Oil Spill Hits Close to Summit's Home and Michigan Wetlands

On July 26, 2010 an oil pipeline burst spilling over 1 million gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River.  The Kalamazoo River flows directly into Lake Michigan.  The pipe, built in 1969, carries about 8 million gallons of oil per day from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario.  Obviously, this oil spill isn't to the extreme of what happened with the Deep Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, but this is spill is close to home for Summit.

Residents of the area were evacuated from their homes due to high levels of airborne toxins, including benzene.  Michigan has gorgeous and important (more info below) wetlands that surround our rivers and lakes (we are a peninsula after all, this is pretty close to sea level) where the devastation to plant life and wildlife has been tremendous. 

The organization responsible for the pipeline is a Canadian company called Enbridge Inc.  According to news articles, they were warned by the EPA in January about the state of the pipeline but did not react.  Now they are facing a law suit and possible fines for not reporting the incident in time.  According to reports, the burst was reported at least 4 hours after it occurred.  Companies that fail to notify immediately or exceed the one-hour requirement would face a penalty of $250,000, up from the previous $100,000, and penalties would increase to $2.5 million for companies having multiple related violations.

The EPA estimates it will take months to restore and clean-up the river.  Thousands of animals were harmed it the spill, including Canadian geese, ducks, musk rats, deer, porcupines, and fish.  The photos, similar to the Gulf, are devastating.  Many residents in Michigan utilize well water for their homes and businesses and are dependent on a safe and healthy watershed system.  Our wetlands and marsh areas are critical to the ecology in this State, as they serve as drainage areas for winter snowfall.  Because they occur where the dry land meets the water, wetlands play a critical role in the management of our water based resources.

Acre for acre, wetlands produce more wildlife and plants than any other Michigan habitat type. Wetland species also comprise a critically important segment of these species. For example, Michigan boasts about 2300 native plant species; 50 percent of these are wetland species and over 25 percent of the wetland species are threatened or endangered. More than 40 percent of the 575 vertebrate (with a backbone) wildlife species in Michigan live in or utilize wetlands. This includes 10 to 15 of the 66 mammals, 180 of the 370 birds, 22 of the 28 reptiles, and all of the 23 amphibians.

Here are a few other things that wetlands do:

• reduce flooding by absorbing runoff from rain and melting snow and slowly releasing excess water into rivers and lakes - a one acre swamp when flooded to a depth of one foot contains 330,000 gallons of water
• filter pollutants from surface runoff, trapping fertilizers, pesticides, sediments, and other contaminants and helping to break some of them down into less harmful substances, improving water clarity and quality
• help recharge groundwater supplies when connected to underground aquifers
• contribute to natural nutrient and water cycles, and produce vital atmospheric gases, including oxygen
• provide commercial or recreational value to our human economy, by producing plants, game birds (ducks, geese) and fur bearing mammals - many fish are directly connected to wetlands, requiring shallow water areas for breeding, feeding and escaping from predators
• when wetlands occur adjacent to the Great Lakes, inland lakes or streams, they serve as nutrient traps that then enrich the larger body of water of which they are part

(Source: Michigan Department of Natural Resources www.michigan.gov/dnr)

 

The news of the Kalamazoo River hit the national headlines for about a day or two last week.  For us in Michigan, it is the top story of the day.  For detailed information on the Kalamazoo River oil spill and more photos, visit here.

It is critical that we manage our chemicals and hazardous substances as safely and securely as possible.  The people in the Gulf of Mexico can attest to that, and so can the people of Michigan.

Stay safe.

All photos in this article by Bryan Hornik - Summit General Manager, taken on July 30, 2010.