This was in today's Detroit News.
Fordson Island gets cleanup
Jim Lynch / The Detroit News
Detroit
Cynthia Whitehead has lived along Heidt Street, in what is almost the farthest southwest point of Detroit, for all of her 36 years and watched the view worsen. The neighborhood has deteriorated — with vacant properties, burned-down homes, crime and occasional rats.
She doesn't feel comfortable letting her children play outside. Adding to the dreariness is the 10-acre island — a manmade chunk of land several yards offshore in the Rouge River — that sits in full view of all Heidt Street residents. Over the years, this industrial property called Fordson Island has become a magnet for dumping and discarded boats.
"It's depressing," Whitehead said. "Every time you turn around people are constantly [[illegally) dumping garbage over there. That makes us look bad."
After years of neglect, Fordson Island soon will be seeing improvements and could represent a preliminary step in the reinvention of the Rouge River area. Work crews this week will begin dragging away carcasses of the decaying boats that dot the island shoreline in a cleanup effort spearheaded by the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority.
The authority is allocating $150,000 in grant money — part of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative — to help several organizations, including the Friends of the Rouge River and the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, make something out of the eyesore.
"We're going to take that money and remove the abandoned vessels that have been left in the channel," said John Kerr, director of economic development for the authority. "Not to mention we'll be removing who knows what that's still in those vessels."
Island has potential
Dearborn Mayor John O'Reilly Jr. sees potential in the island that technically lies within his city's limits. Despite hurdles to rehabilitation, including soil contamination, Fordson Island could be the starting point for something big, said O'Reilly and several Downriver leaders.
O'Reilly said he sees Fordson Island as a "learning lab" for environmental sciences where students and researchers could evaluate cleanup processes as work continues to rehabilitate the soil, which contains traces of polychlorinated biphenyls and other contaminants left over from its industrial past.
"It could be a place where we achieve the goal of cleaning up the property but we also create a place for future scientists to say 'Let's try this,' or 'Let's try that,'" O'Reilly said.
Fordson Island also figures in the plans of other groups including the Southwest Detroit Business Association
who see the property as part of the Rouge Gateway Project — a collection of pathways and trails linking the waterfront areas along the river.
Other ideas include cleaning up the manmade channel for use as a kayaking destination and utilizing the area as a wildlife refuge. In a perfect world, O'Reilly said, the work along the Rouge River would eventually tie in with work already under way via the Detroit RiverFront Conservancy, which has built a RiverWalk in downtown Detroit.
"This creates the opportunity for us to take something that has just kind of been sitting there and giving it a purpose — making it a part of something larger," O'Reilly said. "With projects like this, we're seeing the transformation of the Rouge right before our eyes."
That would be welcome news for Whitehead.
"I'd be happy if they did just about anything, besides letting it be a dump site," the homeowner said.
The next step
Before any of that can happen, Marathon and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment will have to determine the extent of the soil contamination and how best to tackle it.
The island may lie in Dearborn, but a one-lane bridge to it is in Detroit. Despite its size, the island has multiple owners, including Marathon Petroleum and the city of Dearborn.
Marathon has owned roughly half the island since 1959, when it was known as the Ohio Oil Co. and purchased a 5.5-acre parcel from businessman Max Fisher. At that time, the property included an oil refinery operation. Later, Marathon would use the land for a marine loading facility, but that operation has not been used since 2003. The Faust Corp., a St. Clair Shores-based marine and land construction company, is the only entity operating on the island today. Faust leases the property from a private firm.
Abandoned boats abound
In recent years, Fordson Island has become a magnet for boats no one seems to want. All manner of crafts of varying shapes and sizes lie rusted-out and beached along the island's south side channel. That includes one entire decaying houseboat in full view of the surrounding neighborhood. And the channel appears to be filled with refuse.
The full extent of the environmental contamination is unknown. State officials are waiting for an assessment of the land conducted by Marathon to arrive, possibly as early as January. At that point, a remediation plan can be devised that would open the door to the next chapter in the island's already-unusual history.
Before 1922, there was no Fordson Island. It was simply part of the southern shore along the Rouge River. In an attempt to improve shipping — particularly to and from the Ford Rouge Plant — engineers cut a channel across the land. That $10 million project, in conjunction with dredging of the newly created channel — proved crucial as the Rouge Plant began manufacturing Eagle-class patrol boats designed to hunt German submarines.
During Prohibition, boats bringing in illegal alcohol from Canada would land at Fordson Island to offload their cargo and avoid law enforcement agents, who had staked out normal landing spots along the Detroit River.
Now, officials like O'Reilly are looking to add a new chapter to Fordson's history.
"We really think we could turn the Rouge into a place where people want to come up the river to see what's going on," he said.
"This is the birthplace of an industry. And [[Fordson) island was a part of that."
From The Detroit News