At the time Teresa Woody, attorney for the plaintiffs, said that she didn’t think it would take long for Borello to verify his earlier decision in view of the new standard developed by the supreme court.

ABC12 reports that Borrello, who is now retired, has promised to issue an opinion within two weeks.

Years of chemical manufacturing at Dow’s Midland facility has resulted in a plume of contamination that reaches from Midland through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw rivers into Lake Huron and covers thousands of acres.

The disputed class action involves property owners in the Saginaw County portion of the 100-year floodplain of the Tittabawassee River.

If Borello approves the class it could involve around 2,000 plaintiffs.

Dow has argued that the property owners should not be treated as a group because their properties have varying levels of contamination.

In 2009 EPA required Dow to pay to
remove 17,370 tons of dioxin contaminated soil from West Michigan park, 15 miles downstream from the company’s Midland plant.

The park had been identified by state officials as a top clean-up priority and designated “time critical” by the EPA after dioxin contamination at levels as high as 5,900 parts per trillion was found there. Federal law requires cleanup of contamination at 1,000 ppt.

“There is a plan in place that requires sampling in the park after flooding events to evaluate potential recontamination and the dioxin levels,“ EPA Project Manager Mary Logan said via e-mail. “Sampling is currently scheduled for early next week, conditions allowing. EPA’s Project Manager from our Saginaw office will provide oversight.”

In response to questions from the Sierra Club this week Logan said that EPA does not plan to issue advisories about the dangers of dioxin exposure in flooded areas along the Tittabawassee River and the Saginaw River.

Some residents are not satisfied with EPA’s response.

“Why can you not close that park as well as ALL others that have been inundated again and again,” said John Taylor, who lives along the Tittabawassee. “How much is Dow paying you to sit back and let us be poisoned to death?”

In announcing her new role Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris said that Ganholm has a “demonstrated track record of cultivating many public-sector and private-sector collaborations that have laid the groundwork for profitable and sustainable growth for 21st century manufacturing.”

The Midland Daily News reports:

Granholm’s appointment may seem a natural fit for Dow, a Michigan company that has invested heavily in clean energy fields such as solar and battery technology as the company has transformed itself in recent years. As governor, Granholm made multiple stops in Midland to highlight hundreds of millions in state tax incentives for Dow and its subsidiaries for clean energy projects that have boosted job opportunities in the region.

Tax breaks aren’t the only way the Granholm administration helped Dow Chemical.

Dow is responsible for a 52 mile long plume of chemical contamination that stretches from its Midland plant through the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and into Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay.

In her role as governor Granholm argued against having the federal government declare the contaminated area a Superfund site — a move that could have allowed for relocation of people living in the contaminated zone.

On Monday I reported that public health experts are worried that the report is likely to confuse people.

The message seems at odds with the repeated state health advisories warning against contact with the soil of the Tittabawassee floodplain and against eating fish from the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers and Saginaw Bay.

In a Feb. 1 letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Director Lisa Jackson representatives from the Lone Tree Council, League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club and others wrote:

We believe the mailing by the University of Michigan was inappropriate and premature, inasmuch as it is clearly intended to influence public opinion before the new study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal and made available for public scrutiny. It also sends conflicting signals to the population, and interferes with and frustrates public health efforts to educate the public about legitimate health threats.

The groups urged EPA to conduct a review of the report and inform residents about its limitations.

EPA has not yet stated whether it plans to respond to the latest UMDES report.

In 2009 the agency conducted a formal review of the University of Michigan Dioxin Study and announced that it would be of limited value from a public health perspective because it failed to address dioxin exposure among children and did not adequately sample people who live on highly contaminated land or eat local fish.

“People whose houses are on contaminated soil or who have contaminated dust in their homes do not have higher levels of dioxin in their blood,” the study’s latest report states. “People eating fish from the Tittabawassee River, Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay do not have higher levels of dioxins in their blood.”

These findings are a reversal of those reported by the group in 2006 and are based on a reanalysis of previously collected data, the authors say.

The report has received widespread media coverage in the area, and the Midland Daily News reports that a four-page summary of the study results will be mailed to 117,000 residential addresses in Midland and Saginaw counties.

“I doubt if the public will comprehend the changes, particularly in reference to fish eating,“ said Saginaw County Medical Director Dr. Neill Varner.

Varner said that he found it odd that the report states that those who go fishing on the contaminated waters have elevated dioxin levels but people who eat the fish do not.

Varner said that he is waiting on a clarification from the UMDES researchers.

It’s important that people understand the risks of eating fish from the areas downstream from Dow, he said.

“The practice is not a healthful one,” he said, “and is one that could damage them beyond repair.”

“The new report is clearly intended to influence public opinion,” said Dr. Ted Schettler, science director for Science and Environmental Health Network.

Schettler said that the report is “outside the scientific norm” because it does not fully explain how it reanalyzed the data to come up with the new conclusions.

“EPA and state public health agencies need to carefully review this brochure and if they find wording that is misleading or troublesome,” he said, “they need to set it right.”

Responding to the report should be a priority for public health agencies, he said, because people are deciding how to act on the information.

Dow has an interest in how dioxin is perceived in the region. The chemical giant is facing a class action suit by residents of the contaminated floodplain and is in the limit dioxin exposure for people who live in the contaminated Tittabawassee floodplain.

In media interviews UMDES lead researcher David Garabrant has insisted that researchers have complete independence from Dow, but a copy of the contract between Dow and the University, obtained by Michigan Messenger, shows that the university promised to allow Dow to preview all communications about the study.

In 2009 an EPA analysis of the Dioxin Exposure Study said that it is of “limited value” because it did not examine dioxin exposure among children and did not adequately sample highly contaminated properties and people who eat fish and game from the contaminated area.

EPA did not respond when asked whether it planned to respond to the latest report from the study.

Michigan Dept. of Community Health toxicologist Linda Dykema said that state health officials do not plan to respond to the report.

“We feel EPA has already analyzed it,” she said. “We prefer to focus our time and effort on public health efforts.”

Among the agency’s plans for the year is a program to teach elementary school students about safe fishing and how dioxin and other persistent chemicals can bioaccumulate in the aquatic food chain.

In its “2008 Michigan Family Fish Consumption Guide: Important facts to know if you eat Michigan fish,” the Michigan Department of Community Health warns that pre-menopausal women and children should avoid all lake trout and large whitefish from Lake Huron because elevated levels of PCBs and dioxin have been detected in samples taken by the Department of Environmental Quality.

But people who encounter these same fish in restaurants and fish markets across the country are unlikely to know about Michigan’s consumption advisory — commercial fisheries are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration which does not regularly screen for dioxin and doesn’t require that consumers be informed about state consumption advisories.

At Bay City [Mich.]’s Bay Fest over the Memorial Day weekend, representatives from Bayport Fish Co. said that most of their fish is sold to Jewish and Chinese distributors in Chicago and New York City.

According to a report by the university-based Michigan Sea Grant Extension, 60 percent of the commercially caught Great Lakes whitefish come from Lake Huron. In 2000, more than 3.5 million pounds of whitefish were harvested from the lake’s U.S.-administered waters.

This year’s event features a Special Olympics hot dog cook-out, a teen dance and battle of the bands, a rummage sale and beer tent. But the centerpiece of the festival is the walleye tournament — a competition to see who can catch the largest fish from the river.

Doyle said that the people fishing for walleye are aware of the state fish advisories. “The fishermen all know about the advisories ’cause they are posted when you buy a permit,” he said.

“We don’t serve any walleye caught in river,” he said, adding that the fish served during the Friday evening fish fry is “probably pollock.” Doyle estimates that 80 percent of the Walleye Fest competitors will keep and use the fish they catch.

“Other people donate them to food banks,” he said. “If people don’t want the fish we will filet the fish and donate them to different food organizations that want them.”

Dioxin remediation work three miles downstream from Freeland in Saginaw Township’s West Michigan Park will not impact the river-wide festival, Doyle said.

In 2001, the National Institute of Health listed the family of chemicals known as dioxins as “known human carcinogens” — and while the jury is still out on the chemicals’ level of toxicity, a 2003 Environmental Protection Agency report said dioxin is a “dangerous carcinogen.”

You can read Eartha Jane’s full story here.