Two years ago, residents of Alden Village, a small subdivision directly east of Ford Motor Company’s Livonia Transmission, got a letter from the automaker.
It was not good news.
A plume of groundwater contaminated with vinyl chloride and trichlorethylene — both known carcinogens — had moved off plant property, and was now underneath about two-thirds of the roughly 110 homes in the neighborhood.
Ford scheduled an informational meeting shortly afterwards, and Monica O’Connor went. Her home is just 700 feet from the boundary of the plant.
"It was a dog and pony show," she says. "We show up, they had charts and graphs and people talking and it was all very well prepared to impress. Their biggest impression they wanted to make was that there was not any contamination in our drinking water."
That is certainly inarguable. Livonia gets its drinking water from Detroit, just as most metro Detroit communities do.
Bruce Tenniswood, a retired deputy fire chief, says it was obvious Ford was using the drinking water talking point as a red herring.
"I understand how vinyl chloride works,” he says.
Vinyl chloride is an extremely volatile substance. It releases as a gas in air pockets in the soil. If the contaminated groundwater is very shallow, as it is in Alden Village, vapor can get into homes and be inhaled.
“It doesn’t take much to get in your house,” says Tenniswood. “My basement is […]
Full article: “They lied to us” about contaminated groundwater, say residents near Ford’s Livonia plant
US groundwater in peril: potable water supply less than thought
Benefits of Groundwater Recharge Demonstrated in Lodi Vineyards
California Court Finds Public Trust Doctrine Applies to State Groundwater Resources
Farmers drawing groundwater from Ogallala Aquifer faster than nature replaces it
Global coal industry using as much water as a billion people each year
Los Angeles residents at a section of the Los Angeles River cleanup in Los Angeles,…
Over the past decade, about 67 million gallons of fire retardant have been dropped on…
Photo: Golden Trout Wilderness Seeking blue, seeing gold The Kern Plateau features a chain of…
For the first time in more than a century, a salmon was observed swimming through Klamath…
New turnout facility from the California Aqueduct on Monday, Oct. 23, 2023. Officials say the…
Over the past century, humans have constructed major transportation infrastructure like highways, bridges, railroads, and…