Time is running out to get a historic Detroit River cleanup at a discount

Industry spent decades dumping toxic chemicals into the Detroit River. Terrance Upsher, 53, eats fish from it anyway. But learning to live with pollution isn’t the same as accepting it.

He’s intrigued by a proposal to remove decades-old contaminants from the river, a massive undertaking that could be mostly paid for by the federal government and some of the polluters themselves.

“It would be beautiful if they can actually do it,” said Upsher, a lifelong Detroiter, last week as he kept an eye on two fishing lines dangling in the river.

If they can actually do it.

The Detroit River is our water supply and a boon to our economy. But with a deadline looming, there’s no sign that Michigan will pony up the necessary down payment to unlock hundreds of millions of federal environmental cleanup dollars. There are at most three years until the pandemic-era money runs out — a narrow political window for a project of this size.

“We’re going to have to do this, so we might as well do it while we have federal dollars,” said Ellen Vial, Detroit program manager with the Michigan Environmental Council.

“Without remediating the contaminated sediment in the Detroit and Rouge rivers, we will never be able to interact with these rivers to their full potential,” she added.

The cleanup has support among some key state Democrats, but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer didn’t include funds for the project in her recent budget recommendations . Budget negotiations are just beginning, but Whitmer’s preferences carry a lot of weight.

Stacey LaRouche, press secretary for Whitmer, said in an email that the governor’s spending proposal would generate $80 million for environmental projects by increasing the cost of depositing trash in Michigan landfills , money that would be used for “environmental remediation, brownfield redevelopment, and recycling initiatives.”

LaRouche didn’t go as far as shooting down a potential cleanup, nor did she clarify if some of that money could be spent on a river cleanup.

“We remain engaged with our partners who are overseeing efforts in the Detroit and Rouge rivers,” LaRouche said. “Governor Whitmer will continue work with anyone to protect our natural resources and create good-paying jobs for Michiganders.”

Budget negotiators will meet in coming weeks with the future of the Detroit River in the balance. At the same time, warmer weather means millions of walleye will migrate upstream, and local anglers will be out in force, pollution be damned.

A way of life

Upsher learned to fish in Detroit from his father and friends. He fishes whenever he can, both for sustenance and pleasure. He avoids paying for live bait at one of the city’s few remaining fishing shops by catching his own minnows with a net at Belle Isle.

He knows the river is polluted and is just as worried about the microplastics and PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, as he is about older industrial pollution in the river. As much as he likes the idea of a river cleanup, he has concerns. Will dredging just stir contaminants into the water? How will we know if the cleanup actually works?

A spokesperson for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said in an email that crews would use underwater “curtains” to contain pollutants and monitor the water around dredging sites. Sediment on the river bottom would be retested after dredging, and the results would be shared in local meetings, press releases or online.

As Upsher spoke with us at the William G. Milliken State Park and Harbor, he pulled a perch, his third of the afternoon.

“That’s going to be part of my fish dinner tonight,” he said.

Why the river needs help

Local industry was concentrated on the banks of the Detroit and Rouge rivers in the 20th century.

Factories dumped massive volumes of oil , mercury, PCBs, heavy metals and other toxins into the waters , relying on the currents to take the contaminants away.

But much of that pollution didn’t go very far. Instead, it got stuck to the river bottom with the dirt, sand and rocks. From 2013-18, state and federal officials sampled river sediments from the Detroit and Rouge rivers, and found harmful amounts of toxic chemicals near numerous former industrial sites. Some of the substances were decades old.

The toxins build up in aquatic wildlife, hurting its health and reproduction, not to mention the health of residents who eat fish from the rivers.

Detroit River anglers, many of whom fish to feed their families, tend to have higher blood levels of mercury and PCBs , or polychlorinated biphenyls, a 2017 Michigan Department of Health and Human Services study found. Mercury can damage the nervous system and kidneys, and PCBs are linked to cancer .

State guidelines say it is safe to eat some fish taken from the river — as long as it’s the right species, cooked carefully and consumed in limited quantities.

Experts say these limits wouldn’t be needed if the river was cleaned up. The project would improve swimming safety along the length of the river (not just at Belle Isle ), and it would make the river more hospitable to wildlife: think birds, beavers or the otters that have just begun to return to the river.

One of the biggest river cleanups in U.S. history

The Detroit and Rouge rivers would be one of the biggest challenges yet for environmental officials who have been working through a list of pollution hotspots around the Great Lakes region for decades, one cleanup at a time.

Experts estimate 4.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment would need to be dredged from the bottom of the rivers or capped at a cost of more than $700 million. The toxic material would likely be removed to landfills to be replaced with underwater vegetation.

Compare that to the 2 million cubic yards of dredging work anticipated for the Milwaukee River in Wisconsin, where a gas plant released PCBs and greases. That clean up is expected to cost $475 million.

Even the mammoth six-year cleanup of the Hudson River in New York was smaller, involving roughly 2.75 million cubic yards of river sediment contaminated with PCBs from a General Electric facility upstream. (Environmental advocates now believe that cleanup, funded by General Electric, didn’t go far enough .)

Who should pay for a healthy river?

The answer seems obvious to Upsher: The companies that polluted the rivers should pay to clean them up.

“They put it in there, they should take it out.”

Advocates hope that companies will pony up $245 million for cleanup projects on the Detroit and Rouge rivers. It’s hard to know how much they’ll actually wind up paying because negotiations are ongoing, said Scott Cieniawski, of the Great Lakes National Program Office at the EPA. The EPA is already in talks with Bridgestone Americas, BASF, Arkema and Honeywell International, he said. If the project doesn’t get federal funding, the companies might still have to pay for past pollution “through state or federal enforcement programs that might take place,” the EPA said in an email.

Much of the contamination in the river today was dumped more than 50 years ago, and about 80% of the companies that polluted the rivers no longer exist, Cieniawski said.

That means the cleanup won’t happen if the public doesn’t shoulder some of the $700 million cost.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by U.S. Congress in 2021 included $1 billion in funding to accelerate environmental cleanups , much of which was earmarked for projects in the Great Lakes region.

That additional money will run out by 2027, and half has already been spent or committed, per the EPA.

Congress regularly sets aside smaller amounts of funding for Great Lakes cleanup projects. If Michigan doesn’t take advantage of the pandemic-era cash infusion, it might have to wait much longer to see its largest river cleaned up, Cieniawski said.

“The time is now, we have to strike while the iron is hot,” he said.

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What’s next

The state has about three years to come up with the roughly $100 million it would need to contribute to clean up the rivers, John Hartig, a board member of the Detroit RiverFront Conservancy, told Outlier.

That’s a lot of money, and even supportive lawmakers say that setting it aside won’t be easy.

Still, $100 million is just 0.12% of our almost $82 billion state budget. It’s the same amount lawmakers set aside last year to improve central commercial districts in towns and cities across the state. And it’s the same amount set aside for the University of Michigan’s Center for Innovation development, backed by billionaire Stephen Ross.

The investment would more than pay itself off, said Democratic state Sen. Stephanie Chang, whose district includes the riverfront east of downtown.

“That’s a lot of money, but it would be worth it because we need to ensure that we clean up our river,” she told Outlier.

Every dollar of investment in Great Lakes restoration efforts yields $3.35 for Michigan’s economy, according to a 2018 University of Michigan study.

“Whether it’s fishing or taking walks at the river, or swimming at Belle Isle, there are a lot of folks who feel connected to the river and have a lot of love for being at the river,” Chang said.

The cleanup has high-profile supporters in Chang and fellow Democratic state Sen. Jeff Irwin, who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

Now they’ll just have to win over Whitmer.

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