WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI – Township officials are seeking legal advice over “potential violations” of a permit they issued to a sand and gravel mine outside Ann Arbor that has pumped millions of gallons of groundwater, sucking some nearby residents’ wells dry.
The Ann Arbor Township board voted Monday, Aug. 21, to direct the township attorney to prepare a legal opinion regarding possible violations of the conditional use permit issued in 2020 for the Vella Pit mine on Earhart Road, operated by Mid Michigan Materials. The motion did not specify the potential violations.
“I have to say that I’m really disturbed by what I felt was a cavalier attitude on the part of (Mid Michigan Materials) toward our conditional use permit and development agreements, our natural features and of course our residents,” township Trustee John Allison said ahead of the vote.
“In my 27 years on this board, I don’t think I’ve ever run into a business that I thought treated our ordinances with such impunity.”
Mid Michigan Materials, whose representatives dispute violations of any township permit, purchased the decades-old mine in 2020 and set about expanding operations with a new, modern plant.
As part of the extraction of aggregate, used for such projects as the I-275 reconstruction and local building construction, the company has intentionally lowered the groundwater in its pit, resulting in the drying of several nearby homeowner wells, according to state environmental regulators.
Read more: A new gravel mine operator moved in. Then, these Ann Arbor-area residents’ wells ran dry
On Monday, Mid Michigan Materials Vice President Rob Wilson said his company didn’t anticipate the well impacts and acted as soon as it learned of them in April, commissioning a hydrogeological study and so far paying to repair or replace nine affected wells.
A model built through the study could be used to predict if other residents’ wells could be affected, allowing the company to proactively lower pumps or drill new wells before water loss, the company’s consultants said on Monday.
“We believe this facility is essential to making Washtenaw County work, and we want to partner with everyone to make it work for all parties concerned,” Wilson said. “We run as a family company. We take these matters very personally.”
Still, Mid Michigan Materials is under scrutiny by township officials over its zoning permit and its current operations.
Allison said at the meeting the company didn’t notify the township when it began pumping groundwater from the pit, to mine and wash material. The water is now discharged into nearby wetlands after a settling process under a state permit the mine obtained.
Allison sits on the township planning commission, which reviewed the zoning permit for the mine expansion in 2020.
On Monday, he read from application materials the mine had submitted then, which said the proposed mine operations didn’t include groundwater pumping. He also cited statements made by mine representatives in the permit review process that year, recorded in planning commission minutes, that the operations “would not dewater the site or lower the groundwater table.”
“I am just appalled, frankly, that you think these changes wouldn’t be a major change to the conditional use permit,” Allison said, challenging Wilson to justify how the dewatering is consistent with the permit.
Wilson replied that the zoning permit requires the mining company to seek all appropriate permissions for its operation, which it did in obtaining the water discharge permit from the state. Dewatering is a method his family has used for 30 years without issue, he said earlier in his presentation.
“Businesses change, methods change, so we sought the appropriate permit,” Wilson said.
Township officials intend to review the conditional use permit and get legal advice on any rights or remedies it has to address the “potential violations,” according to the motion passed Monday.
Officials need to take time and complete a careful analysis, township Supervisor Diane O’Connell said Monday. “We don’t move quickly. We move carefully, and we want to make sure that we are doing the best job that we can.”
In a statement to MLive on Tuesday, Aug. 22, Wilson committed to continuing to work with officials.
“We have followed the (conditional use permit) to our understanding in seeking and winning state and federal permits for operations. We value our relationship with our neighbors and Ann Arbor Township and will continue providing all information requested during last night’s meeting because the ongoing functioning of the Vella facility is essential to our area,” he said.
The township vote came near midnight on Monday after several hours of public statements from some 30 Ann Arbor Township residents and homeowners in nearby townships.
In eight months, residents have documented 24 wells in the area surrounding the pit that have suffered issues ranging from going dry to experiencing static water level drops or quality issues, said Michael Watts, who added his own well water level dropped 22 feet.
“Should the township fail to take action on behalf of the community and its water, health, safety, environment, wellbeing, property values and quality of life, the community itself will take action,” Watts said.
Others, like resident Lindsay Duke, said they worried about water problems affecting livestock and gardens.
“This township, this land, is my dream,” Duke said. “I’m not letting anyone get in the way, destroying my dream and ability to drink water.”
Some residents urged officials to temporarily suspend operations at the mine and investigate.
“An investigation by (Mid Michigan Materials) is not good enough for me because I do not believe the fox should be guarding the chicken coop,” resident Amy Olszewski said.
Mining company representatives sought to calm fears in a presentation of their own.
attorney Kenneth Vermeulen, with the mine operator, addressed concerns that drilling deeper wells into a lower aquifer might result in arsenic levels in well water.
The carcinogen is naturally occurring and exists all over southeast Michigan, he said, and many wells have treatment systems to remove it. That’s only been the case for one of the wells the company has drilled so far, and it covered the cost of the system, Vermeulen said.
The lawyer also addressed another sore spot for residents, a pending application with state regulators for the mine to raise its permitted water withdrawal from a maximum of 2 million gallons per day to a cap of 4.8 million gallons per day.
Even with the permit, the mine has no intention of increasing its water withdrawal from present operations, roughly 1.8 or 1.9 million gallons per day, he said. Even so, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy takes the position that the mine should have a withdrawal permit matching the capacity of its pumping equipment, according to Vermeulen.
The company disagrees with that interpretation, and Vermeulen compared the requirement to police giving a ticket to a car that can go 150 mph, even if it doesn’t break the speed limit. But Mid Michigan Materials is still applying for the permit, which will result in increased state oversight if granted, he said.
The mine is also looking into concerns about turbidity of a nearby lake voiced by residents, and EGLE is coming to do a site inspection, he said, denying the mine is responsible for any longstanding impacts.
The company is working to install monitoring wells on its property, which will provide continuous data and can be used to inform a model of the underlying aquifers now built using data from well logs, said Leslie Nelson, an environmental engineer with Haley and Aldrich, a consultant investigating the issues for the mine.
“The purpose is to be able to protect your wells and be able to address the problem before it happens, so that you don’t run out of water and feel that panicky feeling. Nobody wants you to feel that,” she said.
The company has “thoughtfully and quickly” responded to neighbors who have reached out with issue, Wilson said, replacing or repairing nine wells and working on a tenth, even some in an area further from the mine it currently doesn’t believe it is responsible for, Wilson said.
The company is also willing to come up with an agreement with the township and state regulators increasing financial assurances to guarantee future well adjustments and water treatment systems, if necessary, he added.
“We consider ourselves members of every single community (we operate in), so the fact that we find ourselves in this position and the inconvenience we have caused, we are sincerely sorry for that, for all of you that have endured this,” he said. “We are working toward a quick resolution, we want an accurate one.”
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