# Measuring the Rouge - A $1.6 billion cleanup, but what did we get?



## the rapids (Nov 17, 2005)

informative piece of reporting on the state of the rouge river. much more of the article is available by following the link

http://www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=13524

Measuring the Rouge 
A $1.6 billion cleanup, but what did we get?

By *Joel Thurtell* 

On an overcast morning last month, as I followed Mapquest to a bridge on Military Street spanning the Lower Rouge River in Dearborn, I did a very un-Mapquest thing &#8212; hopped my car over a curb, stowing it on a sidewalk. 
Then I popped the trunk, pulled on hip waders and tromped across the bridge. There I found the guy who e-mailed me that helpful parking tip. He wore an orange T-shirt and cap. He had on waders too, and was hauling deep-cycle storage batteries out of a big metal box supported by two 4-inch-by-4-inch posts.
A few steps away, a steep embankment dropped down to the Rouge. Robert Howell, a 30-year-old hydrological technician with the U.S. Geological Survey, was removing water quality monitoring equipment from a USGS stream-flow gauging station. I thought I was going to observe him mothballing the gear for the winter. I would be shocked minutes later to learn he was dismantling the water-quality measuring instruments, perhaps forever.
The equipment being removed gauged water temperature and the amount of dissolved oxygen in the river. Both are used to determine how healthy the Rouge is for its aquatic life. Later I would learn that testing for E. coli &#8212; the result of fecal waste that can cause serious illness for humans &#8212; had been discontinued three years earlier.
As for heavy metals and toxic chemicals, I could find no government source that's doing regular testing for those pollutants.
Despite the dearth of objective criteria, officials responsible for overseeing cleanup of the Rouge are assuring the public that conditions have improved dramatically. But experts I've talked with say that chemical pollutants and fecal contamination still make the river unsafe for swimming, and eating its fish can often be risky. Moreover, testing crucial to gauging the river's health and evaluating the effectiveness of massive expenditures of tax dollars has been substandtially curtaled or, in some cases, completely eliminated. 
But, based on the data that is available, despite spending $1.6 billion since the late 1980s to clean the Rouge, that statement simply isn't true.


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## Buck Bed (Nov 3, 2008)

They would have been better served by taking that 1.6 billion and removing the Army Corp. of Engineers cement project.


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## Fishndude (Feb 22, 2003)

Anyone who chooses to eat fish that come from the Rouge River deserve to get whatever they get. You would just be begging to be removed from the gene pool by eating fish from there.


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## Clinch (Nov 30, 2008)

I agree that eating fish from that river would not be a wise choice. I will say that it has to be somewhat cleaned up for salmon and steelhead to survive in the rouge for their spawning runs. I know the walleyes, suckers and other game fish also in habit these waters to spawn and make their home, including bass year round. If the water was overly polluted, than these fish could not survive for very long.


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## Fishbone (Oct 10, 2008)

_*'For those who do not know'*_

What about consuming fish where the containments eventually drained from the lower Rouge 'After many years of heavy urban destruction', & flow back into the big river where excess drainage/contanimation would continue the on-word flow into the lake bay area? Would the fish from the bay area be classified as safe to consume?

It sounds like the bay area would have the potential to play the role of where the excess drainage flows down from the toilet bowl.


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## wanderboy (Sep 24, 2008)

it's a pricy tag, and yes, they can do a better job, pahaps getting the surrending communities involved more, but if they don't spent those $$, the result could be worse...

# of posts show fish (include salmon) had made home at these waters, I am not expert, but I would assume if these water are so bad, fish like salmon usually wouldn't it home, so it's not a bad as it looked, or maybe Rouge aren't doom just yet.... 

the section flow through Dearborn looks more like a man made channel than a "river"...... I think that's old school, and proven not helping the river & water at all.

just my $.02....


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## Fishndude (Feb 22, 2003)

Salmon lay their eggs in the Fall, and the eggs hatch in Spring. The parr smolt within a month or two of being born, and really don't spend any significant portion of their lives in their natal rivers - just long enough to grow enough to smolt, and when they return to spawn and die. It isn't amazing to me that the eggs can make it through the winter. It isn't amazing to me that Salmon come back to spawn in the Rouge. It would amaze me if Steelhead were able to spawn and have naturally spawned adults returning, because Steelhead have to spend at least a year in their natal rivers before they smolt. Same thing with Cohos. 

I am sure that a lot of pockets got lined with some of that $1.6B, but I am also sure that a lot of good was done for the watershed with some of it. It was a LOT worse when I moved to this area, 20 years ago.


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## stinger63 (Nov 25, 2003)

Back in my younger days the middle rouge along Hines drive would never freeze know matter how cold it got.It was so full of chemicals and pollution it acted like antifreeze:yikes:


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## ESOX (Nov 20, 2000)

One of the biggest problems with the Rouge is the algae and weed growth, a result of all those dipsticks ferrtilizing their lawns in the quest for perfect grass as the tribs meander through subdivision after subdivison. I wish they would outlaw fertilizing lawns and make mulching mowers mandatory.


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## back2spool (May 7, 2005)

ESOX said:


> One of the biggest problems with the Rouge is the algae and weed growth, a result of all those dipsticks ferrtilizing their lawns in the quest for perfect grass as the tribs meander through subdivision after subdivison. I wish they would outlaw fertilizing lawns and make mulching mowers mandatory.


I agree 100%. Whose fathers programmed them to have to have unnaturally green lawns?? I talked to an environmental engineer last year and he did say a healthy lawn is better for the environment than an unhealthy one, but chemicals need to be used sparingly if at all. Mother Nature provided us everything we need to have a green lawn. Aerate, compost and you will do great....

Also, I read once that a suburban lawn has the same water retention rate as gravel. It's all runoff!


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## Jimbos (Nov 21, 2000)

That river still smells like pure butt crack on any summer night, especially in the vicinity of Ford rd and Hines dr.


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## kype138 (Jul 13, 2006)

There's a CSO retention basin at Ford and Hines, plus vents for the sanitary interceptor that runs through there. The river doesn't smell pretty, and those two extra inputs don't help...


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## stinger63 (Nov 25, 2003)

Until the rouge quits being treated like an open sewer it will always be one.


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## Team Spawn Bag (Aug 12, 2008)

Jimbos said:


> That river still smells like pure butt crack on any summer night, especially in the vicinity of Ford rd and Hines dr.


I 2nd that.


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## knockoff64 (Oct 14, 2001)

stinger63 said:


> Back in my younger days the middle rouge along Hines drive would never freeze know matter how cold it got.It was so full of chemicals and pollution it acted like antifreeze:yikes:


Huh?

I have lived within a stones throw of the Middle Rouge for 44 years. Most winters of my youth ('70's & '80's) the river froze solid in many places . We walked the frozen river for miles. I spent more time in Hines Park than I did at school.

Mild winters and high water were the only thing that kept it from freezing.


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## DetroitIron (Dec 4, 2003)

I also walked the frozen rouge as a kid. Used to sled on Deadmans hill in Westland.. After sledding on the hill, we'd walk on the frozen river. I remember falling through the ice and walking home several miles with frozen stiff pants. NOw that sucked!

The rouge is getting much cleaner, even though other disagree. Much work still needs to be done.


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## stinger63 (Nov 25, 2003)

I remember newburg lake being froze over but not the river rouge.I also remember seeing pike caught from Newburg lake that people couldnt believe they were catching.BTW I lived in Westland which we all called it waisteland when we were in our teens.Maybe I dont remember it as well as you all do because I was probaly waisted:SHOCKED::16suspect


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## knockoff64 (Oct 14, 2001)

DetroitIron said:


> I also walked the frozen rouge as a kid. Used to sled on Deadmans hill in Westland.. After sledding on the hill, we'd walk on the frozen river. I remember falling through the ice and walking home several miles with frozen stiff pants. NOw that sucked!
> 
> The rouge is getting much cleaner, even though other disagree. Much work still needs to be done.


The "Deadmans Hill" near Middlebelt? It's an old landfill! 

1910 Bridge?


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## Jimbos (Nov 21, 2000)

knockoff64 said:


> Huh?
> 
> I have lived within a stones throw of the Middle Rouge for 44 years. Most winters of my youth ('70's & '80's) the river froze solid in many places . We walked the frozen river for miles. I spent more time in Hines Park than I did at school.
> 
> Mild winters and high water were the only thing that kept it from freezing.


Yup, used to walk my Golden Retriever back in the late 70's up and down that frozen river. I can still picture doing it, brings back some memories.


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## stinger63 (Nov 25, 2003)

I walked across a branch of the rouge that I thought was frozen but then I fell through:yikes:I still remember it like yesterday.


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