1,4 dioxane
For nine years, ending in 1986, a company in Ann Arbor sprayed wastewater containing 1,4 dioxane on their lawns and stored the dioxane in unlined lagoons. This chemical carcinogen seeped through the soil and rock layers and began to spread down to the Huron River. I can’t imagine a worse place for this to happen, in some ways: one of the most liberal and organic hotspots clashed with toxic industry.
That part of town is where the houses are cheapest. That’s where Rosie and Jack’s mom lives, and they’re not permitted to plant edible gardens in the ground — they have to be in raised beds or in pots. And they are certainly not permitted to draw groundwater from their residence. It has felt real to me because they live there — I see how they can’t sell their house and I see the lack of interest in gardening on that side of town.
But the dioxane keeps spreading, and now there is a prohibition zone on our street, too. We could walk fifteen minutes to the river, so the chemical is getting that close, and when it gets in the river it eventually enters Lake Erie.
As far as we know we can still have our garden, but we can’t draw well water. It feels haunting that an invisible toxin from twenty-five years ago has crept into our yard. It feels unfair. I am maniacal against toxins, especially now. It makes me want to move.
Somehow I want to correlate this to Detroit — a place so close to us that doesn’t seem to touch us, nobody visits, yet everyone here is somehow connected to it, and the idealism of this town is scarred by how many people are losing their jobs. More people worked for Ford than I knew, or worked for a company that worked for Ford in some way. Industry and university clashing, personally, under our house.
