Part of the groundwater underneath Ann Arbor is contaminated with 1,4-dioxane. It’s known as the Gelman Plume. The name comes from the medical filter manufacturing company that started dumping dioxane on its property west of the city in 1966.
That’s not news, though — the plume was discovered more than 40 years ago.
And for decades, Ann Arbor residents have been lobbying for state or federal officials to do something to actually clean up the contamination. Now, those same residents are hopeful the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to designate the Gelman plume as a superfund site — which would make more federal resources available for removing 1,4-dioxane from the site.
Michigan Public's Elinor Epperson dug deep into the history of the Gelman plume. She joined us on the podcast to walk us through how the contamination happened in the first place — and what's being done today to fix it.
Listen to the Stateside podcast to hear the full conversation.
