Are you familiar with the Ludington Biological Station?  Established by the Federal government in 1956 in order to help control lamprey populations in the Great Lakes, they employed up to 26 permanent positions and 10 seasonal positions in a combined storage facility/office building located on South Jebavy, just west of Shop & Save that they've been based at since 1962.

Or so they did, until the Ludington Biological Station (LBS) moved into a Manistee warehouse a little over a year ago.  Never heard anything about that?  There may be a couple reasons why you haven't.  

During the 1960s and 1970s corrugated metal drums lined the warehouse of their Jebavy facility filled with lampricide.  One of the lamprey treatments, called TFM, was quite corrosive and over time leaked though the barrels,was absorbed into the concrete floors, and possibly further into the ground. 

It was believed the contamination was taken care of, but TFM is water soluble, and even four decades after the leakage had occurred, mopping of the bays where it was contained would lead to yellow staining of the floors, showing the presence of TFM was still an issue.  This became a clear reason for moving and this is a good reason you haven't heard of this.  Our local governments and media do not like to broadcast environmental contamination, even when the lack thereof may cause more issues to the health and safety of the public.

“Even though chemicals we use are not known to have any long-term health impact on humans, I will also say that there haven’t been any studies done on humans. So we’re doing this to protect our staff,” LBS Supervisor Scott Grunder said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) searched for an alternative building with warehouse space for storing modern lamprey treatments and office space for staff, but was not successful finding such a facility in the Ludington area.  When searching for a new space, USFWS Public Affairs Specialist Monica Blaser said the agency wanted to keep employees close to Ludington.


“We had been at our Ludington location for so long, we wanted something that was as near as we could get to Ludington, as well as it also depended on the availability,” she said. “So we kind of had to put a call for lessors through GSA, looking for bids for spaces. Ed’s was one that came back for warehouse space, which is what we ultimately went with.”

This is the second reason why you have likely not heard of the Ludington Biological Station moving about 30 miles away from Ludington.  We have well-funded agencies like the Mason County Growth Alliance with a well-funded executive in Spence Riggs and possibly several potential facilities for the LBS warehouse to be in the county, but the proper connections were never made, and so more than 30 full-time equivalent jobs went from being in Mason County to being in Manistee County, with probably a related exodus of residences of those employed following once the move would be made basically permanent in December 2017, with the finding of office space in downtown Manistee.

The second floor of the PNC bank building on 375 River Street in the city of Manistee was found suitable for office space for the LBS employees, definitely better than sharing a warehouse with lampricides containers.  The space on the second floor is roughly twice the office space they had back at the Jebavy facility with over 7000 square feet.  

As we look at the future, it is unlikely that the Ludington Biological Station will ever once again grace the area around the city it was named for.  If and when the USFWS decide to rename the facility to match the geographical city it currently is entrenched in, we will still have the abandoned contaminated warehouse and the TFM in our environment that they left behind. 

Not to mention the questions of why we expect to be a competitive county in attracting businesses when we can't even offer a pre-existing warehouse facility to a long-term business trying to remain in the area.

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Wow... Yes, I haven't heard of this, but knew of them there for years.

That Ludington building is either very close or within the the watershed leading to PM Lake/River, correct?  How long has these chemicals been stored there? 

NOT good.  Both for jobs and more importantly the watershed.

TFM was introduced as a lampricide in 1958 and is still the most popular chemical used in the Great Lakes for that purpose of killing off lampreys, as it doesn't seem to affect fish other than 'primitive' species of fish, like sturgeon.  After it was introduced and proved too corrosive for metal barrels, they smartly switched to plastic containers, so my understanding is that they stored TFM there for over 50 years, the latter 40 rather safely.

TFM is added to streams at strategic times to do it's dirty work of killing lampreys, but it does not seem to bioaccumulate in aquatic environments, it actually breaks down into harmless materials over a matter of days after being used (see more here).  TFM can come in powder or in liquid solution. 

The contamination that has occurred would pose a threat to those who might repurchase the Jebavy warehouse, work on the demolition and removal of the warehouse, and rebuild on the site-- provided they do not take proper safety measures in their actions.  If TFM actually gets into the groundwater and the watershed, it appears as if its potential effects would be minimized considering its properties in water.

IThanks again, XfLFD for an eye-opening and informative article.  That's a  lot of probably good-paying jobs moved from Mason county.  And with how many full-time employees wasn't the corrosion of containers properly taken care of?  That sounds like very bad management.

I don't fault the USFWS employees of 50 years ago for corrosion leaks due to how they got the TFM from the manufacturers being insufficient to hold the chemical.  Once they began commercially producing TFM after 1958 when it was found as an ideal lampricide, the LBS likely had no idea the metal barrels would corrode as they did.  

I am currently working on a somewhat-related story dealing with a local business looking to add a sizable warehouse in Ludington and effectively getting it nixed by the Ludington Planning Commission for rather arbitrary reasons.  Who was the main LPC member arguing against it, just months after the Ludington Biological Station moved to Manistee for lack of available Mason County warehouses? 

None other than Mason County Growth Alliance director (and LPC voting member), Spence Riggs.  Is that a teaser or what?

Does the US Fish and Wildlife actually own that building? I know in years past that they rented the Ludington location. I thought they were still renting.

I heard rumors that they are going to remediate the problem, remove the contamination and replace the concrete floors. And then, relocate back to Ludington.

It is unfortunate that what we have for local news coverage doesn't have the intellectual curiosity to look into this.

They are probably too busy playing grab-ass with the city councilors to be bothered.

It is also too bad that PM township hasn't issued a statement. After all this happened their back yard.

One thing I do know I have always found the Ludington USFW station to be forthright in answering any questions the public might have. 

According to the Mason County Property records, 229 S Jebavy is owned by the Ruth R. Wadel Trust, which lists Patricia Gowell of Shelby as its contact.  The trust is paying around $12,000 in property taxes yearly, so they might want to remediate the situation and get it back to viability.  I have seen nothing to either confirm or deny your rumor, but plan to look into it.

Thanks for the information X. We used to take specimens of invasive species over there when they first appeared in the lakes. They were always very helpful. How did you find out about the contamination problem? What doesn't make sense to me is why so much time went by before this problem was discovered or made public. When barrels leak it immediately becomes an obvious problem. Why wasn't it taken care of back when the problem first appeared. This situation is easily solved by replacing all contaminated portions of the concrete after removing any contaminated soil under the concrete. It's possible there is very little contamination under the concrete. That depends of course on how much contaminant leaked and how much the concrete absorbed.  There is no need for the agency to move to Manistee. There are other forces at work here, in my opinion. There's something fishy about this situation, no pun intended.

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