OPINION

Chromium in our lakes, water is bad at any level

Editorial Board

Port Huron City Engineer Lennie Naeyaert is right about where the hexavalent chromium in the city’s water supply is coming from.

“If you know the intake for our water plant is the St. Clair River, the St. Clair River is the natural discharge for three of the Great Lakes, all of the industry, the farming, everything ... it all eventually finds its way down here,” Naeyaert said.

We think he’s less correct when he told us, “They’re very, very low and not of a concern.”

First, this is not the fault of the Port Huron water system. It was singled out only because it was tested. The chromium came in with the water. This is not the Flint water crisis.

There are two kinds of chromium in the environment. The first kind — chromium-3 — is naturally occurring and is an essential nutrient. You get most of it from food — broccoli is an excellent sources.

The second kind — chromium-6 — is exclusively man-made. It is a byproduct of a wide variety of industrial processes, from refining metals to dying fabrics. Half of the chromium-6 released into the environment, though, comes from coal-fired power plants. It is also released when petroleum and natural gas are burned.

Much of the chromium-6 generated by power plants is segregated within the ash. Because of contemporary air pollution regulations, most ash is captured before it escapes smokestacks. Still, power plants release about half a million pounds of chromium-6 into the air each year.

Another 10 million pounds is landfilled in coal ash. There is a substantial risk that chromium-6 can wash out of ash dumps and into the environment. A 1999 EPA study calculated that leachate from ash created at the St. Clair Power Plant would contain the toxin at a concentration 57,000 times higher than the California safe drinking water standard.

We could argue about which standard is right — the federal one that says Port Huron’s water is safe and the California one that says it isn’t — but only if it doesn’t distract from the big picture.

The chromium in your car, shoes and favorite sweater is added to make them last forever. That same property means the chromium-6 already in the Great Lakes is never going away. Continuing to add chromium-6 to the watershed will make differences between drinking water standards moot.