Pollution of the Kalamazoo River
Situated in the southwest of Michigan, the Kalamazoo River watershed drains an area of approximately 2,000 square miles and eight counties including: Allegan, Van Buren, Eaton, Kalamazoo, Jackson, Ottawa, Kent, Hillsdale, Calhoun, and Barry. Running around 150 miles long, the Kalamazoo River has been the home of human interaction for more than 11,000 years. The area itself didn't become a functioning port for fur traders until the late 18th century. By the early 19th century, several communities had settled along the river, including the settlement at Kalamazoo. Farmers soon replaced fur traders and quickly populated much of the watershed. Many shipped their goods down the river on flat boats to Singapore, MI, established at the mouth of the river in the 1830s. This "bustling port," abandoned in the 1870s, was later buried by the shifting sand dunes. With the introduction of the railroad in the 1840s, the importance of the river for transportation declined.
The Kalamazoo River has also seen its share of problems over the years. Several communities later became sites for paper production, which used the river for water intake and waste discharge. Dams built to support the papermill industry also contributed to the degredation of the river limiting fish passage. Deinking practices—the industrial process used for removing printing ink from paperfibers—led to Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination of the river. PCB is a highly destructive and toxic product. By 1945, the Stream Control Commission proclaimed, “The condition of the river, a source of industrial cooling water, is such that agricultural uses have been severely impaired, fish life is largely non-existent, and the value for industrial processing purposes has been heavily impaired….”
Beginning in the 1970s with the introduction of the federal Clean Water Act, serious efforts have been made to clean up the river. Due to the PCB contamination, the river was designated as an Area of Concern under the 1987 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. The Kalamazoo River also holds Superfund status as part of the Michigan Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act 451. Despite efforts to clean the river, inhabitants are still encouraged not to eat large amounts of fish from the river because of lingering pollution. By 2010, this was not the only problem facing southwest Michigan.
In 2010, a pipeline operated by Enbridge (Line 6B) burst and flowed into the Talmadge Creek, tributary of the Kalamazoo River, resulting in one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history. When the line broke, the sludge gradually sank to the bottom while the volatile hydrocarbons poisoned the air. Because of the unusally high river levels, the spill spread into the floodplains and river banks. The emergency response managed to contain the spill in an 80-mile stretch. Within that area, approximately 3,000 animals were collected, cleaned, and released. Hundreds of homes and businesses had to be evacuated. About 150 families moved away permanently. The site of the spill at Talmadge Creek was almost completely excavated, and, according to Enbridge, 90% of all spilled oil has been recovered. Reflecting on the incident in 2015, Beth Wallace—formerly of the National Wildlife Federation—addressed lingering effects on the environment at the Van Buren Conference Center in Lawrence. The Paw-Paw Courier reported that this was a "timely and important talk" on a pressing issue. The Kalamazoo River catastrophe is the worst of many, many Enbridge spills, leaks, and violations over the years. The EPA later estimated that 1 million U.S. gallons of oil had polluted the river. The cleanup took five years, and following the spill, Enbridge had to dredge portions the river to remove submerged oil. The U.S. Department of Transportation fined Enbridge $3.7 million for the spill.
The pollution of the Kalamazoo River has been the subject of many local newspaper editorials in the years following the spill. The Saline Reporter led with an editorial titled "Companies that can cause harm should be regulated." The report chastised Enbridge for not realizing the spill in the Kalamazoo watershed for 17 hours—during which operations pumped more oil into the pipeline. The editorial called Endridge's response to the disaster as "absolutely nothing between the fixes and the henhouses." The Paw-Paw Courier, later in 2017, ran a reader's voice section on Line 5, citing the spill in Kalamazoo as justification for the shut down of Enbridge's operations in the Mackinac Straits. The symposium held in Petoskey revealed that 16 sections of the pipeline did not meet safety requirements, and if an oil spill occured, there would be grave consequences.
Perhaps the biggest pollution concern in Michigan is pollution that’s not even happened. Environmentalists, Native American communities, and a fair number of Great Lakes businesses want Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 shut down. Line 5—which crosses from the UP into the Lower Peninsula through the Mackinac Straits—has been the subject of hot debate since the Kalamazoo spill. After the Line 6B's rupture, Wallace and many other concerned citizens raised questions about Enbridge's other piplines, including the lakebed Line 5 pipeline. Enbridge's plans to reinforce the pipeline have been the subject of many battles, and it has become state and international news. Liz Kirkwood of FLOW (For the love of water) also supports the shut down of Line 5. Most recently, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan DNR have pushed Enbridge to cease operating the Line 5 pipeline alongside many Michigan businesses, non-profits, and Tribal communities.
