The goal of WeAreWolverine.com is to provide regular updates to the community on what’s happening and what we are doing to address the situation.
Below, you’ll find important updates for this week…
Well Testing Results
To date, we’ve sampled approximately 640 wells in the House Street Study Area, Buffer Zone, and Southeast Expansion Area, and have received results for 620 of them, or approximately 97%. So far, 590 of these wells have tested below the very conservative EPA lifetime drinking water advisory level of 70 parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOA/PFOS – and 30 wells have tested above it.
To date, we’ve sampled approximately 390 wells in the Jewell Study Area and all Wolven Study Areas, and have received results for 170 of them, or approximately 44%. So far, 140 of these wells have tested below 70 ppt, and 30 wells have tested above it.
The EPA lifetime drinking water advisory level of 70 ppt has a significant “safety buffer” built in, including assuming exposure for an entire lifetime, and that a pregnant or nursing woman could drink over 4 liters of water per day at 70 ppt PFOA/PFOS with no effect on developing babies and infants. For more information, please see our blog post on this topic.
Whole House Filter Installation Update
To date, 335 whole house filters have been installed in homes in the House Street, Wolven, and Jewell Study Areas. Installations are being prioritized based on the levels of PFOA/PFOS detected in wells. We plan to install 55 filters each week until we’re done.
As we recently announced, we have expanded our whole-house filtration program to include all homes in the Jewell Study Area and all Wolven Study Areas that have confirmed test results with any detection of PFOA or PFOS. In the interim, while results are being received, every home in these areas is being provided with bottled water through Culligan. Eligible homeowners will be contacted by Culligan to arrange for whole house filter installation.
Field Work Update
The field work to remove non-hazardous waste from two parcels in the House Street area has been completed, and all waste has been disposed of by our contractor at a state-licensed facility. We’ll be conducting additional removal work over the next few months, as access to individual parcels is allowed. In addition, we have completed drilling 11 monitoring wells over the past two months, and will be drilling approximately 10-12 more over the next two months. We appreciate the patience of the residents in these areas while this work is being completed.
We developed this blog as one way for you to hear directly from us and you’ll be hearing more from us in the coming days and weeks. West Michigan is our home and we’ve always acted responsibly and taken our obligations as part of this community personally – for over a hundred years, Wolverine has been not only a leader and contributor to this community, but we’ve also been your neighbor – that’s why we’ve taken the proactive steps we have so far and why we’re committed to seeing this through to the end. We hope you’ll follow this blog, learn about what we’re doing to make this right, and hear the other side of the story.
We Are Wolverine.