Any Environmental Watchdogs here?

[unsapien]

This subject came up this morning - and inspiration said to post it here.


Who keeps track of hazardous waste sites?

Because I can't find one listed - that I know exists. I was there by accident with a buddy of mine, and there were government types in " moon suits" running about - who told us it was a quarrentine zone - and made us leave.

They covered an area 100 yards or so circular - with concrete - put up a fence and a guardhouse --- and we never heard a peep about it in the news. This was the late 1980s.

You can see the remains - on Google Earth. Look up Bittersweet ski resort in Allegan County Michigan. Go about 1/2 mile west. There is a spur of road that comes off 105th Ave. At the right hand side of the end of the spur - the concrete is still visible - with trees growing through the concrete...

Yeah - I' m sure THAT made it safe.....


Wonder what kinda ungodly shit they were trying to cover up?? Literally.

I had some time during a slow work day to take a look at this, there's no guaranteed connection, but the timing and location is a bit too coincidental.

First this is the parcel of land I think you're talking about:



This is an image grab from the Allegan county Michigan land records website to give you more info That's the Bittersweet ski resort on the right of the image:



You can do your own look up here:

https://gis.allegancounty.org/portal_web...c10596f3eb 

Now around 1974, the EPA started monitoring the contamination flowing into the Kalamazoo River, and they found it coming from here:



1 glass street, owned by the no longer existing Rockwell International Corp. Well some parts maybe..sold off after the founder's death.

You can read the EPA's hundreds of reports on them here:

 https://semspub.epa.gov/src/collection/05/AR2652

It is designated superfund site MID006028062 , which is a designation for sites that should get priority funding for contamination clean-up. Go nuts, I only had time to peruse a bit of them.

Summary of what the contamination is/has been :

 

Now the documentation I did read showed that the EPA approved the beginning of removal of contaminated waste in 1984-85 to two sites, not the one OLB was talking about, but one of the requirements was that the sites had to be outside at least 3 miles from a populated area & not where it might leech into local wells and such, here's the zone around Allegan where a site cannot be:



The document scan is pretty bad, cause it's old, but you can see Otsego (city? village? town?) there, in the bottom right, draw a similar sized circle around it, OLB's site (and Bittersweet resort) is between, but not in either zone.

Lastly, I did a search of the Michigan Land Bank Fast Track Authority where they list the different properties that they own this is their map, you can find it here:

https://public-mlb.epropertyplus.com/lan...B%5D%7D%7D

But as you can see here, there are is a dot in Otsego that is dark green, and one light green that they acknowledge as owning, but OLB's site around Bittersweet Resort is not listed, even though it is listed as being owned by them in the Allegan county land registry: