Katie McGinty, vice president and chief sustainability and external relations officer for JCI/Tyco, speaks Tuesday at a ribbon-cutting event for the company's Groundwater Extraction & Treatment System (GETS).
Chris Eichmann, GM of Global Fire Suppression Products for JCI/Tyco, shows a video of firefighting foam testing in Texas Tuesday at the Groundwater Treatment Building in Marinette.
Denice Nelson, senior director of environmental remediation for JCI/Tyco, leads a tour of the new groundwater extraction and treatment system facility Tuesday at the Groundwater Treatment Building in Marinette. The large blue tanks remove PFAS using activated charcoal.
JCI/Tyco personnel from left, GM of Global Fire Suppression Products Chris Eichmann, fourth-generation employee Adam Walker, Sr. Director of Environmental Remediation Denice Nelson and Chief Sustainability Officer Katie McGinty cut the ceremonial ribbon Tuesday at the celebration of the Groundwater Extraction & Treatment System (GETS).
Katie McGinty, vice president and chief sustainability and external relations officer for JCI/Tyco, speaks Tuesday at a ribbon-cutting event for the company's Groundwater Extraction & Treatment System (GETS).
Chris Eichmann, GM of Global Fire Suppression Products for JCI/Tyco, shows a video of firefighting foam testing in Texas Tuesday at the Groundwater Treatment Building in Marinette.
Denice Nelson, senior director of environmental remediation for JCI/Tyco, leads a tour of the new groundwater extraction and treatment system facility Tuesday at the Groundwater Treatment Building in Marinette. The large blue tanks remove PFAS using activated charcoal.
JCI/Tyco personnel from left, GM of Global Fire Suppression Products Chris Eichmann, fourth-generation employee Adam Walker, Sr. Director of Environmental Remediation Denice Nelson and Chief Sustainability Officer Katie McGinty cut the ceremonial ribbon Tuesday at the celebration of the Groundwater Extraction & Treatment System (GETS).
MARINETTE—Johnson Controls Inc./Tyco Fire Protection Products unveiled its state-of-the-art facility this week that officials there believe will go a long way toward combatting the PFAS issue in this area.
About 80 people were on hand Tuesday for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the company’s Groundwater Treatment Building, located behind Marinette High School at the site of the former Ansul testing area in the 2100 block of Pierce Avenue. The event showcased JCI/Tyco’s Groundwater Extraction & Treatment System (GETS). JCI/Tyco has spent $25 million on GETS and another $11 million on an Advanced Research and Testing Facility at the Fire Technology Center (FTC).
Katie McGinty, vice president and chief sustainability and external relations officer for JCI/Tyco, said Tuesday was Tyco’s day to invest in the community and invest in the future.
“It’s vitally important that we certainly get our arms around this PFAS issue and fix it and that’s what we’re determined to do,” she said. “For Tyco, it’s not a burden, but a privilege, to make clear to this community that we are in it with you as family and partners every day of the promising future.”
JCI/Tyco has taken full responsibility for issues caused by its former test site, considered to be one source of PFAS, also known as forever chemicals because of their staying power.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are used to make firefighting foam, nonstick cookware, water-repellant material and other products and components, and they pose a health risk. They’ve been linked to cancer, birth defects, thyroid problems, liver damage, developmental delays and other health issues, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Earlier this summer, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit against Tyco and several other companies over the PFAS issue. Tyco spokeswoman Karen Tognarelli called the action an election-year ploy and said Tyco has spent millions tackling the problem. In August, the Town of Peshtigo announced intentions to file a lawsuit against those responsible for harming its water. Details of that lawsuit have not yet been disclosed.
GETS is an operation that extracts groundwater containing PFAS before it upwells into Ditch B, transports groundwater via underground pipes to the treatment system that removes PFAS from groundwater and delivers water that meets DNR standards into Ditch B.
Denice Nelson, Sr. Director of Environmental Remediation for JCI/Tyco, said the company found that water seeps primarily east and uploads into Ditch B.
“The whole intent of this project is to intercept that water that contains PFAS leaving our historic operations area and treat it before it gets into Ditch B,” she said. “Discharging water will meet surface water standards and in fact be much lower than that. We just got our first sample back and everything came back non-detect.”
Nelson explained that 28,000 linear feet of piping went into the project, which took a year to complete. She said it took the efforts of many—including the city, the school, contractors and more—to get the project done. There also was a lot of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources oversight, she said.
“This was a real intense effort and we really appreciate everybody helping us get to where we are,” Nelson said, adding that JCI/Tyco will be putting up a dashboard on its website so people can monitor the PFAS concentration going in and going out of GETS.
Chris Eichmann, general manager of Global Fire Suppression Products for JCI/Tyco, talked about the evolution of firefighting foam.
For years, the industry used Aqueous Film Forming foam (AFFF), a highly effective foam used for fighting high-hazard flammable liquid fires, such as fuel. AFFF is usually created by combining foaming agents with fluorinated surfactants. It also contains PFAS.
Eichmann said JCI/Tyco has been making firefighting foam for more than 40 years and AFFF has been the market leader in such foams. He said JCI/Tyco has made some investments in chemists and laboratory expansion which resulted in its first non-fluorinated foam 18 months ago.
Eichmann played a video of the foam suppressing an oil/gas fire at a testing facility in Beaumont, Texas. The foam took about 90 seconds to fully blanket the fire.
“It’s more effective than fluorinated and eventually will eliminate AFFF all together,” Eichmann said.
JCI/Tyco officials also introduced employee Adam Walker, who is a fourth generation employee at the company. Those employees have worked a combined 124 years.
McGinty said the history of JCI/Tyco is employees, like Walker, making products that save lives.
“We want to make sure we are equipped with the tools so that a fire doesn’t mean that lives are lost, that dreams are shattered and that total nightmares replace the promising lives of young people—of moms, dads and kids,” she said.
McGinty said GETS is a part of a 3-prong “trifecta” that also includes excavating and removing contaminated soil to licensed out-of-state facilities, even though those soils are nowhere near standards set by the WDNR, and providing Town of Peshtigo residents in the Potable Well Sampling Area (PWSA) with the option of deep wells or possible annexation with the city of Marinette.
“Put it together and we think that today is the day we can begin to say this will indeed become a part of our past and we can celebrate the future,” she said.
After comments from JCI/Tyco personnel and the ribbon cutting, participants were welcome to a guided tour of the GETS facility.
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