KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) — After years of debate and confrontation with the Environmental Protection Agency over how to clean up the Allied Paper dump site, and on the verge of having to accept a compromise, the Kalamazoo City Commission is going for a Hail Mary.
On Monday, commissioners dropped a resolution backing the compromise plan and authorized the mayor and city staff to work with the EPA to see if a company that claims it can neutralize the polychlorinated biphenyls in the ground can actually pull it off.
Vice Mayor Don Cooney said, if they approved the resolution Monday night, they would have been settling for second-best.
“Let’s let them throw the Hail Mary and see if it works,” Cooney said. “If it does, great. If not, we did everything we could.”
WKZO-AM was first to report a few months ago that a firm, Biopath Solutions, wanted to tackle the dumpsite problem.
The EPA and the city remain skeptical, saying the company’s process, enzymatic dechlorination, has only worked on much smaller sites in sandier soil.
“I know that it seems sort of pie-in-the-sky that this would work,” commissioner Shannon Sykes said. “Maybe it is, but we owe it to our community and all the folks living here to try.”
If they succeed, it could mean turning 90 acres of toxic wasteland into something usable. If it fails, the city accepts the compromise.
The final decision will be up to the EPA.
– John McNeill
