Michigan’s environmental agency says highly contaminated water is again leaching from the site of a former steel plant in Detroit’s Downriver area into a creek that feeds into the Detroit River.
A milky discharge was recently observed spilling into a creek near the former McLouth Steel Plant in Trenton, though the creek is situated in the city of Riverview. It was first noticed last year, but regulators suspect it’s been an occasional problem for many years.
Jeff Johnston, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), said the exact source and nature of the contamination is unclear, though it likely stems from a combination of historical contaminants at the McLouth site. “What we suspect is that this is something that occurs occasionally, probably associated with the water table, if there's a lot of precipitation,” he said.
Johnston said the discharge shouldn’t threaten drinking water supplies, but it’s too dangerous for direct human contact.
“The concentration probably varies over time and over location, but we've tested it at a pH of 11, which is approximately the same as household bleach,” he said.
Johnston said the contamination does pose a potential threat to aquatic life in the creek it’s discharging into. He said EGLE inspectors previously observed a fish kill in the creek at a time when the contaminated water was observed, though the two can’t be definitively linked.
The contamination appears to be entering the creek from a drain pipe adjacent to the north end of the McLouth site, which is privately owned by the company RTRR and where there is ongoing work on rebuilding and extending an old rail line on the site. RTRR is part of the umbrella of companies known as Crown Enterprises, owned by the Moroun family, which also owns the Ambassador Bridge. The south end of the former steel plant is a Superfund site managed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Johnston said EGLE and Crown approved an interim plan to further investigate, and hopefully correct, the problem late last year. He said drilling for further sampling is supposed to start this week, and the timeline calls for a report on the problem in about 90 days.
Representatives for Crown could not be reached Tuesday to confirm if drilling had begun on schedule.
*Editor's note: A previous version of this story stated that the contamination was entering the creek from the north end of the McLouth Steel site. The information has been corrected above.
