Rogue River becomes major focal point in Wolverine PFAS cleanup planning

BELMONT, MI — There’s little evidence that anything is amiss along the Rogue River Trail in Belmont besides the four small black monoliths with padlocks.

The metal posts are sentinels of a sort; access points to check the groundwater for toxic “forever chemicals” called PFAS, which are seeping quietly, every day, into a beloved river where people tube, kayak and fish for bass, salmon and trout.

As the Rogue River winds through several townships and the city of Rockford, it’s picking up chemicals either dumped or spilled years ago by Wolverine World Wide, a global footwear company that poisoned miles of surrounding groundwater.

The river, a former drinking water source for Rockford, has been sidelined as point of concern since Wolverine’s PFAS problem came to light four years ago. Remedial efforts have focused on connecting people using private wells in the northern Kent County polluted area to safe water through in-home filtration or extension of municipal mains.

But as the Plainfield Township water systems expands and drinking water exposure is addressed, attention is shifting back to the river. The Rogue, a Trout Unlimited Home River, is not only showing clear signs of impact from years of chemical loading but it is also, unfortunately, helping spread the contaminants beyond the local area through its connection to the Grand River and, ultimately, Lake Michigan.

“It all goes downstream,” said James DeYoung, a fly fisherman who lives in Grand Rapids, which has low but regular PFAS detections in its Lake Michigan source water.

DeYoung has been fishing the Rogue for about 17 years and loves the tranquility of being on the river. But lately, he’s been considering whether to start going elsewhere.

“I’ve seriously considered, ‘do I take my kids or not?” said DeYoung, who has become a bit nervous about his children being in extended contact with the river. “I know the likelihood of exposure is small if they fall in, but it’s still not something you want to do as a parent; to bring your kids somewhere they could be exposed to that.”

The extent of Wolverine’s contamination in the Rogue has been coming into sharper focus over the past two years as the company and state regulators accumulate more data on where PFAS are entering the river and in what concentrations.

Related: Questions raised about Rogue River testing

Those investigations are undergirding cleanup plans and have already resulted in new restrictions on consuming fish from the river that will be published this summer.

Under the terms of a 2020 consent decree negotiated with the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE), Wolverine has been sampling at multiple places where plumes intersect the river. The results are under state review, but the data shows not only are there elevated PFAS levels in the water, but the chemicals are entering the river at very high concentration in some locations.

Meanwhile, Wolverine is also seeking approval for a long-delayed plan to stop pollutants from entering the river at its former tannery in downtown Rockford, where a century of leather manufacturing left behind groundwater laden with toxic fluorochemicals just upstream of the city’s iconic dam.

The fish advisories, coupled with Wolverine’s data showing 1,100 part-per-trillion (ppt) of the individual compound PFOS in pore water samples near the river trail wells, add fuel to the debate about how to manage long-term cleanup at the company’s infamous House Street dump, located on a high spot about two miles northwest of the river.

A plume coming from the House Street dump is boosting concentrations of PFAS in the river not far from its confluence with the Grand River in Plainfield Township.

The tannery has long been seen as the big source of pollutants in the river — thanks, in part, to surface water foam that’s tested for high PFAS levels at the Rockford Dam — but experts say that its contribution to the overall PFAS load is actually smaller than plumes coming from House Street and another dump site under the Wellington Ridge neighborhood.

“There’s a serious problem with groundwater entering the Rogue River,” said Rick Rediske, an environmental chemistry professor at Grand Valley State University who was involved in the initial citizen-led exposure of Wolverine’s pollution.

“The tannery is a drop in the bucket compared to what’s coming off the plumes,” he said.

Rediske, who has reviewed Wolverine’s investigation of contamination at the groundwater-surface water interface along the river, said there are numerous spots between the 11 Mile Road Bridge in Algoma Township and Rogue River Drive NE bridge in Plainfield Township where groundwater containing PFAS at more than 100-ppt is entering the river.

Those are far above the state’s water quality standards for PFAS, which start at 12-ppt.

The most elevated concentrations in that roughly 12 mile stretch of river are underneath Rogue River Park in Belmont — where the House Street plume hits the river. Testing of the river water itself shows increasing PFAS concentrations moving downstream past the various plumes.

Rediske, who is a member of the Wolverine Contamination Advisory Group (CAG), a citizen-led body created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has been advocating with other group members for the construction of a groundwater treatment system at the river to intercept contaminated groundwater from the House Street plume.

“They’re going to have to build something at the Rogue.”

A.J. Birkbeck, an environmental attorney who sits with Rediske on the CAG, helped critique Wolverine’s proposed plan to remediate the House Street dump using “phytoremediation” — a technique that relies on planting trees and using roots to siphon and sequester the contaminants.

The state recently rejected the proposal.

“Something needs to be done at the Rogue,” said Birkbeck, who worries the consent decree the ability of state regulators to force the installation of more robust cleanup measures. “The river is being impacted, without a doubt, at significant levels.”

Wolverine would not say whether it would consider putting extraction wells at the river in response to a question from MLive, replying via email through a public relations firm that its ongoing groundwater investigation along the river would inform its future remedial steps.

The company is drilling monitor wells in 17 new locations over the next year and must eventually submit a plan to address chemicals entering the river. It could take more than two years to reach that point, says EGLE.

“There’s some timing involved, but if push comes to shove and Wolverine does not submit a plan for response activities to cut off the venting (of chemicals to the river), EGLE is able to go after them for natural resources damages,” said Karen Vorce, project manager at EGLE’s remediation and redevelopment division in Grand Rapids.

Renewed attention on the river brings the Rockford area PFAS problem full circle. It was the river from which the initial pollution clues sprang forth back in 2013, when the first regulatory sampling for PFAS in Michigan surface waters turned up elevated PFOS levels in the millpond above the Rockford dam, next to the former tannery site.

Related: PFAS ails fish near tannery leftovers (2017)

The fish advisory that resulted from that testing remains in place. The state’s Eat Safe Fish guide advises limiting consumption of suckers, as well as large and smallmouth bass, from the river above the dam, to one to four meals a month, depending on the fish and size.

When the Eat Safe Fish guide is updated this summer, brown trout will join bass and suckers as fish species for which people should limit consumption. The advisory is for fish above and below the Rockford Dam, which separates the fishery.

The new trout restrictions follow fish testing in 2018 and 2019 by the EGLE, which had never tested brown trout in the river before. A brown from the ponded area above the dam had the highest PFOS levels, at 117 parts-per-billion (ppb), but another fish downstream hit 98-ppb.

Brandon Armstrong, an aquatic biology specialist at EGLE’s water resources division, said analysis showed some correlations between PFAS levels in the river water and levels in the fish tissue, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

“Fish aren’t just getting exposed through surface water,” he said. “They’re also getting exposed through their diet.”

Brown trout eat insects and small fish exposed to chemicals through contaminated sediments. Because they’re higher in the food web, any contaminants in their diet will accumulate through a process known as biomagnification. This phenomenon has resulted in many similar fish consumption advisories for various contaminants around the region.

The state also tested coho salmon from a Rogue tributary, Belmont Creek, but Armstrong said PFAS levels were below the benchmarks for an advisory. Steelhead, another trout species targeted by anglers in the Rogue during spring and fall during spawning runs, fall under a different advisory driven by PCBs in migratory fish from Lake Michigan.

For some, the trout advisory strikes at the heart of the Rogue River’s reputation as a popular fly-fishing river with numerous access points for downstate anglers. The river is storied among anglers and was previously estimated by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to bring about $485,000 annually to the area through fishing trips.

“It’s that thing in the back of your mind,” DeYoung said. “You can be in this beautiful place, but you’re also wondering and thinking, ‘I’m not going to take any (fish) home.’”

Like many anglers on the Rogue, DeYoung fishes mostly for sport and releases a lot of what he catches back to the river. Anglers involved with Schrems West Michigan Trout Unlimited, the local Trout Unlimited chapter, say that catch-and-release ethos dampens outrage from local anglers over the new trout restrictions and continued chemical loading.

With PFAS, “I hate to say it, but it’s kind of like Covid — we have to find a way to live with it,” said Lance Climie, a Schrems board member who sits on the CAG.

Tom Mundt, a Schrems member who is also a chair of the state chapter, issued a statement highlighting how Trout Unlimited generally worries more about pollution’s affect on fish themselves — not so much on those who eat them.

Mundt, a former Wolverine executive, was heavily involved in helping the Rogue get designated a Trout Unlimited Home River in 2010 while the company’s tannery was being demolished.

“While we recognize that the Rogue River contains significant levels of PFAS which entered the system from several sources over many decades, there has been no scientific studies initiated to determine if the presence of PFAS has in anyway effected the health of the trout within the Rogue River watershed, a study which Michigan TU would eagerly support,” Mundt wrote.

Watershed groups working in the Rogue River have been similarly muted in response to the presence of PFAS in the river and have been mostly disengaged from advocacy around how to manage its cleanup. Local nonprofits that work on river restoration and reducing input of contaminants like e.coli and agricultural runoff have not made public comments about any of Wolverine’s proposed plans this year, according to EGLE.

Organizations like the Lower Grand River Organization of Watersheds (LGROW) and Rogue River Watershed Partners have organized some educational events in conjunction with EGLE, such as a recent Paddle & Pints get together in June where the river’s PFAS issue was discussed.

But members of both organizations acknowledged that their involvement has mostly been limited to helping educate members and the public, rather than advocacy.

“It’s been years of concern on this and I guess maybe we’re all wearing out,” said Jessie Schulte, a Rogue River Watershed Partners board member.

“Obviously, we’re trusting EGLE,” she said. “That’s their wheelhouse.”

Wendy Ogilvie, director of environmental programs at the Grand Valley Metro Council, which houses LGROW, said concerns have been raised about PFAS causing surface water foaming at the long-awaited $45 million Grand River rapids restoration project in Grand Rapids, which would create a river whitewater course downtown.

In Rockford, there are signs warning people to avoid river foams that develop on agitated water due to a microlayer of PFAS on the water surface. The Rogue is the last major tributary of the Grand before it reaches Lake Michigan.

“What are the implications of having PFAS in the Grand River when we’re encouraging people to recreate in the river?” said Ogilve, a former Wolverine CAG member. “It’s definitely been a topic of conversations in some of our meetings.”

Related stories:

‘We want a real solution,’ say Wolverine dump neighbors

Timeline: The Wolverine, 3M Scotchgard disaster

Wolverine submits plan to clean dump with 4k trees

Michigan PFAS site list surges past 100

Blue soils dug from under polluted Wolverine tannery

3M, Wolverine settle pollution lawsuit with Michigan family

3M to pay $55M in Michigan PFAS settlement

How citizen sleuths cracked the Wolverine tannery case

PFAS activist says blood testing probably saved her life