001hello testing one two and councilmember since we're sitting back here good evening everybody excuse me I think we're gonna get started so if you want to grab a seat that would be great I will walk you through our agenda for this evening so we'll start with some quick introductions of some of us on staff and some of the city officials who are here I'll give you a quick overview of what our we're planning on talking about tonight and then the majority the time is really to listen to any questions you have and hopefully we'll be able to answer those so to start I am Brian Stiglitz I'm the manager of water treatment services for the city of Ann Arbor when with the city for over 20 years and working with me tonight on this presentation
002is gonna be Patti McCall with petrotech she's our hydrogeologist consultant who's helped with this presentation together and kayla coleman will be helping facilitate to keep us keep me on track and make sure that we're able to address all the questions that come up also stay off this here is uh lisa wan dress in the back she's our communications director or manager Craig QPR public services area administrator and we have an intern with systems planning who is over in the corner who is helping us get people signed in her name is Nani wolf and we have several City Council members here in the audience so I'd like to welcome council member Griswold councilmember Haner councilmember Eaton council member Nelson and councilmember Alam did I miss anybody okay well thank you all for coming tonight so why
003are we here we're here because we want to make sure that we are doing everything that we can to make sure that the city's drinking water supply is protected and that is really going to be the focus of our conversation tonight I'm going to talk a little bit about as part of this introduction what we need mean by Sentinel Wells because I think that's some jargon that people may not be familiar with but you keep that all in the context of the conversation tonight is what does the city feel like we need to do to make sure that we were amply prepared to make sure our water supply is protected and the water supply we're talking about the Huron River water supply our surface water supply in Barton pond so I'm gonna pass it quickly
004over to Kaiba to go through some of our rules for the evening hello so just to make sure that we can all get the most out of tonight's meeting I wanted to get us started with some discussion guidelines so I'm looking for a volunteer would anyone be willing to help us go through the proposed discussion guidelines here would someone read the first one he recognized to talk what happens if you okay be recognized to talk thank you and how about the second discussion guideline speak loudly and clearly so everyone can hear Thank You councilmember Haner one speaker and one point at a time allow everyone a chance to speak before a repeat speaker thank you and how about be respectful to other ideas and perspectives so my question for you all is do these sound
005like fair discussion guidelines that we can work with tonight is there anything missing that we should add to the list yes us and our waters are contaminated the spirit of we want change urgency to clean it up is missing okay Thank You Morgan so that's the spirit of change and urgency to be added as well to the discussion guidelines that agreeable okay all right thank you all and I'll hand it back over to Bryan Thank You Kayla a couple definitions to make sure that we're all on the same page as we go through this presentation tonight I think you've all are familiar with this term 1 4 dioxane but that is the groundwater contaminant that we're talking about and when we talk about this Gelman plume we're primarily talking about 1 4 dioxane this was
006a solvent that was used as part of a manufacturing process over off Wagner Road on the Gelman site from the 1960s through the 1980s the Gelman plume is the where the concentrations of this industrial solvent have gotten into the city's groundwater and we estimate that there's approximately 850 thousand pounds of this dioxane that might have been used at the site and and potentially gotten into the into the city's water system groundwater not into the city's water system Gelman manufactured medical and environmental filters so when we talk about Gelman plume that's what we're talking about sent noelle a sentinel well is a well that we are proposing to look at locations for installation where we don't expect dioxin to be so it's a monitoring well it's basically a sentinel well as synonymous with us with a
007monitoring well but it's a well where we are not necessarily looking for finding the contaminant at this point in time but it's strategically placed at a location where if we do detect the contaminant in that well it can serve as an early warning system for the city to take additional action in order to protect its water supply so a few things about what we won't be talking about tonight since we are focusing solely on protection of the city's water supply in Barton pond the consent judgment so this is part of ongoing litigation between several parties and and the Gilman and Gilman we won't be discussing that and that won't be on the agenda tonight we also won't be talking about near surface groundwater in basement sampling we're aware that there is some evidence that some
008dioxane has reached near surface water groundwater in the area of West Park again not part of the agenda for this evening the discussion about super fund and EPA's potential involvement in the future associated with remediation of this this site will also not be discussed and impacts on Scio Township we recognize that these are all very important things that a lot of people are concerned about but tonight we're going to be strictly focused on city's water supply that Martin pond with that I'm going to turn it over to Patty to walk through the technical part of the presentation welcome everybody thanks for attending tonight I appreciate the audience so just briefly what we're going to talk about tonight I'm gonna give you a little bit of background information on the Gelman plume in general the project
009phases that tetra Tech completed for this model our recommendations and then Brian's going to come back up and do the last couple of slides about the next steps the city's looking at okay this looks a lot different and it does on my computer let me grab my pointer real quick to point out a few things so you may have all seen this probably a lot of you have seen this figure it's from the County Health Department just to orient you this is the larger picture of where we're located so Scio township to the west and Arbor township to the north and then this sort of kind of a lavender color here is city of Ann Arbor here's 94 14 I'm just trying to orient you 94 head south here this is the former Gilman site
010here a couple of things to point out here this is the plume right this big thing here the darker color in the center is what's depicted is everything above 85 parts per billion and what's outside of it is everything that's been detected so at least a just a detection of one part per billion of one for taxing also on here is this red dashed line and the red dashed line is something called the Prohibition Zone in I believe 2005 Washington County Circuit Court deemed this area to basically groundwater could not be used to limit the exposure to to people who could potentially drink around the 1 4 dioxane groundwater most importantly about our conversation tonight here's Barton pond we are most interested and for this model what we did was we took a look at
011this this black line here is everything that ended up in our model and I'll talk about exactly what that model is and what we've included in it but just a couple of other things about this figure if you've not seen it before these are all monitoring wells that the responsible party has installed for the most part there are a couple of residential wells in there as well and then outside these other dots that are around in the township area those are residential wells so our project phases we broke it down into six phases there they're not independent of each other they we've kind of been working on all of them at the same time but quickly the I'll go through each of these in more detail but just as an overview phase one is the
012data collection phase which we started in July actually I think we may have started in June we've kind of been gathering information from various sources then we started the actual three-dimensional modeling the third phase is an independent review that we had completed phase four is a sample collection phase and then phase five well location recommendations and finally Public Engagement what we're doing here tonight okay so there's a lot on this slide but this is essentially what we've gathered together to put into our model so our model is a three dimensional rendering essentially of many variables to help us understand where we could put these sentinel wells that are going to protect the city's drinking water supply and in order to figure this out that that black line that I had outlined here we've included all
013the monitoring wells in this area it's kind of it looks a little sharp in places and it's because each of these lines is connected to a monitoring well so there are monitoring wells on the outside of this line and then all of the wells pretty much all of the wells that are inside our in in our model and the line is a little wrong in that we actually included one that heads out toward I think it's Glendale Road so it kind of pinches out you'll see that in the model you'll see the pinch out in the model so going back to this slide so we were trying to determine what spatial parameters we wanted to include and obviously the most important thing me being a geologist is geology so we we put in all of
014the geologists from those 67 I think monitoring wells is what's in our in our model in addition to that we needed to make sure that we were understanding things correctly so when you you can't just throw geology into the model you have to have things spatially arranged right so we need surface elevations and we need to know where you know a contact is where sand starts where clay starts so all of that elevation data is included in the model we also have the 1 4 dioxane concentration data from the most recent monitoring that was completed at each of these wells it's not a time travel for each one of the wells it's just one point in time and then we did reach out to several people for more information especially the elevation the elevation data
015is really important so we had a meeting with Roger rail from card and SR SW 2 to get some information from him he's obviously got a wealth of information isn't most of the people in this room know he provided us some boring logs some data he also gave us his elevation data we got elevation data from Dan Hamel with Eagle and also Fleiss and Bandar brink who is the responsible parties consultant provided us with their survey database so we had three survey databases to compare to and for the most part things lined up there were a few things that were a little odd and we just had to figure out you know what worked the best and sometimes it was going back to surface topo but more often than not it was just that there
016were some data gaps like maybe Roger didn't have some data but Eagle had some data so we were able to fill in those data gaps ok so some information about the model itself it is a three dimensional deterministic model and by deterministic I mean it is a snapshot in time it's not a stochastic model which you may have seen which gives you some time travel into the future you can understand what what's happening maybe 10 years down the road this is just a snapshot in that time so we can take a look at some cross sectional views essentially and I want to talk a little bit about kriging because that's important to this model and to too many models kriging is an interpolation process where you've given two end points essentially and maybe we don't
017have enough data in between to definitively say the sand layer continues 100 feet this direction the model will determine a weighted average essentially and come up with what it thinks will be in between those spaces and that's important in this model for many reasons and part partly because the well network for the responsible party especially to the north we're missing there's big space there's a lot of space in between and that's part of the reason why we're not sure what's happening to the north you know if water is traveling that direction creaking yep yep yep so what we did is we we interpreted those boring logs into simplistic units clay silt sand gravel and we'll get that actually might be the next slide hang on one more site okay so a couple of constraints for
018this I did talk a little bit about the kriging so we've got the creaking that happens both with the geology and also with the 1 4 dioxane data itself it will interpolate what that concentration could be in between those two spaces and wait like I alluded to we do have some large gaps in the physical space between that well monitoring networks means some places it's 1,500 feet right so some many places that's closer but you know once you start you you start with bigger spaces like that the the models trying to evaluate what that could be and then also we have we don't have data to the north that could be integrated into the end of the model so we sort of have like this boundary that ends okay Kayla I'm probably gonna need your
019help here so before we start this this is a like a minute video and I'm probably gonna rewind it and play it a couple of times because there's a lot of information to see in this but what I first want to point out is that it's hard to distinguish these colors here but the brown colors are clay and then silt and then we've got these golden colors that are like sand sand and gravel and gravel and what will happen is each one of these will start to come into the model independently so if you want to start it so you're looking at an aerial view the top is the north side Wagner Road is on on your left those are all the monitoring wells that are included in the model and then you'll start to
020see the clay come in there's a lot of clay and then the silt looks pretty massive and then we add the sand in sand and gravel and you don't even see the gravel pop up because there's so little of you wouldn't you want to rewind that again and maybe we'll just play it again yeah there you go so again we're looking at Wagner Road on the left and that Glendale on the right sequoias on the on the point there's the clay adding in the silt sand sand and gravel and again you don't see the gravel there's just a little bit of it so those yellow areas are what we call granular those are areas where you can have ground water flowing if you have groundwater in those areas and then the brown areas are what
021we call cohesive it's very difficult for water to move through those so they operate is an aquitard water doesn't flow through them so contaminants aren't likely to flow through them as well now we're getting into the contamination the 1 4 dioxane plume itself and let me just we'll rewind it and play it again but just to give you some information about this is the scale for the contamination so the blue is essentially a non detect and not until you get up to this yellow are we at like 10 the top is anything like a thousand and over is what's red so we'll play that again I think it sounds about 45 seconds paler okay so now we're looking at now detect everything including non-detect now we're looking at about ten parts per billion and everything
022above that we're getting into about a hundred parts per billion and everything above that and now we're at about a thousand as this wines down move it back just to make maybe five seconds you get a little further I just want to get to that last bit yeah right there that's good so yeah there's a couple of places here and and probably many people in the audience here will know exactly what these wells are but that's first sister Lake down at the bottom there sorry I don't have a pointer so you've got a handful of wells that are in the model that are 750 parts per billion we've got one that's 2100 parts per billion and I think there's another one that's about right about a thousand parts per billion so that's what's causing the
023the model to to crib that data together but you can see where those hotspots are and they they tend to line up in these granular areas right so that's what you would expect but what I want to point out about this if you want to run it again Hale you just run it from start to end and I'll just talk through it what I want to point out is that there is a lot of clay here and that helps to guide the contamination in the groundwater a little bit but what we don't know is those sand layers that start to pop in those could be little what we call like sand stringers so you don't know there might be like a regional or a small ground water divide where water could follow a different pathway
024than what the preferential pathway is so that's what we're concerned about and that's why we're interested in making sure that Barton Pond is protected we don't know if any of those sand stringers are out there then contamination is following that pathway that is criteria that's the generic cleanup criteria for drinking water protection 7.2 7.2 parts per billion we did not know those are all yes everything is from existing data so we looked at soil boring logs that have already been completed by the responsible parties consultant and reinterpreted them Gelman yeah the old miner Danaher is their name now so okay just gonna know that this this meeting is being recorded by CTN and it will only pick up what is spoken into the microphones so what comments are being made in the audience if you
025could raise your hand if you have a comment and we'll bring a microphone to you otherwise those at home will not have the benefit of hearing your comments and questions thank you can we pull the lights up real quick because I want to walk through these cross sectional views hopefully people can see them on both sides okay I don't know if these are positioned very well but this is what we got so here's our here's our area again our model space essentially there are three cross sectional views across here starting with a B in the center and then C down here on the south side these are ordered the same a B and C and what you can see from these we'll start with the geology which is on the right we have less sand
026that's this golden color on the north side then we do down here on the south side where we saw the highest contamination these are depictions of the concentrations right so that red was above a thousand I think it was actually pulling in like 700 in that orange space so we don't actually have contamination up here at the Epis at the top of this that's a model issue we've got to fix but this should be brown up here and it should look something a little more similar to this so as you move from the north down to the south you see that we're losing that higher contamination it's getting a sparser I say higher relative to the high concentration of 2100 right we're looking at like three hundred to a thousand in this space on the
027north side this is about a thousand and here we're in the heart of it where did Kayla go thank you thanks Kayla okay so just to move on now now that was the quick reap preview of our model essentially or an understanding of it I know there's there's a lot of information in that that and a lot that went into making that so we had dr. Larry Lemke review it he came to my office and sat with with us and many of you may be aware of who dr. Lemke is he's both a hydrogeologist and environmental engineer and he's currently the chairperson for the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Institute for Great Lake research at Central Michigan University he's been involved with the Gillman plume for at least a decade and a half he's graduated many
028of his students with masters and PhDs on the Gillman plume doing thesis on it so we wanted him for his institutional knowledge and he's a modeler and he does a lot of stochastic modeling and if you've met him he's a great man and he knows what he's talking about so we thought he'd be the perfect person to take a look at it so he gave us a couple of tips some things he thought we might help strengthen the model we took those into account add them to the model and I think we got a pretty good product so phase four is our sample collection we were not able to complete this we chose several wells mainly along our model space boundary where there are there are no detections in those monitoring wells we wanted to
029split samples with Gelman and the reason we wanted to do that was because we wanted to use a different analytical method that would provide maybe some resolution to the data method 522 is a drinking water method I know I use it on many sites myself it can detect down to 0.7 parts per billion the method that's used by the responsible party is one part per billion so we were looking for that in-between space cuz we're talking about you know maybe this plume spreading to the north they're getting down to text maybe there might be a little bit in there that might help us with the model unfortunately we didn't have access to those but that that didn't have a an impact on our ability to come up with our recommendations so our well location recommendations
030I just want to run through a few things and that we have been talking about that are important for coming up with where we would put those wells obviously geology is key we're looking for those Streisand stringers that could potentially be carrying the contamination groundwater flow is very important one thing that I didn't mention when I talked about the the larger Health Department map is that groundwater flow from the Gellman site essentially heads to the north and then it takes a turn to the east we're wondering if there's a ground water divide at that northern end where some of it as I've alluded to could potentially be heading to the north we also took a look at surface topography in the absence of having wells to the north and not having an etiology to help
031us understand where aquifers are or where the clay is the thickness or the sand units may be in contamination could be moving through we look at surface topography as an expression of ground water usually mimics it and I'll show you a figure in a second here that kind of helped guide us to where those locations would be so we basically look for highs and lows and then the final thing related to you know the science of it is taking a look at the 1 4 dioxane concentrations and the existing wells and looking at trends and understanding where things are and where they've been where they could be migrating to or where they are migrating to some other just you know a little more political I guess looking in city right-of-ways or city property for installing
032monitoring well locations and also I threw this last one in I like the idea of having some adaptability so if we first install one monitoring well it would be nice to take that information put it back into the model or do some other analyses on it before we figure out where that second instead of like one two three four that's where we're putting them when we want some adaptability to understand what's happening in that first well to help inform the second well and then the third well so these are our recommendations and I'll show you the locations on the next slide we are suggesting three or four nested monitoring well sets and nested means that each of those monitoring wells would have what are called screens they're basically independent Wells within one borehole and they
033basically seal off different aquifers within that one borehole so it gives us it gives us some distribution in the aquifers that are in the subsurface survey data obviously is very important to us that helps us understand groundwater flow we would take we recommend taking static water levels obviously understand how the head pressures of the waters are moving through the aquifers and understand which direction they're going we would sample with the lower detection limit in those monitoring wells so we can see that resolution and get an even earlier warning and probably most important after the wells are installed is doing some aquifer analysis and that's something that I've seen a whole lot of for this Gellman plume I think it's important to understand basically these aquifer analysis would tell you how quickly the water is moving
034which direction it's moving what gradient it's moving at because sometimes it moves faster in some areas that it doesn't others it would tell us a lot about the aquifers that they're moving through some - you know coarser material makes it easier for water to move through that it does the silty err material it makes a difference for those time frames so ultimately what we're interested in is how long if we were to detect something how long it would take for the contaminant to reach Barton pond and doing these aquifer analysis what would give us that ability that's hard to see so here's the here's our recommended well locations I just kind of isolated some these orange areas as potential places to look and I alluded to earlier about this the surface the surface elevation so
035these brown lines right through here are the high elevations in this area on the north side they're all about 950 feet this is our prohibition zone boundary right here on the north side and then you can see we've got this open area here and then like a little channel that runs through these two 950 s this is where I would first target like maple Miller area it seems like an easy way for the water to try to go through again I'm using surface expression to understand what's happening in the groundwater but until we put a point in there we won't really know which direction the groundwater is moving and then after that I just kind of sucked to that channel and then putting a couple of points out here again that adaptability once one well
036is installed and learning some information about the aquifers and the geology will help inform second third and fourth now turn it over to Brian Thank You patty we're getting close to opportunities for questions I'm just a little bit about our public engagement approach we felt it was really important one to engage the people who have expertise in this in this area so we spent some a fair bit of time with with Roger rail with card and also Patti mentioned with dr. Webb key so we're tapping into their knowledge and experience we've also been communicating regularly through our our monthly water newsletter quality water matters org so as we've completed updates throughout the projects since July we've been providing updates through that channel we've been giving council updates as well so we and obviously we're having
037this public meeting tonight so we've really tried to engage people as much as we can tap existing knowledge we've also had some communications with Eagle to make sure that we have there the information from them incorporated into the work that we're doing and where we're where are we taking it from here so as we wrap up this this effort we will be identifying recommendations and you can you've seen sort of what the preliminary first cut of those recommendations are and we will be presenting those to City Council for their consideration just we know typically questions come up on what costs that we've incurred are the work that we've spent with tetra Tech has cost just under thirty thousand dollars to the city and our estimated costs for implementing the web the well installation recommendations that
038were just shared with you those three to four nested wells is approximately four hundred thousand dollars we will be bringing this to consideration these recommend s recommendations to Council and the expectation is if we just if we end up moving forward with this we would be installing the well somewhere in 2021 to 2022 timeframe so with that I would like to open it up to questions and I think we're gonna pass a microphone around so we can make sure people here so let me get the lights so we can all see each other better and so that we can continue with an orderly fashion for a meeting if I can see a show of hands of everybody who would like a chance to speak and I'll pass out cards and then we can work through
039these in order some on this side of the room and then we'll come back to the other side as well anyone else over here oh you have two written comment okay yep there there are written feedback forms as well but we have plenty of time right now that's thick sorry about that yeah and Kathy did you get a card already you've got one was there someone else okay any other hand you do all right so we've got our first ten anyways and then we can pass out more as we go so if you could raise your hand or whoever's got number one you'll turn that into me I'll trade you for the microphone I understand that we're doing a lot of monitoring how do you treat 1 4 dioxane to make it quote as safe
040as possible so from the perspective of treating the drinking water there are treatment techniques that are available they're called advanced oxidation it's what Gelman is currently doing as part of their pump and treat oxidant operation so it involves typically a process like ozone or UV in addition to a chemical oxidant like hydrogen peroxide so at the at their facility they're using a combination of ozone and hydrogen peroxide in order to remove the 1 4 dioxane Thank You Bryan number 2 there you go vent thanks for doing the meeting tonight I appreciate it Roger Rael wanted me out he's out of town Roger L asked me to ask to make sure that the data that's collected is incorporated into Eagles database there's you know it's already a database that isn't fully complete and we'd like to
041try and make sure that we have a complete database the other thing I wanted to mention was that Larry Lemke actually got his PhD doing this site and he was very knowledgeable guy thankful for his work but his comment one of the meetings occurred me too I'm a card member that's Caruso board member he said that once in his opinion once the plume gets beyond and 14 it's almost a downhill run into Burton and he's very concerned about that and were very concerned about that the MD Q and a town hall meeting said it was Bob Wagner said well the Barton pond has a natural blocking agent that keeps - one for toxin from going into Barton and I asked Larry Lemke at the next card meeting which was a week later and he said
042no that's not true in fact you know it'll go right into Barton if it gets close to it and the card group had asked the DEQ to put some monitoring Wells north near the prohibition zone many years ago judge sheldon ruled that that was not needed so how do those wells match up with the wells that you're proposing if you even know about them that's been many years now I remember that happening I actually don't remember exactly where those wells were proposed I didn't know we went right off of our model and all the other information that we gathered but I guess I would add to that patty is that the intention of the work that we're proposing is to be able to answer some of those questions that you raised is is there a
043migration pathway between where we see the existing contamination and our water supply so we would hope to be answering those questions as part of this work I'm sorry I came in a little late is the responsible party as we say sharing their data with you finally or are they not or are they if so how well so so Gelman does share their data with eagle and that's available at the repository so I'm not exactly sure which data you're referring to but there their concentration their concentration data is available yeah in the repository and I know card gets the data I think Roger keeps that data available and it's part of his mashups yeah so hi thank you you guys the face for sample collection it said that you weren't able to get those and it's
044because Gelman wouldn't let you or why do we not have access to through eagle and other methods to have access to those so I think the issue that that Gelman had is us doing the analysis that is more refining they want to stick to the method that they use so we you know we only asked Gelman we didn't we didn't you know no but it wasn't material to to the end result for this for the recommendations it just would have helped refine it and Patti I think I'm correct if I say as we're doing analytical testing on the new wells that we install we will be using the the lower detection limit for analytical techniques and who has number five Cathy thank you couple questions you stated that it is estimated that there were eight
045hundred and fifty thousand pounds of dioxane put into the ground two different methods exact correct well let me go on just I wanted to know the source of your data and then your estimation of how much dioxane remains in the ground at this time okay let me start with the 850 thousand pounds that's what went into the unlined lagoons between 66 and 86 the source of the data most of it is what's publicly available from the the sources that I mentioned so we obviously got information from Roger information from Eagle and yeah and then I was trying to think if we used any of the residential Wells but we decided not to and then finally our third was the actual responsible party so we went to Gelman to get the elevation data because I want
046to know what they were using for their flow maps and then your third question about how much mass is out that I don't know we only worked in that space in that model space so I have no idea and we didn't we weren't estimating mass number six so as far as I understood in Gelman stopped treating treating the pollution or the plume with with UV light is that correct that is correct so to this day they are not using UV light to to treat dioxin in the plume is that correct that is correct because what you said before sort of sounded like they are using UV light they are not using UV light so the other thing I was always thinking is from what I have read for the past couple of years which I
047have become aware of the severity of this from what I've read I can conclude that the data that the Department of Environmental Quality has and the data that the city has is quite incomplete in that there is many missing data in that there are many wells that have never been tested wells that had been put in place but and they had been in key positions they have never been tested is that correct my understanding of it is it correct that there are wells that have never been tested I don't know the answer to that question okay well my understanding is that there has been wells that have never been tested the other thing is so you are telling us that in order to protect our waters we need to put in more monitoring wells and
048that would be a way of protecting us so the way I see it we it's not a measure of putting more monitoring wells is not it's not saving or protecting our waters you are saying we should spend $400,000 to have more wells and to have more readings I want everybody here to know that is not cleaning up that is not cleaning up our waters so I suggest instead of spending more money putting more wells in and then have problems getting the data fixing it over let us try cleaning it up it's 50 years since the city of Ann Arbor various council members have known about this pollution and it has not been cleaned up as somebody told me earlier money talks Gilman has gotten away with murder we must clean this up it's not gonna
049be a Superfund item Superfund list is already being destroyed so my question is how is this gonna help us spend another four hundred thousand for a few wells that is probably you know gonna be the city we're gonna be in the same position just pay more money to have more data with which you can do nothing thank you Brian would you like to address but comment so the intention of this work I think as we've we've Illustrated tonight is to make sure that we have an early warning system for protecting our water supply so the purpose of the wells are to make sure that we have wells in a strategic locations to make sure we know about the are you gonna let me finish we the intention is to have wells in a place so
050we can make sure that we have an early warning system to protect our water supply and right now we feel like we don't have wells strategically located between where the north end of the plume is and Barton pond so the intention here is to install those wills thank you thank you and number 7 councillor Haner thanks is most you know I could talk about this forever but I hope I don't have to talk about it forever so I had a couple questions about the model so when you created the model using the existing well data and the screen heights and all that and all that y'all is all that incorporated a model in a way that we can view that and compare it like the Google Earth mashup is that card and Saez uses is
051that is that model is there an ability flat model with this cross-section lines and so on to be added to the ongoing Google Earth mashup that card uses potentially I have to work out you know the IT aspect of it with Roger but the data you know is available in spreadsheets that can be can be provided to card the model itself is a is its own program so I'd have to figure out how that exactly works these three cross section lines that we're seeing there that result of this data I my assumption is that you can slice that any way you want okay and I guess my other concern would be one that'll probably come before our body that when we looked at some other I mean we really want to take this project by
052the horns and deal with it and so this idea that we're actually doing something I think is good but when I ran my own numbers on that it was not $400,000 for set enough three sets and nest wells it was much less than that and maybe there's a different kind of well maybe they're doing something different I hopefully that includes the analytical processes but I just seem like about three times more than what my initial estimates were for for doing this Thank You councilman Rainer number eight so first of all I want to say how happy I am that you're working closely I hope with Raja rail and with dr. Lemke I feel that DEQ Eagle has for many years discounted everything that they have tried to offer so I'm pleased if you are in
053fact using the very extensive data that they have I'm disappointed that it's gonna take more than two years to install the monitoring wells that seems like a long time to get the job done I mean again we're not cleaning anything up but I would like to if we're gonna do monitoring a two years is an awfully long time but my final question is about the soil borings there was some reference to gell-mann's consultant Fleiss and somebody or other have there been any new soil borings what what when we say soil borings are we talking about anything in the last five years how so the soil borings I was referring to is what we used in the model space and so the there were some that we're missing from like cards data set and I had
054to reach out to other folks for them what I primarily got from Fleiss and Vander brink was the elevation data cuz that's it was most important for me to get that data from them because they make their groundwater flow maps from that data so I wanted to see what they were using compared to what card has what the state has and there were some differences there haven't been any it seems to me that new soil borings would be useful Delmon did some years and years and years ago but now we know much more so but we're just going by the old so so I was in this model space and so any of their newer wells would have been incorporated into this and some of their newer wells around the outside actually don't know what
055the newest one where that one's located you know Vince I'll step your head no okay well and I meant in the plume yeah yeah in the plume there's been an issue all along about how thick the clay layers actually are and how much sand and all the rest but we're not getting any new information about those layers so no we we did not go out and do any boring so that's really expensive so we used existing data and reinterpreted for our model we didn't just take what was on there Borlaug's we you know used a simplification process because they refer to some there were furtive things maybe how things had got there you know and de McDonough and things like that we just simplified it to what's clay what's silt maybe you know reinterpreted some
056of the information that was on the log so our plan is part of this first stage was to use all to tap into all the existing resources and data before we go and start poking holes in the ground because we're gonna poke holes in the ground to get more information we want to make sure we're doing it in the place that we can leverage that data best to help answer the questions that we have so really using that information helped us decide here's where we really have significant data gaps that are important to know if we really want to understand how this bloom is potentially migrating north of the prohibition zone not sure if that answers your question but sort of okay and Priscilla's first question was a comment more about the disappointment in the
057time to complete the project yes yes thank you for correcting that this was not the first comment that you made but I just wanted to check whether Brian or Pattie wanted to comment it on the time frame I mean I can I can comment on that I think you know at this point in time this is you know our first cut staffs first cut and looking what we need to do and putting together you know a realistic schedule we know these things come times take longer than anticipated but I think this would really be something that would go before council and you know it could be their decision to do identify what time frame they want to have this happen in given capacity and funding source and lots of other questions that we would have
058to answer so our intent was to provide the information to them in this fiscal year so they can consider for looking at how they might want to fund as part of future fiscal years number nine yes to follow up in terms of what was just mentioned a moment ago I mean this is question not much for staff and the consultant here but perhaps for the policy makers when we're talking about the timeline I think everybody in the room is grateful that a we're doing this and we're moving X I'm sure you're moving expeditiously as you can um I am assuming that this is not that this is not part of the consent agreement is that correct I missed the first part of the the gun that is correct all right would counsel be on be
059looking at outside funding in terms of grants etc short of reopening the consent agreement itself and short of petitioning US EPA I can just answer that the direction that you no staff has received from the administrators that we would be pursuing opportunities for for figuring out funding mechanisms whether it is grants through the state or through potential future attempts to be compensated through the ongoing litigation so yes we will be pursuing opportunities but at this point we haven't gotten to the point where we've sure identified what those are or made any decisions we're really sort of early in the stages there my final comment would be thank you all for being here tonight thank you for having the opportunity and I thank Council for helping to make a pit make this happen so thank you
060everyone thank you and someone has card number ten okay you go Monica I'm new to this I live in the township and this is the anti retention I should say and sure I've read about it in The Observer with some wonderful articles I'm going oh my gosh in Gelman I'm gonna drove by that area that's my end of town now this turns into a different situation especially when you start talking about a monitoring well at Miller maple that's a mile from my house I am now in the township with weld water our neighborhood which has been since the 60s we live up on Hills where the hearing rumors below us different with because of putting Wells in I know there's sand areas I live on a sand hill it was the easiest part to put
061in a septic because we're full of sand my question is and also some of my neighbors they put when we knew this meeting was going to happen was that are there high tech companies that we can use personally for our own wells the safe dry wells not waiting two years that you put in this monitoring well at maple Miller why in the heck is this not being expedited when people start here no about this well I mean these are some folks that have been here a long time that isn't gonna sit well and I know it's not sitting well for anybody else because this yars drinking water and I know part of my course that's a her own River Barton pond so again it's just it's upsetting to me too to hear you I know
062you've been working and administration is always slow you know it's almost like in your own family well you got to go through everybody before you make a decision your own family but the point is again I get something may have mentioned this I guess and I'm I don't understand all this there was a lot of words that just went over my head but is there a way that can be expedited get money get grants I mean it happened in Rockford there was a big article in Rockford if many of you Brett that was in our paper so the point is there are people that can start expediting it and stop making just the Wells and saying oh is it here now oh well that was why didn't we see that two years ago we know
063it's going that direction I don't I guess okay thank you Monica um did patty one respond there are many laboratories that will do this analysis for you I'm happy to give you a list after the county yeah you can reach up to the county thank you for that I appreciate that County Health Department let them know you want your well tested so the county is testing was like we regularly test their wells on oh my goodness Elizabeth is that what is one where we're and we're seeing trends in those wells below the drinking water criteria but above zero yeah and in sigh oh and several other places so the county is testing personal wells drinking water wells and they have a testing schedule for that and you can call and express your concern and I've
064had others do that I've referred them to folks on Rose Drive and Wagner Court in places like and they let them know when they're gonna be tested and they do it and so there is testing available for private drinking water wells Monica this map appeared for everybody else where there's this like lavender color around these residential wells these are regularly tested by the County Health Department thank you so I want to check and see if anyone who didn't have a chance to speak yet would like to speak and then we can come back around to those who would like to speak again so let me just pass up a few more cards she's not yet spoken that would like a chance then I'll pass out I know that Marsh gun and okay so my number
065one not all right this is my first meeting here so this might be like an obvious question that everyone knows the answer to but I was just wondering what happens when the if and when the water gets to our drinking water to Barton pond that's a good question Claire obviously the intent of what we're trying to do here this evening is to make sure that we have these sentinel wells in place so we have ample time to be able to react if the water was going in that direction and based on the information that we have currently and through you know the limited work that our hydro geologists have done as well as information from dr. Lemke it's many many many years away in terms of where the kaboom currently sits based on the best
066information we have right now however if for some reason the this plume did enter our water supply there are means of treating for it we currently have ozone as part of one of the tools in our toolbox at our water treatment plant and through some initial piloting that we did maybe 10 years ago we know we can get some removal of of 1 4 dioxane through the current treatment process possibly up to 70% removal if we needed to do additional treatment then we would be planning to put in additional treatment as part of future capital plans and that would be probably some type of additional chemical feed system so it is possible when our attention would be to be prepared for that ultimate situation if it eventually realized itself Thank You councilmember Carson hi I've
067been on council for less than a year but I want to say I'm really impressed with the knowledge of our staff of our consultant and most of all with the audience it is just amazing how much people know about 1 4 dioxane and what I've said before and I'll say it again we need a full-court press so what you're hearing about tonight is just one of the ways that we are addressing the 1 4 dioxane we are still discussing it in the courts with our lawyers we are still considering an EPA Superfund site and I know we can't talk about those things tonight but while we can't talk about them tonight I am thinking about them every day and it seems like there is this invisible headwind and somehow we've just we've got to break
068through because we've got the intelligence and we've got the passion and I'm confident it's going to happen thank you do you have number four we skipped three so I wanted to know I'm this is my first meeting also and I don't know a whole lot about it we are on the maple miller area and I'm just curious if there's flume outside of the area that it's showing there I mean it seems like we would be testing a lot of wells that already exist before making new ones and I don't know what people have chosen to have theirs be the tested well I mean and then is that a cost to a homeowner we're in sia township but if we test our water and it's bad because we're kind of new to the area who's gonna
069pay to have us hooked up to city water so you know the the county health department as was already mentioned in in concert with eagle are testing residential homes that are in the vicinity and they're if there are areas where they anticipate that there could be concentrations that wouldn't be acceptable from public health standpoint those homes are being tested and and if there were elevations of concentrations that were not acceptable then you would be connected to the city water supply at the at the expense of the polluter so it's a question about the process for how you would become connected at the expense of the polluter do we have that information you would be doing that through your your township you'd be serviced by the township you'd be a Township customer and for sewer also
070if they're if they're on but again they're with the township they're not directly connecting to the city system so I can't even speak if there's Township sewer available whether they're in the sewer sewage area or not so you have to go through your your township government they ask that question how they would manage it for you because they buy service from us wholesale you would not be a direct city customer okay does that does that give you the at least the starting point yeah so so the conversation that just took place is about clarification on the connection process for a Township resident they will work through their Township and the the township would then work with Gellman in turn that's how the does anybody have more institutional knowledge on how that works Vince so traditionally
071there has been an issue with especially people who are retired getting their wells contaminated and then they're switched over Gelman typically pays for the switch for drinking water some of the science that I'm aware of had somewhat of a problem because they had to pay their own sewer so they just abandon their wells they abandon their septic system that they paid for and then they have to pay to have a sewer line run to their house so there may be some negotiating there but traditionally there isn't much leeway on the sewer as far as I know so that's an additional expense these homeowners have to bear which is you know really unfortunate because they're harmless I'm a done anything and so that's been a bit of a problem for some people Thank You Vincent I
072think there's one more who had some let me jump in real quick the area Seward within the township is smaller than the area that they have authorization to serve with drinking water so it may occur that there is who are already there but just as I said the sewer corridor is pretty much the Jackson Road corridor and the adjacent development so again I would urge you to talk talk to your Township and see where their sewer is and where their water is I speak to that how many again go through the county make sure your question was hurt so how much does it cost to have your water tested and then their response was to work through the county for that we didn't have the answer to that but Kathy is here from South on
073ship to answer some more questions I can personally answer your question okay there is a style service area and a sewer service area there are approximately 2,500 residences that do receive water from the city of Ann Arbor okay but it's billed through scio Township through the Co Township utility department there have been situations where there's identified dioxin contamination in drinking water wells on the edge of the known area the plume and close to the city of Ann Arbor where homes and neighborhoods are then annexed into the city of Ann Arbor so there are two different ways this could work it depends on where you live but I think we have people sitting here someone from the Evergreen subdivision and someone else who were annexed into the city of Ann Arbor I know it's confusing Thank
074You Kathy um thank you all for your contributions to clarify that I think we're on number five now basically I want to first of all I want to say that I really appreciate your energy Monica the way that you brought the urgency of this to us it's important and I want to emphasize that this is an urgent situation we know that this plume has been growing for all the text acknowledged e for all the education for all the positive stuff that miss Griswold talk to us about with all of that the plume is growing it is going to every nook and cranny of our surface water and there are some who believe it is already in Huron River and there are some who believe it is already in Barton pond I've spoken to many many
075people in this town a lot of them with knowledge of water movement I myself am an environmental toxicologist and I have been following pollution all over the world in multiple scenarios so what I am trying to communicate to the public here is this putting more monitoring Wells is not a solution to the massive problem of dioxin contamination of our surface water you can put monitoring Wells up the wazoo that is not the same as cleaning up the current catastrophic pollution that we face we must clean it up we cannot continue to use fancy science and fancy monitoring and let the the pollution itself to keep growing we must act to clean it up right now in respond to the young lady who is gone now no she's right there what happens if it gets into
076Barton pond dioxin is a carcinogen it has been found in cord blood which means it's very close to the fetus it can wreck the signaling of cells it is a toxic toxic compound we are risking the future of young children when we act so oh yeah we've done a lot and we've cleaned up and you know we're in good shape we are in terrible shape we are in bad situation our waters are contaminated putting more monitoring well is not the same as cleaning up the pollution and our bure should clean it up no more waiting 30 years is enough Thank You Moscone and councilmember Haner would like to speak to that yeah I'm a I'm a stalwart polluter pay guy and yet we have had decades of not really getting the polluter to pay for
077much I mean they won't even split samples with us and with all due respect to DEQ and the state attorney general's office we've had opportunity after opportunity slip by they've allowed well abandonment without consulting the consenting or not the consent well the parties who are part of this consent judgment now the intervening parties they don't ask us but they allow DEQ and the state attorney general's office allow us Wells to be abandoned just this last month including compliance wells that are part of the consent judgment and so as I learned more and more and more about this I come to the unfortunate conclusion that we may indeed have to clean it up ourselves and I don't know if there's the the public has the stomach for a millage to do that or what but at
078a county meeting a couple years ago the price tag of 30 to 50 million dollars was put on this for total cleanup and there's a 30 million dollar fund to that set up by the polluter to facilitate DQ's monitoring of and the monitoring of the prohibition zone and so on and so there's 30 million sitting right there and we spend 50 million on a parking structure downtown and so the question I don't want to judge the room or the residents by a small sampling but there is consideration that we might ask about initiative to clean this up ourselves and so you know we'll see reach out to your councilmembers and and you know share your opinions with us I if we don't clean it up and pull it back ourselves we're going to be doing
079the same thing at the water treatment plant in the future and it's very expensive and the method the the UV method which i think is a preferred method is more expensive and that's why Gulman stopped using it it's a better method but it's cost more and so I know that we're doing UV for some of our Cryptosporidium some other things at water wastewater treatment and water treatment plant and so you know we're gonna have some experience with that in the next couple years and see how that works it's not the scaled one that would required for the accident but we're gonna know what it's all about and the wastewater treatment if the mr. Stiglitz can speak to this better but the investment that we're putting into the plant improvements is designed in a manner to
080facilitate the cleanup of dioxin and other contaminants should it need be is that correct that is correct Thank You councilmember Gaynor for your comments and then I think is our last card thank you yeah I would like to make the other point that Jeff was talking about the discussion was fifty million dollars in ten years and one of the commissioners on the city on the County Commission brought that up with several people including myself whether we could bond this out and the county clearly had the money he thought and then we go with lawyers or with the EPA or whatever to get the money from Donner which is a huge company you know a multi-billion dollar is like twenty six million billion dollar company and they're the responsible party they can't walk away from this
081by federal law that may change but I doubt I talked to debbie Stabenow after Donald Trump was elected she came to Ann Arbor area and I asked her point-blank you know it's super fun still viable if there's a responsible party and she said absolutely she said Superfund is working on many Superfund sites where there's responsible party to cover the cost and so I would like to see our community petition for a Superfund as well as any other opportunities we might have it's not at all it's not a one-shot deal we could do things like Cathy Griswold has says you know all hands on deck I'll just mention something that that should get people's attention that there is near surface groundwater contamination at West Park at 22 part billion and the numbers going pretty regularly here
082it was a thousand part per billion at vets park a couple years ago which is about 11 blocks upstream so r22 at West Park at the near surface this could technically be percolating into people's basements either now or in the near future and then when it gets into your basements in Canada it'll evaporate and when it evaporates you'll be exposed through inhalation which is another exposure route that is of concern and the DEQ eagle has says they will consider that vapor intrusion which is now part of Michigan law where card was really responsible for getting the DEQ to include that though we made a lot of pressure but I think we need to talk to our City Council members talk to our council County Commissioners I think we're very close to getting a strong support
083in that regard there's gonna be a meeting a joint meeting in December so I urge you to contact your representatives thank you thank you vents and I do want to make sure that we get to questions that are about the Sentinel monitoring well project and try to stay focused on that we appreciate all the other comments that we've heard but I'm going to stay focused on hearing from those that have not yet spoken and that have specific questions to tonight's topic I was not able to locate the Sentinel Wells as you went through the presentation is this presentation going to be available online and will it indicate where the Sentinel wells are proposed to be yes it will be available and I had circled areas there's not like a pinpoint area so yeah I know
084the screen is totally different than my computer sorry yeah sure sure here we go all right so this is the first one is the maple miller area and then just north of that in the park um oh sorry she's she's on it okay and then just north of m14 again I was looking in these high areas I'm trying to bound the 950 areas maple is down here yeah yep yep so just on the east side and then I don't have a it's hard to tell I don't have a road over there if it's just to the to the east there my recollection is that there is a monitoring well on the corner on the mm southwest corner of Dexter excuse me oh yes of Dexter and maple behind the next to the party store there
085okay I'm not an existing monitoring well Dexter and maple okay um yep I just want to reiterate that these locations are meant to be clean they're meant to be sent Noelle's and also to do aquifer analysis which is really important in understanding which direction contaminant may be flowing and how quickly it's moving the groundwater is moving so there's there's even though there's monitoring wells here that are part of the responsible parties there's benefit to having these you know besides that I think there was that someone knew that had a question hasn't spoken yet no okay other questions you have a question that's particular to this project to the Sentinel monitoring well we just need to make sure we stay on topic Sentinel monitoring winds are not going to be useful to us because they merely
086are going to report some levels what we need is clean up we need clean up right now because mr. rims talked about Superfund I have to say a few sentences about that so he should not have said so let me let me give him two sentences so Superfund list is being dismantled by EPA of Trump administration it is false to make the public believe that putting this site on EPA Superfund site is gonna eventually help us clean it up it is false are there any other comments or questions that are pertaining to the topics we're discussing tonight Vince is this pertaining to a topic that we are discussing tonight thank you so that so the new wells are installing I'm curious to note if you're gonna screen them at high close to the surface as
087well as down deep because that's a concern that that we've had recently that there's contamination that's migrating to the surface and I'd be good to have a handle if that's happening at these well sites since you can screen it at several different levels yeah the goal is definitely discreet at several different levels whether or not it's gonna be at the surface we'd have to we have to wait and see what the geology looks like and where the aquifers are but yeah definitely that's on the table well that's all that we had for you tonight thank you for coming anything cable to wrap-up for the evening thank you all for your question I will say just a reminder if you have written any feedback on your comment cards please drop those off there's a little box
088on the counter you could drop it on either at the sign-in tables you also received a demographic questionnaire if you did not yet complete that please do it helps us get a better understanding of who's participating at our public meetings and who's not so we can get more diverse engagement thank you have a good evening everybody you