(The following story by Ken Kolker appeared on the WOOD television website on May 6, 2009.)
WOODLAND PARK, Mich. — Even from the air, it looked like an environmental disaster — Dow Chemical’s so-called “Bomb Train,” carrying toxic chemicals, piled up and off the tracks.
Police and firefighters evacuated residents of this town in northern Newaygo County. State police monitored clean-up from a helicopter.
But a Dow Chemical spokesman reassured the public.
“Our big ally is the real cold weather, and we’re going to be able to clean it on up,” he was quoted as saying. “That isn’t our main concern.”
Thirty years later, 24 Hour News 8 tested a creek 200 yards from the crash site. The creek winds to nearby East Lake, through a forest of white pine and oaks.
The findings: The creek is tainted with a possible carcinogen — more than twice the level for safe drinking water, according to an analysis by the Prein & Newhof laboratory in Grand Rapids.
The chemical, 1,1-DCE , is used to make plastics and flame-retardant coatings. The EPA says it might cause cancer in humans. It can damage the nervous system, liver and lungs.
And, it’s the same chemical that spilled from the train — 30,000 gallons — on Feb. 4, 1978.
Tests show the chemical has spread through the groundwater to the southwest, toward East Lake.
The site is among hundreds in West Michigan contaminating about 4,200 neighboring properties, according to a 24 Hour News 8 analysis of state Department of Environmental Quality records.
Merrill Township Supervisor Lynn McDaniel says the findings raise new questions. Woodland Park, which is within Merrill Township,has no city water; residents drink from their own wells.
“Is it in all those wells? I don’t know,” she said. “Should we know? Yeah, we should know.”
Woodland Park is a crossroads town with a smattering of mostly older homes and a bar, Woody’s, along a series of mostly undeveloped lakes. It has about 200 year-round residents, but the population grows in the summer.
If the chemical is in the creek, McDaniel wonders, where next? In the walleye? Bluegill? Pike? The perch?
“If you ask some of the old-timers in the community, they’ll say, ‘Well, you know, all the people that lived around that train derailment at the time died within a few years later of cancer,” McDaniel said.
Western Michigan University geosciences professor Alan Kehew says the test by 24 Hour News 8, “probably means it’s moving in the groundwater and then coming up into that — discharging into that creek.”
A follow-up test by 24 Hour News 8 found no trace of the chemical in the water just off East Lake’s shoreline.
However, tests by a consultant hired by CSX have found traces of vinyl chloride — a known carcinogen — in East Lake. Vinyl chloride is created when 1-1, DCE breaks down in the environment.
State officials say the levels in the lake and creek are not high enough to require clean-up of the surface water. They say there’s no indication that fish or other aquatic life are in danger.
However, state officials acknowledged telling CSX it could stop testing lake and creek water several years ago.
“I would be more worried about the groundwater there,” said Kehew, who studies plumes of groundwater contamination.
That is also the state’s worry.
“The concern would be for the drinking water and the potential for someone to be exposed that way,” said state Department of Environmental Quality senior analyst Darlene Stringer.
Stringer oversees CSX’s response to the spill.
It’s not like CSX has done nothing at the site. It’s the successor of the Chessie System, which owned the tracks at the time, and is considered responsible for the spill.
CSX has spent millions pumping and treating the groundwater and replacing drinking wells at five nearby homes, Stringer said. That includes all three homes that are known to be within the plume of contamination, she said.
But in 1998, after it was obvious that the treatment wasn’t working, CSX stopped the clean-up, with state approval, Stringer said.
“If there was going to be some benefit to that (continued treatment), it probably would have occurred years ago,” Stringer said.
Since the cleanup ended, test results have shown high levels of the chemical in monitoring wells — up to 137 times higher than allowed for drinking — some near the creek, one well on the lakeshore.
Then, a surprise.
A new investigation several years ago showed the contamination had spread through the forest to the north — uphill and upstream in the groundwater.
It has crossed 11 Mile Road, the community’s main road. It appears most of the homes in Woodland Park are not endangered, state officials said.
Consultants hired by CSX said they believe the old cleanup program may have spread it there.
Woodland Park resident Roberta Daniel knows those woods well.
“Over here, I get…I used to get morels over there,” she said, while walking through the contaminated forest.
Several years ago, however, she stopped picking morels there, after learning about the contamination.
“Well, I’m afraid of the chemicals and, you know, I don’t
want my children getting sick,” she said.
Eleven years ago, she said, her young daughter got sick — bad stomach cramps — from beefsteak mushrooms picked near the railroad tracks.
She immediately quit picking mushrooms from that spot, she said.
Then, about five years ago, she was picking mushrooms from the other side of the tracks.
“I tried it a few years ago, but the smell that was coming from the mushrooms when I went to cook them — I threw the pan out.”
Today, as consultants still try to learn how far it has spread to the north, there are no plans for more cleanup.
“We know at this point it’s been 30 years,” the DEQ’s Stringer said. “So it would not be unreasonable to say it will be there at least another 30 years.”