EPA Region 5 Superfund Officials to Visit Kazoo

Meetings at Radisson to discuss Allied site groundwater testing.
Environmental Protection Agency officials from the Region 5 office in Chicago, will meet with Kazoo stakeholders at the Radisson Hotel, on July 28th to share the results from groundwater testing done at the Allied site, just south of the city's municipal wellfield. Remedial Project Managers Jim Saric, and Michael Berkoff will meet with the Allied Site Task Force at 1:00 pm and a public meeting will be at 6:00 pm.

The additional testing was agreed to by the Responsible Party (Millennium Holdings) and the EPA, in an effort to answer questions, chiefly by the City of Kalamazoo, regarding possible contamination of municipal wellfields located downstream, along Portage Creek, from the Allied site, which contains about 1.2 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated paper mill waste.

According to studies included in the Remedial Investigation, part of the CERCLA or Superfund process, the Allied site continues to leak PCBs to Portage Creek, and subsequently the Kalamazoo River.

The current studies called for analysis of groundwater flows from the toxic waste site to see if the aquifer the City draws Kazoo drinking water from is, or could be, contaminated by paper mill waste "residuals" that contain PCBs at levels far exceeding government safety standards.

If you drink Kazoo water, live along or near the Kalamazoo River, or are concerned about restoring our river to it's natural state for all to enjoy, please come to the meeting at the Radisson at 6 pm on July 28th.