U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY PUBLIC HEARING FOR THE WILLOW BOULEVARD/A-SITE of the Allied Paper/Portage Creek/Kalamazoo River Superfund Site taken before Alison R. Huffman, CSR-0945, Certified Shorthand Reporter and Notary Public, at the Kalamazoo Public Library, 315 South Rose Street, Kalamazoo, Michigan on August 3, 2005 commencing at 7:15 p.m. APPEARANCES PRESENT: Don de Blasio U.S. EPA Community Involvement Coordinator EPA Region 5 Shari Kolak Remedial Project Manager EPA Region 5 Jim Chapman Keith Krauszack Jackie Hejmanowski Daria DeVanter Liz Brown Members of the Community MR. de BLASIO: This is the official comment period, and we have a format. We have asked you to register. We've had a couple people register. Comments will be limited to five minutes at a time and I'm going to be up here and kind of keeping track. If you have more than five minutes, you're welcome to get back in line and come up. I'll stop you after five minutes. If you're making comments, then you can come back. We're doing that -- it's not that we don't want to hear from you. What we're doing that for is to hear from as many people as possible, so that's why we put it at five minutes at a time so we can hear from as many people as possible, and we appreciate you being courteous to your friends and neighbors here to give them a chance to speak, too, and if there's nobody else waiting to speak, we'll let a person go ahead and continue speaking longer, but then if somebody else wants to speak and they indicate that they want to, we will give the person who's speaking 30 seconds to wrap it up and then let the next person speak. I think you put down -- did you want to make oral comments because -- LLOYD SCOTT: I think I already have. MR. de BLASIO: -- those were not reported, but I've got three lines on here, just says, "Lakewood Neighborhood Association." LLOYD SCOTT: Yep. MR. de BLASIO: But no names. LLOYD SCOTT: Oh, we signed our names. I signed my name. MR. de BLASIO: Not on the registration. LLOYD SCOTT: Okay. (Brief pause.) MR. de BLASIO: Let me make a few housekeeping comments here: The comment deadline is August 15th and that's for comments, and written comments carry as much weight as the oral comments, so you don't have to feel that you're not getting the same kind of consideration if you send in something in writing as if you stand up and make a presentation. During the comment period, the EPA does not respond to questions or comments. It's the public's turn to speak, so we just listen at that point, and we'll address those questions and comments in our Responsiveness Summary. Sometimes if you get up here, you may see some nodding of the heads. That doesn't necessarily mean we're in agreement with what you're saying. It means we're listening to what you're saying. Okay? So it's a natural reflex. Sometimes we may laugh; doesn't mean we're laughing at you. Maybe you've said something in a funny way or maybe it's amusing. We do not think that this is a funny situation, so we're not laughing at the situation. It just may be a particular turn of phrase or something. And as I said before, I'd like for you to show respect to each other when it's somebody else's turn to speak; let the next person come up and speak, and then you can come back if you want to make some more comments. And one last thing, when you're making your comments, we'd like for you to come to the front of the room because we're having it reported and the court reporter may not be able to hear you if you're in the back, so if you want to project so that everybody else can hear you, that's fine, but it is important that the court reporter hear you, and when you do come up, we'd like for you to give your name and to spell it for us so that we have it accurate on the record and where you live and if you represent an organization, we'd appreciate you let us know that, too. So I still don't see a name on here. LLOYD SCOTT: Lloyd Scott. MR. de BLASIO: I'm sorry. Lloyd Scott. Okay. Mr. Scott, you're the first one. Will you come up to the front, please? Face the reporter, so she can hear you better. LLOYD SCOTT: Lloyd Scott, L-l-o-y-d, S-c-o-t-t, Lakewood Neighborhood Association, and I'd just like to know why it's taken so long. Georgia Pacific has been ready to do this, just about the same plan for years and why it's not done already and as the lady that's taking care of it had to go to Iraq or someplace and let it sit on her desk for the next five years. MR. de BLASIO: That's it? LLOYD SCOTT: That's it. MR. de BLASIO: Thank you. Joan Wadsworth. (Brief pause.) MR. de BLASIO: State your name and spell it for me, please. JOAN WADSWORTH: My name is Joan, J-o-a-n, W-a-d-s-w-o-r-t-h, 2915 Carlton Avenue, and my question is: Why is it taking so long, also, because they told us in the beginning, it was supposed to be done in 2002, and I've lost four dogs through this to die with cancer, and I want to know what can be done about this situation. Thank you. MR. De BLASIO: Thank you. I'm reluctant to plug in the microphone because it was making so much noise. (Brief pause.) MR. de BLASIO: Carolyn Scott. (Brief pause.) CAROLYN SCOTT: My name is Carolyn Scott. I live at 2905 Carlton, and it's right along the river. My concern is a lot of people in our area have a lot of heart and cancer problems. Most of them have lived there a long time, and my family alone, my son needs a heart transplant, I've had a heart transplant, my husband has heart problems, not sure about my daughter yet, but a lot of the young kids that grew up in the area have had heart problems, and I would like an investigation done. I've tried the University of Michigan. I'm going to try Western Michigan University to see if they can't do a study on the human health part of the PCBs because it just seems like we're not a large area along the river, but I think we're large enough and we have all had health problems enough that it needs to be studied, and that's all I have to say. MR. de BLASIO: Thank you. The last person I have signed up is Dayle Harrison. Does anybody else want to speak? I think Dayle has a little bit longer presentation. Dayle also has some slides, and I've talked with him before, and I just want this on the record, too. He said he would provide us pictures of the slides for inclusion with the comments. If we don't have the pictures, we may not be able to address those comments properly, so I just want that on the record that we'll need pictures to go along with the comments by August 15th, so -- DAYLE HARRISON: Well, my first comment is you need to extend the public hearing process. We've waited 25 or 30 years. MR. de BLASIO: Want to come forward and -- DAYLE HARRISON: Okay. MR. de BLASIO: -- state your name for the record and -- (Brief pause.) DAYLE HARRISON: Hi. MR. de BLASIO: Is there anybody else who wants to make any comments? Like I said, Dayle might be a bit longer. DAYLE HARRISON: It's my turn at the wheel here. Thank you. MR. de BLASIO: So want to make sure that we're not excluding anybody. DAWN STARKE: I want to make a comment after him. MR. de BLASIO: Okay. So state your name. DAYLE HARRISON: Hi. My name is Dayle Harrison, D-a-y-l-e. I represent the Kalamazoo River Protection Association. I live in Saugatuck, Michigan. Before I get into my comments, I want to give you folks a little history of this site. Certainly these folks here are familiar with it, how this site was actually discovered. About 1982, the State of Michigan passed an Environmental Response Act which required companies that had toxic waste sites or landfills to identify them, provide a listing to the Department of Natural Resources. In 1985, nothing had happened. In 1986, myself and Commissioner Mary Powers at that time visited this site and saw there were people, kids pulling night crawlers and putting them into containers for sale. As a result of that investigation, it finally got some things motivated where we got a fence around that site and we also got it listed under the Michigan Environmental Response Act. So Georgia Pacific has a long history here of denying these problems. I want to quote from an article in the Kalamazoo Gazette, Monday May 25th, 1987. It says, "Kalamazoo County officials will be briefed Tuesday on state efforts to remove polychlorinated biphenyls from the Kalamazoo River and prevent further PCB discharges into the river from Georgia Pacific Corporation." Then there's a quote from Tom Sullivan, who you folks probably know. Tom Sullivan was the acting manager of Georgia Pacific Kalamazoo Paper Division Plant. He says, "We don't feel that there is any imminent or long-term health hazard connected with the PCBs we've seen." Shortly after that, there was a movement to change the way Superfund, how they rank Superfund sites under CERCLA, so at that point in time, after the mid-1980s, that hazardous ranking system that's used to score various sites was changed to allow for environmental and wildlife considerations as a primary focus, getting away from some of these toxic landfills, like Love Canal and many others. As a result of that and with the help from federal legislators, at that time Kalamazoo was finally placed on the NPL in August of 1990. Even before that, back in 1986 -- 1988, rather, shortly after we did our activity, there was a report that was done by the consultants for Georgia Pacific Corporation and, in that, one of the options they talked about for cleanup was taking the contamination from the Willow site, completely removing it from the Willow site and putting it into the A-Site. So this was something that was looked at 20 years ago. That hasn't happened yet, but that's what needs to occur. Back in 1998, there was an interim action which is what we see today at the site taken to try to stabilize the banks to some extent and prevent the PCBs and the residuals from the landfill from entering into the river system. That was a temporary measure. Our comments haven't changed on what we want to see at that site from that day and from the early 1990s. I talk about the need for community involvement. You've talked about the need for the community to speak out. Shari, you've talked about it a lot. And Shari, as you know, back in April of 2002 when people in our community up and down the river reviewed the Remedial Investigation Feasibility Study that was put forth, our group and the Kalamazoo Environmental Council and many other groups went door to door, from community to community, township, municipality and village, up and down the river, and during this process, all these communities, over 20, passed resolutions, about 30 new organizations, many of them environmental organizations, passed resolutions, supported resolutions, and I have a copy of that here. You've seen this letter, I'm sure. Not only that, almost 600 letters were written saying, "We want PCBs removed from the river system," and they also say, "No landfills should be allowed adjacent to the river." Okay. So the communities already have spoken very loudly about what they want in this cleanup process. What's happened is the EPA hasn't heard it yet, but what more can we do? Legislators, county boards, all municipalities say, "We don't want any landfills next to our river, we want to restore the river, we want to create a recreational, tourism magnet in our communities," but we haven't been heard yet, so hopefully tonight, the necessary decision-makers will hear our message and act decisively. Our proposed preferred cleanup alternative is significantly different than what the EPA has come up with. Let's show a couple slides here. They can't do the lights, but go ahead and let's see them anyway. Go ahead. (Brief pause.) MR. HARRISON: Any time you're ready. Kalamazoo River basin. It's about 80 miles, it's impacted by the Superfund process, site process. Site description. If you're looking for this in the library, sometimes it's hard to find. It's called the, as you can see, the Allied Paper and Portage Creek Site. This is the Superfund process, how it's supposed to happen. You have the site discovery, which we have known about since the early 1970s, but it was put on the National Superfund in '90, but there were lots of studies before it was put on the National Priorities List in the Superfund. Substantial studies were done in '86 and '87 by SDS Consultants from the DNR that provided alternatives for cleaning up the river, believe it or not, that were never implemented, but they primarily focused on the DNR impoundment, the Residual Investigation Feasibility Study. We gave extensive comments, as many other people did, back in 1990 outlining a work plan saying, "Look, let's gets this RIFS done." We don't have the RIFS done, which is fundamental. We don't even have the Remedial Investigation done, which is the fundamental report you need to determine the extent of the contamination at the site. That's the first thing the EPA and the DNR is required to do. We don't know about Lake Allegan. We don't know about Phase II downstream. That hasn't even begun. So when we talk about doing something here, it's a step forward, but it's a very minute step compared to the seven million cubic yards that need to be removed downstream. Go ahead. Let's go to the next one. The Fishing Consumption Advisory -- not very clear. Let's try the next one. Slow down. Let's go back to Georgia Pacific. There is no doubt that Georgia Pacific has played a big role in the contamination of our river. They have also made the least amount of effort to do anything to clean it up. Even at this little site we're talking about tonight, they have stalled it for over 20 years. Let's go to the next one. I don't know if you can see very clearly, but you can see the A-Site in the green and the Willow Boulevard site. Can you see the edge of the river there? UNIDENTIFIED MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY: No. DAYLE HARRISON: Well, I'll help you. There's a focus on there, too, Bill. Can you try the focus, see if you can get it a little clearer? (Brief pause.) DAYLE HARRISON: Here's the A-Site. This is where the wall goes all along the river, and this is the Willow Boulevard site. Here's the other edge of the river, this side over here. As you can see, all this material, a lot of material has eroded downstream, not to mention the millions of pounds of PCB waste that's already moved out into Lake Michigan. So what we're suggesting here tonight is that all the material in the Willow Boulevard site be transferred over here to the A-Site. Okay? They have sort of given permission for Georgia Pacific Corporation to move about 35,000 cubic yards of material on the other side of the highway. We want to move the 150,000 cubic yards back over in this area. We also want to see a buffer here along Davis creek area. That's part of our preferred remedy. So completely remove this, put it on the A-Site, and then once that's done, come back here and remove this sheet metal wall completely along the front here, pull that wall back 150 feet so that the edge of the landfill is about 150 feet from the edge of the river, so by doing that, we're going to have a eye-pleasing space once the vegetative material grows back, a natural habitat, a natural corridor here connecting wildlife and fisheries, restore the fishery habitat, but those are the key components of our preferred alternative. This is another slide of the Willow site. Go ahead. Know what I'd like to do here? Why don't we go off the record. MR. de BLASIO: No, we can't. DAYLE HARRISON: You guys can't do anything. You just have no flexibility. Anyway, let's try the next one. Let's move it a lot closer. Let's move it way up here. (Brief pause.) DALYE HARRISON: Let's try the next one. This is the way the site looked, the A-Site back in about 1986. This is the corner of the landfill. You can see the sludge pits right there. Some of those were shoots down to the river. Let's go to the next one. This is one of the remedies that's been proposed along the Willow site. This is what happened at the King Highway site. Anybody not seen that site? This is sort of what the King Highway site looks like except down there, they have a nice little cyclone fence around there, sort of keeping people out of there. Well, we want to see you folks go back and open up the King Highway rod, we want to see you pull back that vegetation, provide a natural buffer all the way around the King Highway site as part of the restoration process. Maybe you'll have to use some Natural Resource Damages Assessment Monies to do that, but we need to get this cleaned up and protected. We do not want to see anything like this visible from the river as part of our preferred alternative. We would like to see a cement barrier around the front of it as well as Davis Creek. We'd like to see a groundwater collection system collecting leachate coming from the groundwater at the bottom of the landfill and monitored as part of the Final Record of Decision. We talked a little bit about Davis Creek and providing some buffer in that area as well. If you want to get an update on what's going on with the Kalamazoo River, we have videos for sale, little commercial, we have DVDs for 10 bucks; that's about what our cost was. Gives you a lot of information about the issues we're talking about, so if you want one of these, we have provided them to the EPA and the DNR and DEQ, but we'd like you to take a look at this. We talked earlier about risk assessment. I want to respond a little bit to it. Sometimes you don't have the numbers, like somebody talked about, to do the kind of study you want to do, but if you know the people and their animals have elevated levels of PCBs in their systems, whether it's four animals or 10 animals, you can -- I don't know if the word is "extrapolate," but you can take that information and come up with some sense that it's a significant level. Certainly we know if you have high levels of PCBs in mink, probably not going to find too many to sample because they're not going to be around, and same with eagles; we know they won't reproduce if the levels are sufficiently high enough to make for reproductive failures. One of the things that's not happening on this river that needs to happen is the EPA needs to come up and use their environmental enforcement that's mandated under CERCLA and move this process along. It's a political decision, we all know about it, we know it's about the money. Georgia Pacific Corporation in 2004 had sales approximately of 45 billion dollars. We don't think it is too much to come into our community and spend 20 million dollars for 10 years to get this river cleaned up. Hopefully, you'll help in the process. If you haven't made comments, please do so, whether in writing or here this evening and join us in the community-wide effort to get this river restored. Thank you. MR. de BLASIO: Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Please come up here and state your name and address. (Brief pause.) MR. de BLASIO: Is there anyone else who wants to make comments after this lady? MR. de BLASIO: Please state your name and spell it and your address. DAWN STARKE: My name is Dawn Starke, D-a-w-n, S-t-a-r-k-e, and basically I am representing the citizens of Michigan and what I have to say about some of the environmental damage that exists all over this state, including this area -- you want me to talk louder? Oh, I was talking too loud before. And what I'd like to bring into evidence is an advertisement from the National Geographic from the 1950s, and I'd like to give this to you as my evidence of when the state was clean, when our water was clean, and I live in Kalamazoo because I'm an environmental refugee already from another part of Michigan that's more polluted than this area, and I lived downstream from a company that's dearly protected by the State of Michigan and its court system, and they put three-and-a-half billion gallons of toxic waste in the ground since the 1930s, and I moved to get away from that, so I moved to Kalamazoo. Now, I don't live near the river and I don't eat the fish, so basically this issue doesn't really even affect me. I'm more affected by the mercury emissions that comes over the lake from Chicago and I have to keep my car in the garage so it doesn't eat the paint off my car. Other than that, I'm not affected by the river issue. What makes me angry is what happened to me was never addressed. The State of Michigan doesn't care about me. They don't care about my health. They didn't care when the things that happened to me happened to me where I lived, and they don't care about these people now. It's like they're waiting for them to die so they'll shut up, and that is exactly how people are treated in this state that are victims of environmental pollution, they have had, you know, there's genetic factors in the family, there's neurotoxin problems, there's heart attacks, there's cancer, there's all kinds of things, and it's given a blind eye by our Legislature, it's given a blind eye by our U.S. Government, and the corporations are always protected, just like what happened in Saginaw two weeks ago with the dioxin lawsuit and with how Dow was protected permanently. Our Court and Legislature systems have taken their stand, and we know how you stand and we know how the EPA stands and we know that you would evade the issues, you don't fund the research because you don't want to know because then we could go against the corporations in court and we could hold them accountable for what they do to us, the people, this is our country, this is a democracy, not really, but that's what they still call it and so, you know, we're out there trying to convince everybody this is the way to go when we can't even protect our own people from genetic problems, from cancer, and no one is held accountable and it's really infuriating. And the Kalamazoo River, as I said earlier, the company, Georgia Pacific and Allied Paper made millions and millions of dollars for 100 years in this community, and the people of this community sacrificed throughout the years to give the profits to these companies and help them grow as they did. They, without any conscience, polluted our river, left us with the mess and have left us with basically the problem, then they go to the EPA and the state and they beg for mercy and they're given mercy and the people of this city do not get accountability. We want this river cleaned up, we want it done now, we want it done right and we want to be able to fish in the river like they advertised in the 1950s and eat the fish, and that's all I have to say. MR. De BLASIO: Thank you. Anyone else wants to make oral comments? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Did you say you would be answering questions after this? MR. De BLASIO: No, we're not answering questions. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So if I want to ask a question, do I have to phrase it as a comment? MR. De BLASIO: You may phrase the question as a comment and we'll address it in our response to your question in the formal written response. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I'll write it. MR. De BLASIO: Thank you. Yes, Dayle. DAYLE HARRISON: If there's no one else, I have a couple things I want to add to what I talked about earlier. (Brief pause.) MR. De BLASIO: State your name again for the record. DAYLE HARRISON: Dayle Harrison. One of the things I didn't talk about with the Natural Resources Assessment and how that interplays with the cleanup. One of the things I didn't talk about earlier was how the Natural Resource Damage Assessment interfaces with the Superfund process. We expected the EPA is going to do the right thing here because of the community needs and demands to restore the river and remove that bulkhead, take the material out of the Willow site and put it into the A-Site, as I talked about before. We also want some final resolution as far as the Natural Resource Damage Assessment amounts, the dollar figures in this stretch of the river, particularly from A-Site down to King Highway site, but then we need to revisit the King Highway site and get the NRDA done for that downstream where Portage Creek enters into the Kalamazoo River because that's primarily Georgia Pacific's doing, and we also want those residuals taken out of the river that are in front of the landfill moved down to 3.3 parts per million from Davis Creek downstream to Portage Creek, we want those materials taken out, removed and put into the A-Site as well. So about the public hearing, took 20 years to get this far, we haven't got it done yet, we need another 45 days, minimum of 30 days, preferably 45 days to bring more attention to the meeting and the issues that face our community. We're not going to go back and revisit every municipality that's already said they don't want landfills next to the river. We have already done that, and that record is going to be put into this record so you folks can respond to, but we're going to try to get some more comments in for you so you can have no reason not to do the right thing. Thank you. MR. De BLASIO: Thank you. Anyone else have any oral comments that they would like to present? You have until August 15th to make your written comments. There's information on the table over here that has all the addresses, so if you have lost our address, please pick one of those up and take it with you. You can do it by e-mail, by fax or by plain regular mail. DAYLE HARRISON: You're not going to extend the public comment period? MR. De BLASIO: I can't do that. DAYLE HARRISON: Who can? MR. De BLASIO: I can't answer -- DAYLE HARRISON: Who can do it? MR. De BLASIO: We can address that later on. DAYLE HARRISON: Can the Region Five Administrator do that? Does it take a Congressional Act? Hear me out. This is the kind of BS that really gets to me. You can't make a decision, but you can't identify who can. Can Mr. Carl make that decision? Shari, can Mr. Carl make that decision to extend the comment public period? MS. KOLAK: Do you know how that process works? MS. HEJMANOWSKI: I don't know exactly how it works. I know it can be extended. DAYLE HARRISON: Can you check into it and get back to me? MS. HEJMANOWSKI: Why should it be extended? DAYLE HARRISON: Because when the DNR was in charge of this, for one reason, when the DEQ was in charge of this, when they came out with a document like this, the RIFS in 2000, we had 60 days for public comment to review the extent of the documents. Here, we're only asking for 30 more days, half the time. We want to move forward, too, but we want to give the people a chance to respond. MR. De BLASIO: All right. Having heard all comments from those present, we will declare the oral public comment period ended for this evening. You have until August 15th to send in your written comments. Thank you for attending. This meeting is over. Thank you. (At about 7:55 p.m. hearing concluded.) CERTIFICATE State of Michigan County of Van Buren I, Alison R. Huffman, Certified Shorthand Reporter and Notary Public in and for Van Buren County, Michigan, do hereby certify that the foregoing EPA Hearing was taken before me at the time and place hereinbefore set forth. I further certify that the EPA Hearing was taken in shorthand and thereafter transcribed by me and that this is a true and accurate transcript of my original shorthand notes. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 4th day of August, 2005. _______________________________ Notary Public in and for Van Buren County, State of Michigan My commission expires August 19, 2007 27