By Joel Thurtell
Some questions are like a light switch.
Their answers are either on, or they’re off.
Yes or no.
Like my questions to Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel through his press secretary, back on January 27, 2009:
1) Given Detroit’s dire financial plight, will the city ever build a proposed billion-dollar tunnel to deliver sewage to the city”s treatment plant in Delray, thus bypassing its normal rainy-time household and industrial waste dumping ground, namely the Rouge River?
2) Is the city negotiating with Ambassador bridge owner and billionaire trucking magnate Manuel “Matty” Moroun to sell Detroit’s public Riverside Park to Matty? This is the park that the billionaire seized partial control of a few years ago when he fenced off a section and padlocked the public boat launch.
So far, I’ve received polite notes back from the mayor’s PR people letting me know they’re looking into my questions.
More than a week has passed.
What is so difficult about answering these questions?
Either you’re gonna build that tunnel, or you’re not.
Either you’re dealing with Matty on the park, or you’re not.
On or off.
Yes or no.
I’m afraid in the case of Riverside Park, my answer will come in the form of a press release announcing the sale of a city gem to the trucking tycoon.
As for the tunnel, well, to admit that it won’t be built would steal the last best argument from those government and quasi-government environmentalists who trump any assertion that the Rouge River is too polluted for swimming, wading, boating or fishing by saying, “Just wait till we build that tunnel!”
Will the tunnel be built? Or will we keep using the Rouge as a sewer, as we’ve done since colonial times?
I’m waiting for answers.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
Work on the Rouge Combined Sewer Overflow project has already begun. Is that the answer to #1?