Wolverine Worldwide, public officials avoid specifics on water contamination during town hall

ROCKFORD, Mich. — The Kent County Health Department hosted a community town hall on Wednesday night to give residents a chance to publicly address Wolverine Worldwide and several state departments about the contamination of their water.
The Kent County Health Department began the town hall meeting by saying that they understand people are afraid because they don’t know what exactly is going on.
They admitted that there is a lot that they in fact don’t know as a public department of health.
The biggest things people at the meeting wanted to know were: who is going to clean it up, and more urgently, who will give them clean water in the meantime?
“And it’s a hard thing… let’s just do it right and have some financial accountability and make this right for everyone.” Wolverine Worldwide says they’re doing as much as they can, including testing and clean-up.
“We are dedicated to doing the right thing, getting the right data, working with the right experts and finding solutions,” said Chris Hufnagel with Wolverine.
Rick Snyder’s Office.
“It’s a constant number and so we are also working wit Plainfield Township, in the last few days I believe even, to find places, to help them put in additional sourced water wells in the system to ensure we’ve got clean drinking water for everybody.” Many townships test their water quarterly, but only for 90 specific chemicals which are approved by the EPA, none of which are PFAS.
That testing doesn’t cover the people who have private wells on their property.
That, along with different areas producing different results, is leaving residents in the dark.

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