Swim in the Rouge?

By Joel Thurtell

If somebody would have told me 20 years ago that the Rouge River would be fishable and swimmable most of the time, I would not have believed it, and yet we have done it.

— Jim Ridgway, executive director of the Alliance of Rouge Communities, former member of nonprofit Friends of the Rouge board, vice president ECT

Could I have misunderstood? I was sitting in the audience at the annual Gladfest on the Rouge. I looked down at my notepad. Sure enough, my hand had written what my ears heard.

He really said it!

The Rouge is “swimmable” and “fishable”?

I was astonished that a public figure would take on that risk. I mean, what if someone took him at his word and dove in? A guy fell into the Rouge back in 1985 and wound up dead.

Astounding: I had just heard a public figure recommend the Rouge as a great big swimming hole.

I wanted to shout, “Hey, Jim! If you believe the Rouge River is truly ‘fishable and swimmable most of the time,’ why don’t YOU try it?”

Test it out, see if it’s truly “swimmable.”

I could show you some great places to frolic in the Rouge.

They wouldn’t be “fishable and swimmable most of the time” by my or even state of Michigan water quality standards.

I heard that astonishing remark October 23, 2008 at the annual festival of self-congratulation known this year as “Rouge 2008.” It was hosted by the UM-Dearborn (though not for free — ARC will pay UM-D $7,200 for the next posh shindig in 2009).

“Fishable and swimmable”: To me, it sounded an awful lot like W’s boast of “mission accomplished” about Iraq. Except at UM-D they forgot the aircraft carrier.

Specially for the next Rouge Gladfest, I’ve made a list of “swimming” holes.

Six-gated sewer dumps poop into Rouge at Six Mile and Telegraph in Detroit. Joel Thurtell photo

For starters, how about taking a dip in front of that huge, six-gate concrete and steel threshold to a giant storm water and sewage retention basin at Six Mile and Telegraph in Detroit? According to Wayne County’s former environment director, Jim Murray, hundreds of thousands of gallons of combined rain water, poop, pee and miscellaneous industrial and automotive waste bombard the Rouge from these six gates when it rains hard.

Just dive off the concrete lip in front of those gates. Don’t mind the stench of sewage and the sight of crusted toilet paper, soggy sanitary napkins and bedraggled condoms. Go for it!

Okay, it’s true: I don’t believe the Rouge River is “fishable and swimmable most of the time.” I believe the reverse — it’s almost never safe for recreation.

But my perspective is quite different. Jim’s at once executive director of a public agency — the Alliance of Rouge Communities — that in his own words “fights” the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality on the strictness of community water discharge permits. At the same time, he’s vice president of a private company that contracts with government agencies — including ARC — to plan and execute water quality improvement jobs. Government agencies and private contractors have a prime interest in having you believe a river they collectively spent $1.6 billion to clean is actually safe for human contact.

Me, I’m just a guy who wanted to paddle a canoe up that river and wondered how safe it would be if I fell in.

I found a pretty clear-cut answer to my question back in 2005, when I was a Detroit Free Press reporter. Over five days, Free Press photographer Patricia Beck and I paddled a canoe 27 miles up the Main Branch of the Rouge, from Zug Island in Detroit to 9 Mile and Beech in Southfield. The last days, I had raging infections on my hands and arms, feet and legs, contracted from contact with the river.

Swimmable?

Untouchable.

I was told by a scientist with the engineering firm Camp, Dresser & McKee that based on lots of E. coli tests, in 2004 the Rouge was safe for swimming at best 5 percent of the time.

In my view, five percent is not “most of the time.” Since 2005, most of the E. coli testing has been abandoned. There has been no E. coli testing in the Main Branch since 2005. Yet where it still is being done, in the Middle Rouge, the river often is too polluted for swimming.

Because of reduced testing, our best comprehensive numbers still come from 2005 and before.

Five percent of the time means, of course, that 95 percent of the time, the river is NOT safe.

Those figures I got from CDM were for bacteria alone. They took no account of toxic chemicals and heavy metals suspended in the river’s water and in its banks and bottom. According to University of Michigan-Dearborn geology Prof. Kent Murray, neuro-toxic and cancer-causing substances are in the river, as well as bacteria from animal and human waste.

As for fishing, if you were lucky and caught a fish, I don’t think you’d want to eat it. Perusing the Michigan Department of Community Health fish advisories for the Rouge River will make you dizzy. Bottom-feeder line: Don’t eat Rouge River fish! Toxic chemicals make fishing a dubious activity in the Rouge. I’m surprised an official would claim the Rouge is “fishable…most of the time.”

Another prime fishing and swimming hole might be the waters of the Rouge in

Inflatable oil containment boom on Rouge River. Joel Thurtell photo.

front of those inflatable booms just east of the I-75 bridge. The booms are supposed to hold back oil and other industrial pollutants that escape from the city of Detroit’s sewage operation near the O’Brien Drain. A year ago, I was writing Detroit Free Press articles about a spill of hundreds of gallons of oil from the O’Brien Drain into the Rouge.

For some reason I don’t understand, no regular water quality testing has been done in the Lower Rouge where all the heavy industry would, one would think, have some impact on the water quality. Amazingly, water is tested upstream in places like Plymouth, Livonia and Northville, but not in Dearborn, Detroit, Melvindale, Allen Park and River Rouge, despite the presence of two steel mills, concrete, gypsum and salt plants and the largest single-site wastewater treatment plant in the U.S.

Must be okay, right? So in that spirit, I recommend another exciting swimming spot — where Baby Creek flows into the Lower Rouge. Same place where in 2002 some 19 million gallons of industrial chemicals mysteriously were dumped into the Rouge. The upstream plant owners responsible were recently convicted of illegal dumping in federal court.

I have more swimming holes.

Take a dive into Newburgh Lake, the Livonia pond where Jim Ridgway’s company, ECT, had a $12.5 million deal with Wayne County to dredge PCBs from the bottom of the lake to make it “fishable and swimmable.” Despite the company’s promise to remove all fish health advisories, the lake is still not 100 percent safe for fishing. The Michigan Department of Community Health still lists PCBs as present and warns women and children to limit the amount of Newburgh Lake fish they eat.

I learned from Kent Murray that Newburgh Lake is being contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE) leaching into ground water from an old Livonia industrial site.

Amazing: At the Rouge 2006 party, I heard Kelly Cave of the Wayne County Department of the Environment tell the crowd that Newburgh Lake was ready to swim in. Why do public officials want us to swim in a toxic cesspool?

There were some pretty bad results from E. coli (sewage) testing at Newburgh Lake during the summer of 2008. According to MDEQ’s Christine Alexander, ECT and ARC were in charge of monitoring..

Or, how about a dip in Phoenix Lake on the Middle Rouge in Plymouth Township?

Sewer cover beside Phoenix Lake. Joel Thurtell photo.

A good day to have gone swimming in Phoenix Lake would have been last summer on June 25.

On that day, the count of E. coli bacteria in a water sample taken from Phoenix Lake exceeded state standards by a factor of nearly 18. While that day’s measurement was by far the highest reading, it was hardly atypical of readings in summer 2008: Of 12 water samples taken from Phoenix Lake over the summer, seven contained too many colonies of bacteria for swimming.

In nearby Wilcox Lake on the Middle Rouge, half of the dozen samples contained too much bacteria for safe swimming.

More great swimming holes: Near 7 Mile Rd. in Detroit, in 2005, many, many E.

Chlorine and partially-treated sewage, anyone? Sewer outlet in Beverely Hills. Joel Thurtell photo

coli readings were too high for swimming. Some of the samples had thousands of colonies of bacteria — one reading was 18,000, when the maximum even for partial body contact (boating) is 1,000. More than 20,000 bacteria colonies were found in a sample taken near Rotunda, in Dearborn, where in 2005 many readings were too high for swimming. In Oakland County, numerous samples taken from Riverside Park in Beverly Hills were too high for swimming.

I mentioned those raging infections I got from putting arms and legs in the Rouge. Antibiotics quelled the inflammation. Really, it was nothing when you consider what happened to Kenneth Hagstrom in 1985 after he fell into the Rouge and swallowed several mouthfuls of river water.

A couple weeks later, the 31-year-old auto mechanic from Novi was dead. Cause of death: leptospirosis, aka “rat fever.” A fatal infection he contracted by drinking water that had wild animal pee in it.

Kenneth Hagstrom’s death from leptospirosis shows that we have more to worry about from river pollution than human waste. Animal waste is an important factor, though it can’t be controlled by waste water treatment plants, retention basins and gigantic sewer interceptors.

One thing is sure: FOTR can haul all the cars out of the Rouge it wants. It’s great PR. But the cars aren’t hurting the river. Removing them is a cosmetic effort, at best.

All the hoopla in the world won’t replace those DO and E. coli readings, which are the REAL measure of the river’s health.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com