Nearly three years later, you have to know what to look for. It takes a hard look at the flood plains over the banks of the Kalamazoo River to see the effects of an incident that covered the southwest Michigan area with oil.
But it doesn’t take much to imagine what homeowners along the area near the spill think, even three years after the July 2010 rupture that, according to pipeline owner Enbridge, released about 843,000 gallons of oil. More than 150 homes have wells tapping that water. Those wells have ongoing testing.
Enbridge says its clean-up regimen since the spill has gotten the vast majority of the oil out of the river and that it’s taken steps to prevent future incidents. But residents have deep concerns about surface water, groundwater and whether any of the oil that spilled will eventually seep from one to the other.
The Kalamazoo-area spill illustrates a tension modern life: We all use oil, whether it’s drilled in Saudi Arabia or mined from Canadian sands, and we all need water, whether it comes from municipal piping or a well in our backyard. A recent excursion to the area with the Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources offered a wide-angle view of the issues that arise when oil and water mix.
Well Testing
Deb Miller is one of the residents whose well qualifies for periodic testing. She’s had two tests since the spill, both paid for by Enbridge and overseen by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
“After they do the water sampling, a month and a half, two months later we get a letter from Enbridge saying this is what the testing shows,” Miller said.
Drillers installed her well in spring 1999. It goes 100 feet down through clay, sand, broken rock and, eventually, water-bearing rock and shale. Miller’s property sits about five and a half miles from where the oil entered Talmadge Creek. The creek brought the oil to the river and the Millers have about 400-500 feet of frontage on the river near Ceresco Dam.
Her well is about 100 feet from the river and the proximity makes her nervous. “Before the spill, our well was just a couple years old,” she said, adding that it was tested about a year earlier.
“I know our water was good before.”
But her family hasn’t used the water for drinking or cooking since the day of the spill, even though tests show nothing but elevated iron levels, which she chalks up to Calhoun County’s subsurface geology and says is consistent with what neighbors see.
An assessment released in February by the Michigan Department of Community Health agrees.
“Two metals, iron and nickel, were detected above health-based screening levels in some samples from a few wells. However, iron and nickel were previously detected from wells in Calhoun and Kalamazoo Counties and are likely naturally occurring metals,” the assessment concluded.
But, with just a few years between the incident and the testing, that’s not enough to ease Miller’s fears. “I think we’re probably looking at, in my mind, 10 years,” she said before she would feel confident in the water’s safety. She says local health department officials have told her they’d be shocked to see any effect on groundwater within five or 10 years.
Paul Makoski, environmental health manager with the Calhoun County Health Department, expects a long-term testing regime.
“There’s going to be testing of this groundwater long after I retire,” he said. And it could be years before an effect, if any, on groundwater is known.
“In our county with our kind of geology, we may have groundwater that moves two inches a year. It’s going to take a long time for whatever may be in the soil to get anywhere before we can detect it.”
Still, Miller wonders about a well she used to own. She sold a commercial property to Enbridge late last year. The company bought dozens of properties near the spill site, and she said wells on those properties are not monitored. The well at her business, she said, was much shallower than her home well.
“Our well was behind our store, within 20 feet of the river and it was a 20-foot shallow,” she said. “If one was going to go, it was that one.”
Makoski says the health department checks up on wells and septic systems on land bought by Enbridge after the spill to “verify that things are OK and up to standard.” None of that checking has found oil-related compounds.