... 20 years into cleanup work funded by $760 million in bond funds, these lurking threats remain and continue to multiply?
Why are poisons still in soil and water years after their discovery? Where did the cleanup money go?
Voters may remember them as the Environmental Protection and Clean Michigan Initiative bonds. But the protection and cleanup projects undertaken with that tax money voters approved in 1988 and 1998 were never intended to completely eliminate the sources of poisonous chemicals or gases, state officials say.
The reality is, many sites are too big, too complicated and too costly to even consider a complete cleanup, said David O'Donnell, supervisor of the DEQ's Kalamazoo district cleanup program.