Nearly two years ago, disaster struck on the Kalamazoo River. More than 800,000 gallons of thick crude oil spilled into river near Marshall in late July, 2010. That forced health officials to ban public access to more than 30 miles of the river.
Crews have worked for nearly two years to clean-up the mess. Government agencies tested the air and the water and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on remediation efforts. Now, in a sign that the river is coming back to life, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it is okay to open up the affected stretch of the river for public use, just in time for summer, as WMUK’s Chris Killian reports:
It’s been 23 months since the massive oil spill took a section of one of southwest Michigan’s most beloved natural resources away from many who enjoyed it. Now, they have their river back.
A pristine stretch of the Kalamazoo River flowed in the distance, as the Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday, June 21, that it was allowing local health officers to determine if a public use ban on the river could be lifted. And soon thereafter, officers from Calhoun and Kalamazoo counties did just that. Kalamazoo County Health and Community Services Director Linda Vail made the announcement at a news conference at Fort Custer Recreation Area.
[Vail] “I ceremoniously announce to you that we have lifted the health ban on the river and it is open for public use” (applause).
From fishing to kayaking to swimming: all will be allowed again, although a fish consumption advisory remains in place. Small pockets of oil remain in the river and a few areas, both on Morrow Lake in Kalamazoo County’s Comstock Township, are still off-limits to use.
The EPA decided that it would be fruitless to try to cleanup every last drop of the crude. That’s something that would probably cause more harm than good, according to Ralph Dollhopf, the EPA’s on-scene coordinator for the spill response. The results, he added, are plain to see.
[Dollhopf] “I believe the state that we’re at today, where so much of the oil has been recovered and the river still looks so good and so alive, reflects the success that we’ve had in achieving that balance between effective clean-up but not hurting the river more in the process.”
In total, it’s taken more than 3.6 million hours of work to get the river to the state it is today. That reflects the complexity of the spill, one of the largest in U.S. history.
Enbridge Energy Partners, the Canadian pipeline company responsible for the spill, has spent more than $750 million on the cleanup and other costs related to the disaster. Company spokesman Jason Manshum says it has worked hard to make sure that the river could be returned to public use as soon as possible:
[Manshum] “Today is a big accomplishment because now we can give this natural resource back to the residents who live in Calhoun and Kalamazoo counties. So from that perspective, we are very satisfied but we know that there is more work to be done and we will continue to partner with the agencies to finish that work.”
The work that Manshum spoke about relates to continued remediation of submerged oil in the river, a phenomenon that has caused cleanup headaches from the start. Just last month, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality announced that Enbridge would be working on “agitating” 390 acres of river bottom to free stuck oil for collection at the surface.
The Natural Resources Defense Council is critical of the EPA’s decision to let local officials re-open the river. It says the agency is being hasty because oil – and work to remove it – remains. Also remaining are a lot of questions about how the chemicals in “tar sands” or “diluted bitumen” oil, the kind spilled into the river, will affect the environment and the people who live near the river. That’s according to NRDC spokesman Josh Mogerman.
[Mogerman] “We don’t know, because of the unique components that come from tar sands oil what the impacts are going to be for people who breathe in vapors for oil that’s being brought to the surface, for people who are interacting with the submerged oil. There are still a lot of questions. Unfortunately the people along the river are going to be part of a big science experiment.”
But Steve Hamilton, an ecology professor at Michigan State University and president of the Kalamazoo River Watershed Council, says that the river is safe.
[Hamilton] “But at this point, all available evidence indicates the remaining submerged oil does not pose a particular threat to wildlife and to people.”