The Environmental Protection Agency’s time-critical cleanup of PCB-contamination in the Kalamazoo River took an unexpected side branch recently as work started to involve Pine Creek.
The Pine Creek impoundment has been drawn down so contractors can work on the short section where it flows out from the dam and goes under Jefferson Road into the Kalamazoo River.
EPA on screen coordinator Paul Ruesch said draining the impoundment hadn’t been originally part of the plan.
“This is where it’s great that we have such a partnership with MDEQ,” Ruesch said. “It’s nice to have everyone on the same page or else this would have taken months.”
The change in plans had to happen when sampling in that part of the cleanup area showed there was PCB contamination in the riverbed soil in the mouth of Pine Creek at an elevated level.
The stop logs that can be used to change the level of water behind the dam were taken out and the level is now down to about what Pine Creek would normally look like if there were no dam.
The EPA’s contractors are currently getting ready to jump into action and do the cleanup.
When they do, the stop logs will be put back into the dam and the contractors will start excavating in the Pine Creek outlet while all the water is held back by the dam.
“We couldn’t work in there with that level of flow,” Ruesch said. “We had to come up with this solution.”
The contractors estimate they can finish their work in the about two days it takes for the impoundment to fill back up.
“We’ll put up lights and work all night if we have to,” Ruesch said.
The contractors have put a gravel road across the mouth of the creek and will plug the culverts in that to keep water flowing in from the Kalamazoo River side and pump all the water out.
Then computer-aided excavators programmed to dig to a specific depth will move in and clean out the contaminated soil, replacing it with clean fill.
Ruesch said he’d personally notified all the people who live around Pine Creek by going door to door and holding a meeting in Otsego.
One family had concerns about the water level going back up, so Ruesch said he was in contact with them every day to be sure it didn’t get too close to their house.
“We’ll pull the logs if that gets too close,” he said.
Like the periodic Michigan Department of Natural Resources drawdowns in the water level (the next was scheduled for 2019) the water being down exposed the site of Pine Creek, the earliest white settlement in the area.
Ruesch said he wanted to be sure that people understood the boat ramp on 21st Street was closed throughout the Pine Creek part of the project, which will hopefully be done within the next few weeks.
“We waited until after Labor Day so we hopefully didn’t ruin anyone’s holiday by not having the water there,” he said.
The EPA has also detected PCB contamination in Pine Creek above the dam, but won’t be touching that as part of this project.
Ruesch said the cleanup is only dealing with the time -critical aspects of contamination that are a danger to pollute the river further. Further work would be needed someday to completely cleanup the contamination in the riverbanks and areas like Pine Creek, which was formerly part of the impoundment formed by the Otsego Township Dam before the dam and Jefferson Road were built.
Ruesch said the EPA was also going to be more stringent about closing the river off, including from people fishing along the banks in the Kalamazoo River on the north side of Jefferson Road.
“That’s noteworthy because generations of families have fished there for years,” Ruesch said.
The green trailer
Ruesch said one of the questions he’s heard from the public about the work going on was what was in the green trailer that can be seen just north of Jefferson Road where work is currently going on.
The answer is the water purification system that takes the water flowing off the pile of wet, contaminated sediment dug out of the river and makes it safe to put back into the ecosystem.
Three sets of filters are used. First the water goes through a bag filter similar to a home water filter. Then it goes through another filter that uses granulated, activated charcoal and finally a third that uses sand.
The clean water coming out of the system is used by the contractor’s dust control trucks that wet down dirt work areas.
Keeping dust to a minimum and no airborne particulates going off the site is a major priority.
There’s more going on at the EPA site, so check back in next week’s paper for another report on what’s going on at the former Otsego Township Dam, what’s in those big white bags and more.
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