January 6, 2006

Thanks to the efforts of the Department of Environmental Quality, schools in three areas of the state were given the opportunity to take part in an effort to remove old, outdated, and unwanted chemicals from their classrooms. The DEQ program to remove mercury and other chemicals from schools in the Flint, Benton Harbor, and Cadillac areas was designed to keep students safe by reducing their risk of accidental exposures to these materials.

“This department is tasked with protecting the health of Michigan’s citizens, and I can think of no place where it this is more important than in our schools,” said DEQ Director Steven E. Chester. “By partnering with schools, we are able to keep our kids safe.”

Nearly 120 schools in these areas accepted the invitation to drop off chemicals at the collection site, participate in an audit of laboratory chemical storage areas, or both. Over 1,400 mercury-containing items and 800 pounds of elemental mercury were removed from schools, along with hundreds of pounds of other potentially hazardous chemicals, such as cyanide salts, carbon tetrachloride, and heavy metals. All materials that were collected were disposed of properly.

In order to successfully develop the program, the DEQ partnered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Michigan Department of Education. The U.S. EPA provided staff to coordinate the project and allowed the DEQ to utilize existing federal contracts to collect and properly dispose of the material. The U.S. EPA’s previous experience with similar projects in other states proved to be very helpful. The MDE also provided support to the project and helped the regulatory agencies extend the invitation in a nonthreatening manner. The support resources provided by each agency allowed for 100 percent of the grant to be used for collection and disposal activities.

In addition to coordinating chemical waste disposal, the schools were offered an on-site audit of their chemical storage facilities. This voluntary, nonregulatory evaluation of these areas focused on suggestions for implementing best management practices for purchasing and storing laboratory chemicals for classrooms. Additionally, the agencies educated the schools about other programs and assistance the agencies offer that may be of benefit to the schools.

Schools taking part in the collections identified chemicals that they wanted to dispose of, and were then given packaging instructions to facilitate the safe transport of the chemicals to the drop-off location. The packed chemicals were transported to the collection location and were dropped off at an appointed time for each school to facilitate an orderly event. The containers were then repackaged for shipment to a hazardous waste facility for proper management and disposal.

To further facilitate the reduction of chemicals in schools, the DEQ also provided Community Pollution Prevention matching grants to 11 school districts to fund school chemical waste reduction in 2005. These grants addressed waste reduction of school chemicals by not only cleaning out excess, legacy, unused, or improperly stored chemicals, but also by going a step further and implementing mechanisms in schools for minimizing the use of toxic chemicals and reducing accumulation of chemicals in the future. This grant also ensures that these items will be disposed of safely and properly. Grant agreements were signed in August of 2005, and already school chemical inventories have turned up mercury, radioactive materials, and explosives.

Due to the strong response to the 2005 grants, the DEQ has made available a total of $250,000 for the 2006 Community Pollution Prevention Grants for schools, school districts, county governments, local health departments, municipalities, and regional planning agencies to fund school chemical waste reduction. Organizations receiving grants must provide a match of at least 25 percent, and the maximum grant amount is $24,000 for each project.

For more information, contact the DEQ’s Environmental Science and Services Division at 1-800-662-9278. To access the Request for Proposal, go to: http://www.deq.state.mi.us/documents/deq-ess-p2-communityrfp.pdf.

Editor’s note: DEQ news releases are available on the department’s Internet home page at www.michigan.gov/deq.

“Protecting Michigan’s Environment, Ensuring Michigan’s Future”

Revised January 6, 2006 by Pat Watson