Michigan regulator demands action to fix collapsed riverfront site
Michigan’s state environmental regulator demanded Thursday that the owner of a suspected toxic property which collapsed into the Detroit River must quickly come up with a better plan to remediate the riverfront site.
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) has issued a letter to Revere Dock — a company under the Erickson Group — which owns the site where storage of an excessive amount of limestone gravel caused the riverfront property to collapse into the river on Nov. 26.
Revere Dock and the aggregate company responsible for the collapse, Detroit Bulk Storage, on Jan. 10 had submitted an action plan to EGLE on how it would repair the property, which decades ago was a manufacturing site for uranium products.
But the government agency deemed those plans — and steps taken to date to stop erosion of the riverfront site — as “inadequate.”
EGLE wants the new plans by Jan. 24.
“In letters mailed (Thursday), EGLE expressed concern about
interim response efforts conducted to date to prevent soil contaminants from eroding into the river,” said EGLE in a statement. A five-foot silt curtain does not surround the area of the riverbank failure, while the southern portion of the collapse is not protected adequately from erosion, the state regulator said.
There is added concern how a sinkhole at the site “is developing rapidly in size and allowing additional materials from the property” into the river, the agency said. The shoreline collapse was linked to excessive limestone gravel storage by Detroit Bulk Storage, which since July has leased the property formally known as Revere Copper.
The site, about a kilometre west of the Ambassador Bridge, was known to have produced uranium rods for over a decade starting in the mid-1940s as part of the Manhattan Project — the U.S. race to build the first atomic bomb. The property has also been known as a toxic dumping site since it was abandoned by Revere Copper in the 1980s.
The Star reported this week how soil on the property has remained exposed to the Detroit River since the collapse, while a large sinkhole on the site continues to expand.