Baldwin wary of delay in Marinette
Tyco waited to respond to groundwater pollution
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin expressed worries this week in a letter to the top officer of Johnson Controls International about the company’s “delayed response” to contamination of groundwater in Marinette in northeastern Wisconsin.
On Wednesday, Baldwin sent a letter to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer George Oliver and asked why a unit of the company knew of contamination on its property in 2013, yet residents were not notified of potential water contamination until 2017, as the Journal Sentinel reported Feb. 4.
“Without such notification, residents could not reasonably have had knowledge of the contamination and could do nothing to protect themselves from exposure,” Baldwin wrote.
The senator’s office provided a copy of the letter to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“This delay in communications with residents resulted in up to four years of potential exposure to these chemicals and their associated serious health risks,” Baldwin said.
Fraser Engerman, a spokesman for Johnson Controls, said the company “appreciated” the letter and would continue discussing the issue with the senator’s office and is working with state and local officials on a long-term plan to provide clean drinking water.
Perfluorinated chemicals have become known as “forever” chemicals because they are highly resistant to breaking down in the environment. Studies suggest that the chemicals can lead to increased risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension, liver damage, thyroid disease, asthma, decreased fertility, some cancers and a decline in response to vaccines.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced on Thursday it would begin work on a long-awaited plan to set a national standard for the chemicals in drinking water. But environmental groups and residents in affected areas said the EPA should be moving much faster.
The Journal Sentinel reported on Feb. 4 that Tyco Fire Products had test results of soil and well contamination on its property dating back to October 2013 for the chemicals that Tyco uses in fire control.
It wasn’t until November 2017 that Tyco said it believed the chemicals had spread outside its 380-acre fire
technology center, where testing and fire-control training have taken place since about 1962.
Engerman said that once the company determined that the compounds may have left the property, it reported the situation to the Department of Natural Resources and continues to work with the DNR to determine the extent of contamination.
Tyco said on its website on Feb. 5 that the readings from 2013 “were in the center of our 380-acre facility, and we had no reason at that time to believe that these compounds had migrated outside of our property or that there was any linkage to the area’s drinking water.”
In December 2017 the company started providing bottled water to property owners that now totals about 121 properties and has installed 37 water treatment systems in the Marinette area.
The DNR has said it was Tyco’s responsibility to report the contamination on its property immediately.
On potential enforcement action against the company, Deputy Secretary Elizabeth Kluesner of the DNR said Thursday that agency staff is continuing to review the matter.
“This is a very complicated document review for us to do,” she said, declining to elaborate.
In Baldwin’s letter to Oliver, the senator asked whether executives were aware of the contamination problems during the merger of Johnson Controls Inc. of Glendale and Tyco International. Merger talks were first reported on Jan. 24, 2016, by the Wall Street Journal. The merger was completed in September 2016.
Baldwin also asked whether the company was aware that perfluorinated chemicals “had a strong potential to mobilize and spread beyond Tyco’s property.” She also asked if company officials were aware of the contamination and if there were immediate plans to clean up the site.