PARCHMENT/COOPER TOWNSHIP (WKZO AM/FM) The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has released two maps revealing that 33 homes on private wells have PFAS levels that are above what the Government considers to be safe. (See map one)
They are clustered near the northern border between Parchment and Cooper Township.
There may be others that have not yet been tested.
They found 13 homes with both PFAS and PFOS levels that exceed the government lifetime standard of 70 parts per trillion. (see map two)
The home they tested that was closest to the former paper mill had a PFAS level of 340 ppt. That is nearly five times the amount considered safe.
Continued monitoring will be required for decades, because homes that test below the safe level today, may not always test below that level as the plume of PFAS contamination continues to move underground.
MDEQ Analysts are still working to understand an outlier, a single home to the north and east of the area hit hardest by the contaminant that tested with high levels of PFAS beyond a number of other homes that tested in the safe range.
They plan additional testing to determine what is really going on in that area.
The maps also spark other questions. What about those homes just beyond the edge of the one mile circle. Another more disturbiing question. What if that one mile radius was drawn around what we now know is the actual source of the contamination; the old paper mill and its landfill.
The original test area used the three municipal wells as the central pivot, because it was not confirmed at the time that the paper plant was the source of the chemicals.
That has changed. Shouldn’t the test area?
All of the homes that are in the test area have free bottled water available to them, but three weeks on bottled water won’t reverse years of exposure. It may be impossible to determine exactly how long people living in that area have been exposed to the contaminants prior to the discovery late last month, but it may be safe to guess it has been years if not decades.
Of the 100-plus private wells tested, 33 have a problem that will have to be remediated. 44 tested between 10 and 70 ppt. Nine homes tested between 0 and 10 ppt and 22 tested clean.
Homeowners will be counseled individually on the options, which include in-home filter systems designed to address PFAS short term.
Health officials say most filters currently available at your hardware store won’t work on PFAS.
Expect the findings to also spark discussions on extending municipal water as a permanent solution.
Homes in that area that have wells that have not been tested for this class of chemicals may want to pursue having it done.
