In 1992, Sandy Wynn-Stelt and her husband Joel bought a house on House Street in Belmont, Michigan — a quiet community in Kent County, just north of Grand Rapids. The home sat on a wooded lot with a private well. It was, by every measure, the kind of place you'd raise a family.
Across the street was a patch of land that didn't look like much. The locals knew it as the House Street Disposal Area — an old dump. What nobody told Sandy was that Wolverine World Wide, the Rockford-based shoe manufacturer behind brands like Hush Puppies and Merrell, had been dumping industrial tannery waste there since 1939. Starting in 1958, that waste included sludge saturated with 3M's Scotchgard — one of the earliest commercial applications of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS.
For decades, those chemicals leached through the unlined dump into the groundwater that fed Sandy's well. Nobody tested. Nobody told. Nobody asked.
The Numbers That Changed Everything
In 2017, a local citizen group helped prompt the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (now EGLE) to begin testing private wells near the House Street site. What they found was staggering.
Sandy's well water tested positive for PFAS at concentrations ranging from 27,000 to 78,000 parts per trillion (ppt). To put that in perspective: the EPA's current maximum contaminant level for PFOA and PFOS — set in April 2024 — is 4 ppt each. Sandy's family had been drinking water contaminated at levels nearly 20,000 times higher than what the federal government now considers safe.
Her blood PFAS level, when finally tested, came back at approximately 5 million parts per trillion — or 5,000 parts per billion. That is not a typo. It is one of the highest residential PFAS blood concentrations ever documented in the United States.
Her husband Joel Stelt had died of liver cancer in 2016 — a year before the contamination was discovered. Sandy learned the truth about her water after he was already gone.
A Community Discovers It's Been Poisoned
Sandy was not alone. The House Street Disposal Area had created a massive PFAS plume running south and southeast through Plainfield Township's groundwater. As EGLE and Wolverine expanded testing, the scale of the contamination became clear.
By January 2018, Wolverine had sampled 549 residential drinking water wells in the area. By 2019, that number had grown to more than 1,540 wells tested across Kent County sites connected to Wolverine's operations. Of those, 982 wells showed detectable PFAS, and 299 exceeded the EPA's then-advisory level of 70 ppt for combined PFOA and PFOS.
Wolverine installed 90 point-of-use systems and 410 point-of-entry whole-house filtration systems in affected homes and provided bottled water to all sampled residents. By 2019, more than 770 homes had filtration or alternative water supplies.
But filters don't undo decades of exposure. And they don't bring back the dead.
How a Psychologist Became an Activist
Sandy Wynn-Stelt is a psychologist by training. She did not set out to become one of America's most visible PFAS advocates. But when you learn that the water you've been drinking for 25 years was laced with industrial chemicals — and that the company responsible knew it was dumping toxic waste across the street — the choice to speak up isn't really a choice at all.
She began organizing with neighbors, demanding answers from Wolverine and state regulators. She joined Michigan's PFAS Action Response Team (MPART) Citizens Advisory Work Group. She became co-chair of the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network (GLPAN), an organization working to connect PFAS-affected communities across the region.
In 2020, Sandy received the EPA's Citizen Excellence Award for her work combating PFAS contamination. In 2023, she testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, delivering testimony that cut through Washington's usual fog with the clarity of someone who has nothing left to lose.
"After that day, my water has tested positive for PFAS with rates anywhere from 27,000 ppt to as high as 78,000 ppt. Slowly I learned that my neighbors were also contaminated." — Sandy Wynn-Stelt, U.S. Senate testimony, 2023
The Corporate and Regulatory Response
In January 2018, Michigan's Attorney General filed a federal lawsuit against Wolverine World Wide under RCRA and Part 201 of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act, demanding investigation, mitigation, and cost recovery.
On February 19, 2020, a comprehensive consent decree was reached between Michigan, Plainfield and Algoma Townships, and Wolverine. The decree required Wolverine to extend municipal water to over 1,000 properties, contribute to Plainfield Township's water filtration infrastructure and new wellfield development, continue site investigation and remediation, maintain residential well filters, conduct ongoing groundwater monitoring, and reimburse state oversight costs.
It was the first comprehensive PFAS consent decree in Michigan's history. Wolverine also settled separately with 3M — the manufacturer of the Scotchgard chemicals — though the financial terms were not disclosed.
By 2023, Wolverine had spent approximately $50 million on PFAS-related remediation and response, with $24.2 million remaining in reserves. The EPA continues to coordinate with EGLE on the broader investigation, which includes not only the House Street site but also Wolverine's former tannery at 123 Main Street in Rockford and additional disposal locations across Kent County.
In December 2025, two west Michigan landfills filed their own federal lawsuit against both Wolverine and 3M, alleging that PFAS-contaminated waste had been deposited at their facilities without disclosure, and seeking cleanup cost recovery. The contamination cascade continues to ripple outward.
Michigan's PFAS Reckoning
The Wolverine case did something that years of academic research and federal hand-wringing had not: it forced a state to act.
In August 2020, Michigan became one of the first states in the nation to establish enforceable drinking water standards for PFAS, setting maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for seven PFAS compounds:
PFNA: 6 ppt
PFOA: 8 ppt
PFOS: 16 ppt
PFHxS: 51 ppt
GenX (HFPO-DA): 370 ppt
PFBS: 420 ppt
PFHxA: 400,000 ppt
Michigan's standards for PFOA and PFOS were among the most protective in the country at the time — stricter than the EPA's own advisory levels. Governor Gretchen Whitmer created MPART through Executive Order 2019-03, establishing the nation's first statewide PFAS response coordination team. The state has since identified thousands of PFAS-contaminated properties requiring investigation.
The federal government followed Michigan's lead. In April 2024, EPA finalized its first-ever enforceable national drinking water standards for PFAS, setting MCLs of 4 ppt for PFOA and 4 ppt for PFOS individually — stricter even than Michigan's pioneering limits.
What This Case Teaches Us
The Belmont story is not just about one company's waste or one family's well. It is a case study in how contamination operates in the absence of oversight.
Unlined dumps are ticking time bombs. The House Street Disposal Area was never engineered. It had no liner, no leachate collection, no groundwater monitoring. It was a hole in the ground where a Fortune 500 company buried its problem. For decades, that was considered normal.
Private wells are unregulated. Michigan's MCLs apply to public water systems. The families on House Street were on private wells — which means nobody was required to test their water, ever. Sandy drank contaminated water for 25 years before anyone checked. Across the United States, approximately 43 million people rely on private wells with no federal water quality standards.
Citizen action fills the gap. It was not a state agency that first raised the alarm in Belmont. It was residents and local advocates who pushed for testing. Sandy Wynn-Stelt's advocacy — from community organizing to Senate testimony — has directly influenced state and federal policy. The Wolverine case is proof that when institutions fail, informed citizens can force accountability.
Remediation is expensive and incomplete. Wolverine has spent $50 million and counting. Filters help, but they don't remediate aquifers. Municipal water extensions take years. Blood levels don't come down quickly. The families of Belmont are living with a contamination legacy that will outlast the company that caused it.
Where EPR Foundation Stands
We believe in restoration. We believe in accountability. And we believe that cases like Belmont should not require a psychologist-turned-activist to discover that her family has been poisoned for a quarter century.
The EPR Foundation supports stronger protections for private well owners, including voluntary testing programs and state-funded monitoring near known contamination sites. We support enforceable PFAS standards at both the state and federal level. We support full transparency in waste disposal — past and present — so that communities can make informed decisions about the land they live on.
Sandy Wynn-Stelt's story is one of loss and resilience. It is also, unavoidably, a story about what happens when we let companies bury their problems and walk away. The chemicals don't walk away. They stay. They spread. And they find the people who were never told they were there.
Sources: Sandy Wynn-Stelt's 2023 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) PFAS Response site data; EPA Wolverine World Wide Tannery investigation page; Bridge Michigan reporting; Michigan PFAS Response Team (MPART) well testing reports; Great Lakes PFAS Action Network; West Michigan Environmental Action Council; Michigan Public Radio.