The Kalamazoo River in West Michigan was once home to several manufacturers of carbonless copy paper.  They used PCB’s during the production process and dumped the waste products into the river.  The result is that there is now a Superfund site on the river with 350,000 pounds of PCB’s.

The federal government has been in the process of cleaning up the site.  Several western Michigan communities have opposed the dumping of the resulting dredge.  So, the most contaminated material is heading to Southeast Michigan.  It will be dumped in a Belleville landfill.

Here’s the Grand Rapids Press link:

http://www.mlive.com/grandrapids/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-36/1177741537214760.xml&coll=6

What I loved about this story is that it originally appeared on the front page of the Grand Rapids Press just above an article about how the Detroit Institute of Arts was loaning its landmark “The Thinker” sculpture to the Frederick Meijer Gardens for the summer.

So, we give West Michigan a beautiful work of art.  And West Michigan gives us heavily-contaminated PCB muck.  That sounds fair:)

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