By Joel Thurtell
Don’t you hate it when politicians blame their wives for things they should take responsibility for?
Geese no match for these big combined sewer outlets. Trees partly obcure the six concrete gates that dump sewage into the Rouge River south of Six Mile Rd, and east of Telegraph Rd. in Detroit. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of sewage-laced rainwater are dumped into the river at times of high rainfall. Joel Thurtell photo.
Once I had to listen to a certain bigwig Wayne County politician telling me he didn’t dare accept President Bill Clinton’s offer to place him on the St. Lawrence Seaway Commission because his wife had paid their maid off the books. If the media got wind of that, woowee! — there’d be a huge scandal.
First thought — why is he telling me, a reporter?
Second thought: Wait a minute, Ed, your WIFE did that all by herself?
I get bent out of shape the same when people blame animals for things that are clearly human in origin. That’s worse than blaming your wife for your own screwups.
So I wasn’t laughing when I read in the July 29, 2008 Detroit Free Press that a state official found waterfowl and fish guilty of polluting Michigan beaches.
The article discussed why 11 beaches, including two on Lake St. Clair, have been closed this summer due to E. coli contamination.
E. coli bacteria are an indicator for the presence of fecal waste.
Crap, in plain English.
Public health officials routinely sample water from public beaches, and if the bacteria count is too high, the beaches are closed.
Why? Because you can get sick, real sick, from ingesting water laced with feces.
It’s not that long ago that people were getting typhoid from drinking water from the Detroit River.
Cholera? Yes, there used to be cholera epidemics, too.
So, when the E. coli count goes up, beaches are posted “no swimming.”
This summer has been pretty wet, and wet weather is often a harbinger of beach closings.
No, storm water doesn’t make ducks and geese poop more. I doubt it gives pike or bluegills the runs, either.
Remember what W.C. Fields said about water? He never drank water — fish poop in it.
But not as much as people.
It follows that an increase in E. coli won’t be caused by ducks and geese. Or fish. Hey, it’s the human waste that does it — our crap — that gets dumped into streams by overflowing municipal and private sewer systems.
That’s why I was surprised to read remarks by the chief spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality in the Free Press suggesting the beach closings might be blamed on animals like ducks and geese or fish.
Here’s what the Free Press said: “E. coli contamination also can come from human feces washing into lakes through aging, overloaded sewer lines. Often, however, it’s a result of droppings from waterfowl like geese or fish, said Bob McCann, spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Quality.
” ‘The fact is, some of this is nature,’ he said. ‘Certain parts of the state are naturally going to have higher bacteria levels and frankly, there isn’t much we can do about it.’ ”
First, the dumping of sewage has nothing to do with aging sewer lines. It has everything to do with intent. Which is to say, Metro Detroit’s sewers were designed — and still are — to use the rivers as a spare pipe when it rains.
But this thing about the fish and geese bugs me. So I drove over to Detroit and took photos of the six huge concrete gates that dump sewage into the Rouge River just south of Six Mile east of Telegraph. Jim Murray, the former director of Wayne County’s Department of Environment, told me that single sewer outlet gushes hundreds of thousands of rainwater mixed with human waste when it rains hard. It all comes thundering into the narrow Rouge River. In a year, we spill 2 billion gallons of sewage and storm water into the Rouge.
Two billion gallons!
I saw this nastiness first-hand three years ago when I canoed up the Rouge. It was a Detroit Free Press project I undertook with Patricia Beck, a Free Press photographer. (Pat and I paddled a canoe 27 miles up the Rouge. Our book about he project, UP THE ROUGE! PADDLING DETROIT’S HIDDEN RIVER, is to be published in March by Wayne State University Press).
Not only do these sewer outlets stink, but they dump soggy toilet paper, sanitary napkins and condoms into the river. Time your canoe trip wrong and you could be swamped with sewage.
Now, having looked at the photo of that one combined sewer outlet, keep in mind that there are 27 outlets on the Rouge River. Imagine how many ducks and geese it would take to match the combined output of shit those concrete buttocks dump into our waterways.
Ducks and geese indeed.
“Frankly, there isn’t much we can do about it,” or so the DEQ guy said. How much easier it would be for government officialdom if they could blame all that pollution on animals. Sure nuff, not much they can do about it.
I recalled back in 2005 hearing Wayne County environmentalists saying the state was going to pay for a DNA study of E. coli to find out how much river crap is from animals of the non-human species.
Without that study, there’s no way of beginning to blame animals for our river and lake pollution, because you can’t scientifically differentiate between animal and human poop.
I called McCann. Did MDEQ ever fund that DNA study?
No, said McCann. He added that we really can’t blame animals when there’s so much pollution created by humans.
He said the prime source is us.
Glad to hear it. Because those concrete sewer gates at Six Mile and the Rouge tell the story.
The Rouge is still part of the regional sewer.
And it ain’t the fault of geese.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
