[Above: Starkweather Creek storm drains from Dane County Regional Airport; photo Maria Powell]
******
Last October, Wisconsin Watch published “Something has to be done’ about Starkweather Creek, one of Wisconsin’s most polluted waterways” by Isaac Wasserman.
What is “progressive” and “green” Dane County doing about the sky-high levels of PFAS oozing from the 38 storm drains at the airport and burn pits into Starkweather Creek and Lake Monona? Here are a few highlights:
Ignoring and/or resisting DNR regulations. Tinkering around with taxpayer-funded pilot experimental treatments that have failed miserably to date. Ignoring the highly poisoned burnpits that they’ve known about for many decades (right next to the creek) or deflecting blame to someone else. Planning airport and runway expansions over contaminated, unremediated soils and groundwater. Refusing to test sediments in the creek downstream of the airport flowing through Truax and Darbo-Worthington neighborhoods–so teens from these neighborhoods finally tested sediments on their own. Not engaging the community beyond scripted, token online PR exercises at which the county’s corporate attorney assured community members that “everything is under control” with vague and misleading non-answers to their questions (or simply ignored them).
But wait! I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Dane County recently joined a lawsuit against 3M, which manufactured some of the PFAS compounds that contaminate the airport. County Executive Parisi, Corporation Counsel Tutwiler, and his team are in fact taking courageous, aggressive actions!
Well, hmmm. I’m all for holding giant corporate polluters accountable, and making them pay for cleanups, but will this lawsuit do anything soon to help protect the community from more PFAS exposures? No. The lawsuit will likely be batted around and argued about by attorneys for years–and 3M attorneys will vastly over-power and out-resource the plaintiffs’. So who knows if the county and other plaintiffs will ever get any money from this huge corporation for cleanup? Even if they do, it will take a very long time.
While these attorneys bicker in courtrooms somewhere, horrifying levels of PFAS will continue to flow out of airport stormdrains into Starkweather Creek and Lake Monona–already severely poisoned by these forever chemicals.
Perhaps most disturbing through all of this is Dane County’s ongoing audacity to blow off existing environmental regulations–and other government entities’ and elected officials’ willingness to look the other way.
Among other outrages, Dane county violated DNR municipal stormwater laws for years. After we forced this into the public eye, county officials finally passed the legally-required ordinance (27 years overdue!) giving the county legal authorities to address “illicit discharges” (including PFAS) from county storm drains into our waterways. But will the county use these authorities against itself (the airport)? Not at all likely.
And now, behind the scenes, the county is fighting to legally exempt itself from the PFAS monitoring and other requirements finally put into the airport’s WPDES stormwater permit, issued by DNR in May (after we asked about it for four years…).
Shhhh…
See that sad story here.
UPDATE 2: Has Dane County actually been violating its DNR stormwater permit for 26 years?
