1 automaker, the one that has operated a famed testing facility nearby known as the Milford Proving Ground since the 1920s and has paid for bottled water deliveries to her family’s home and their neighbors since 2014: General Motors.
But several months later, they received a letter from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, notifying them of excessive levels of salt in their water.
O’Nions is now one of several plaintiffs named in a lawsuit filed last autumn against General Motors, alleging the automaker’s decades-long use of salt on roads and in vehicle tests at the 4,011-acre vehicle testing and development facility has contaminated ground and drinking water supplies for The Oaks.
At the facility, GM says, salt is used to de-ice the facility’s roads, test tracks and parking areas, as well as for a variety of corrosion tests on vehicles.
But the study concluded that road salt “appears to be a major source of chloride” at the facility.
That’s when the developer of a new subdivision located just southwest of the proving ground discovered high chloride levels, after drilling wells for homes set to be built in the neighborhood.
“GM may be responsible as they have salt storage on site and use salt in splash testing for cars, etc.” Local county officials conducted tests that confirmed excessive levels of chloride, and that October, Michigan’s environmental quality department told GM that, based on the results of the samples taken, “it appears that a source of sodium and chlorides may therefore emanate from the GM Proving Grounds.” The letter set off a war of sorts between GM and MDEQ that went on for years.
“I had always admired it,” Moore told Jalopnik this month in the living room of her 3,000-square-foot home.
Some residents took up the reverse osmosis option, but Moore and O’Nions said the company balked at installing them for every location in their homes.
When people come to your home and they’re saying, ‘Oh, you live in such a nice neighborhood.