Now that a federal appeals board has rejected an effort by Antrim County residents to block the disposal there of contaminated leachate from a luxury resort in Petoskey, a bigger question looms: How long is it going to take to find a local solution to what has become a northern Michigan problem?
Back in 1993 developer David Johnson teamed up with CMS Energy to transform a former mining and cement plant site west of Petoskey into a luxury resort they named Bay Harbor. It was the largest such reclamation project in the U.S. and featured luxury homes, a world-class golf course, a marina and an Olympic-caliber equestrian complex.
A major part of the process -- and the root of the current problem -- was dealing with some 2.5 million cubic yards of cement kiln dust (CKD) that was present in massive piles on the site. Key was a decision by former Gov. John Engler's Department of Natural Resources to change the designation of CKD from a hazardous to a non-hazardous substance, which meant that it could be buried at the site. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had demanded the dust be removed, but the deal struck between the state and Bay Harbor meant it was buried and capped.
In 2003, however, dead fish were spotted in Lake Michigan just off Bay Harbor, and swimmers and boaters were experiencing burned skin and ear infections. Officials determined the situation was caused by leachate from the CKD -- a caustic brew caused when water passed through the buried CKD and washed into the lake.
The Northwest Michigan Health Department likened the leachate to bleach and closed several miles of beach in 2004. The EPA in 2005 ordered CMS to "isolate, contain, or remove" the CKD, but again the state struck a deal that allowed the company to put in wells to draw off the leachate and dispose of it.
The company tried to use the city of Petoskey's wastewater treatment plant, but the brew was too "hot" for the plant to handle. Since then some of the leachate has been hauled to a deep-injection well in Montmorency County and some -- after being pre-treated at a CMS facility near the resort -- has been hauled to Traverse City, where it is run through the city's wastewater treatment plant.
For the past couple years, the company has been trying to get state and federal approval to drill a deep-injection well near Alba in Antrim County that would take the material now being trucked to Traverse City. Residents, environmentalists and outdoors groups have strongly protested, claiming the well could threaten the headwaters of six major Michigan rivers. So far, CMS has prevailed.
From the first, CMS has assumed responsibility for the cleanup and has said it wanted to deal with the leachate at or near Bay Harbor. Spokesman Tim Petrosky says that's still the goal; CMS has spent between $60 million and $70 million on the cleanup so far and expects to eventually spend $140 million.
But to date, he says, the company has not found a technology that would reduce the level of mercury in the leachate to the required 1.3 parts per trillion necessary to pump it into Lake Michigan or dispose of it locally.
Without such technology, then, the plan to reduce the footprint of this problem is so much wishful thinking. If CMS survives legal challenges, the company will eventually begin hauling 135,000 gallons of leachate to the Alba well site every day for years to come.
All this began, of course, with the Engler administration's decision to reclassify the CKD and allow it to stay on-site. It's a decision the entire region is still paying for -- with no end in sight.
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