A major health crisis threatens residents of central
Michigan after last week’s flooding that displaced more than 10,000 people and
destroyed thousands of homes. There have been widespread concerns about
potential chemical leakage from the flooded containment ponds at the Midland
Dow Complex and the spread of dioxin by the flood from a Superfund cleanup site
downriver to larger areas.
In response, Dow Chemical announced last Wednesday that
there were “no reported product releases,” and the state of Michigan announced
on May 27 that it would begin testing soil sediments taken from the
Tittabawassee River this Thursday. However, the statement from Dow and the
small-scope testing proposed by the state are woefully inadequate and in no way
reassuring. The potential environmental and health crisis triggered by this
flooding is a long time in the making and rooted in Dow’s decades-long criminal
practice of dumping chemicals, failure to ensure safe working conditions, and
above all, disregard for the health and well-being of the population.
In Dow’s reporting of its flooded containment ponds, the
contents of these ponds were left unmentioned, and their real purpose was
glossed over. Dow’s containment ponds collect chemical run-offs from a large
cement trench running throughout the Midland Dow complex. As explained to the
WSWS by a former Dow employee, the company “had trucks come in that would take
the containers [of various chemicals], but they didn’t have a reservoir to
collect any residual chemicals” besides the containment ponds, “which would
overflow” with ground level chemicals when it rained.
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