Illegal Overflow
By Robert Burns, Detroit Riverkeeper

World War II built Detroit into an industrial powerhouse. By the end of the 1940s the Detroit River was lined with large steelmaking concerns, chemical plants and auto manufacturers. Unfortunately, the same industries that drove economic growth along the river also caused an environmental nightmare along its shores. By the 1960s it was common to see large oil slicks and raw sewage. The river ran a spectrum of ever-changing colors depending on who was discharging what on any particular day. But since the enactment of the environmental laws of the 1970s the river has seen a tremendous revitalization, and once-common pollution discharges are now rare.

Then in spring 2002, the Detroit River suffered from one of the largest oil spills it had seen in decades. What began as the report of a small amount of oil in the lower Rouge River, a large industrial tributary of the Detroit, several days later turned out to be a spill estimated from 50,000 to 250,000 gallons. It spread over much of the Lower Detroit River into Canadian waters and out into Western Lake Erie. At first it was believed that the oil originated from a barge. This theory was quickly dismissed. Investigators then turned to the Rouge River area for a potential industrial source.

This was a daunting task given that within a ten mile radius there were a multitude of tank farms, refineries, large industries and industrial waste oil recyclers, all holding huge quantities of oil. Oil fingerprinting analysis determined that the oil was a combination of several different types, which made the task of tracking the source much more difficult.
Although a number of facilities received close scrutiny, the investigation languished for several years. The public grew extremely frustrated with the investigators who spent vast amounts of time and resources but could not identify the culprit. The cost of the spill’s cleanup reached into the millions of dollars. And no one could explain how such a large quantity of oil could spill from a facility unnoticed.

In late winter 2007, nearly five years after the spill, a notice came into one of the few remaining investigators on the case. Someone wanted to talk. Shortly after, federal prosecutors announced the indictment of a waste oil recycling company, its former CEO and several of its employees, for wantonly discharging waste oil into a combined sanitary and storm sewer drain over a period of several years.

Although the company was not directly implicated for the spring 2002 spill, charges against the company make them the likely suspect. The facility is located within a mile of the Rouge River and within a few hundred feet of the storm line that empties directly into the Rouge. Investigators theorize that the company dumped large volumes of waste oil into the sewer system over time. The oil backed up the system, until a rainstorm activated the sewer system’s bypass outfalls. The waste oil then washed directly into the river.

This problem is certainly not unique to the Detroit River metropolitan area. Many of our large older urban areas around the country have combined storm and sanitary sewage systems, which are overwhelmed during periods of heavy precipitation. So no matter how many safeguards are put in place to handle large quantities of petroleum products, there will always be the potential for oil spill related accidents. But without very strong regulatory control, inspections and monitoring, there remains an equally dangerous risk that unscrupulous individuals or corporations will take advantage of inadequate regulatory oversight and use these systems, and ultimately our waterways, as their own personal dumping grounds.