SCIO TOWNSHIP

Input sought on water

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality is seeking public input on a request from Pall Life Sciences to increase the amount of treated water it discharges from its plant in Scio Township.

Residents can comment at a 7 p.m. hearing Monday at the Scio Township Hall, 827 N. Zeeb Road.

Pall wants to increase the discharge into a tributary of Honey Creek from 800 gallons a minute to 1,300 gallons. The water comes from aquifers polluted with the solvent 1,4 dioxane, a presumed carcinogen that the company once used to make its medical filters. Officials say the increase is necessary to remediate newly found pollution.

Scio Residents for Safe Water, a grass-roots environmental group, fears more discharge, which still contains some dioxane, would wind up in the Huron River, the source of 80 percent of Ann Arbor’s water supply.