholoethylene, or TCE, plume begins in Mancelona and stretches five miles to the northwest, into the Shanty Creek resort.

The manufacturing company whose improper dumping methods caused the contamination has been out of business for 40 years. But the problem persists and is still growing.

When first tested in 1999, the Simanceks' water was clean. But follow-up tests after they moved in last November showed TCE levels at 26 parts-per-billion, and then 31 parts-per-billion. The state standard for drinking water is 5 parts-per-billion.

"The man from the health department came by and said 'You know, you really shouldn't be drinking your water,'" Diane Simancek said. "We drank it from November to June."

No more. Nor do they cook with it.

"But I am brushing my teeth with it," she said. "It's just hard to brush your teeth with bottled water."

The state is considering expanding a four-year-old, $6.5 million municipal water system to include the newly discovered contaminated areas. Local officials, including Mancelona utilities administrator Gary Knapp, estimated a $5 million price tag for the expansion.

Wagner told Knapp and others at the meeting that the DEQ likely would have $20 million statewide to cover such projects next year. A $5 million allocation for a single project is unlikely, he said.

"It's our intent to go forward with a water system that we can afford to the people who need it," Wagner said.

Robert Simancek, sitting through his first ACUTE meeting about the plume, looked chagrined at the prospect of prioritizing.

"I'm at 31 parts per billion now," he said.

"Right," Wagner answered. "You're definitely in."

But any water expansion project will not begin until next spring. For the Simanceks, that means at least six more months without tap water.

"It's hard to get used to the habit of not turning on your faucet and sticking a glass under it," Diane Simancek said.