By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Per a tip last week, a semi crossing the I-196 bridge crashed and spilled “potentially 25,000 pounds” of plastic pellets into the Kalamazoo River. What does
“potentially” mean and what plots might it perpetuate? The PPT rhythms sucked me in.
The tipster, “Anonymous” to protect his/her privacy, further posited that an EPA-ordered cleanup crew would appear to complete a job started 29 days earlier, tomorrow.
Police report that a semi bearing “nurdles” (white polystyrene pellets the size of rice grains, bound to be fused into common household products, jackknifed during a Wednesday, Jan. 27 whiteout around 3 p.m., plunged off the northbound embankment leading to freeway bridge we can see from the Schultz Park launch ramp.
This popped open hopper doors udder-like under the trailer and PPPs leaked out like milk from a steel cow. Quite a mess was spilt into reeds, broken trees and cattails leading down to the river.
Allegan County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ben Haas, working his shift that day, recalls the freeway stretch from South Haven to Saugatuck being something of a skate rink, starting near 10 a.m. with a nine-vehicle pileup including two jackknifed semis northbound near Pullman Exit 24.
This begat a parallel southbound pileup as gawkers slowed for the flashing red lights in the whiteout slid into one another and became so entangled that state and county police, area firefighters and finally MDOT officials shut down both lanes and detoured traffic onto narrower, less-plowed country roads, which was no bargain either with whiteout still raging and whistling between the cornstalks.
Snowy gales off Lake Michigan shifted north as the day progressed, Haas said, to assail the K-zoo River bridge, a notorious wind funnel visible east of the Schultz Park launch between 38 and 39 mile markers where our subject melee started near 3 p.m.
The PPP-hauling semi jackknifed first and was followed, parallel pileups followed in both lanes and traffic between Exits 36 and 41 was rerouted down Blue Star Highway.
“They had to bring in equipment with a bucket loader to pick that stuff up,” Saugatuck Township Fire Chief Greg Janik said.
First cleanup ran 11 hours or so, he continued, until crews concluded completing the job must wait until ice and snow, which camouflaged untold thousands of remnant particles, could thaw.
EPA-approved contractor Young’s Environmental returned last Thursday from 7 p.m. till midnight to do just that.
The pellets, per joint Saugatuck city and township press releases, had spread along the freeway shoulder and roadside for at least four miles, to Exit 41, due to spillage from the trailer during removal and subsequent snowplowing. Some of the pellets released into the river sank, others floated.
“Nurdles,” the joint release went on, “are considered microplastics: tiny plastic pieces the State of Michigan classifies as contaminants of emerging concern.
“Because plastic does not easily break down naturally, microplastics can build up in the environment for decades and absorb existing pollutants.
“Due to their size, they are hard to clean up once released into the environment, and they can harm wildlife as they are easily mistaken for food by fish and birds.
“They are not considered toxic or hazardous materials, and there is no known risk to public health,” the release concluded.
When I drove there the next day in 52° sunshine, two unoccupied Bobcats sat parked on uneven grass soil rutted by crisscrossing tread tracks from the past night’s work. Cattails bobbed in the springlike breeze and full-speed traffic roared over the now-dry bridge, leaving echoes.
