The Black Hills of West End

[XLFD]

Spring has sprung and with its coming, Ludington annually features a rather unique man-made wonder just a stone's throw from its Lake Michigan shore:  The Black Hills of the West End.  

While one may argue that this is more like a dirty brown ridge of earth and snow, created by a winter's worth of snow removal from local streets, we prefer the romanticized version likening it to other famous wonders of the county, like the pumped storage project.  As one looks towards the rising sun at this marvel, as we did on the first full day of spring, we cannot help but see the flood plain of the artificial glacier run down the paved plains of the Loomis Street Boat Launch and into the nearby Great Lake, creating its own short-lived ecosystem. 

Those saddened by its transience, take heart, it will come back again next year.  One can even take a picture of our craggy hills of winter cheer with Ludington's iconic lighthouse in the background, looking like something out of a dystopic fairy tale...

Except when we consider how all this dirty snow got there and its environmental ramifications.  The administrations of Ludington have used this area to dump excess snow removed from the streets and parking lots of Ludington by their Department of Public Works.  The City of Ludington has alternative spots to drop their excess snow, their First Street 'dump' out in Pere Marquette Township comes to mind as the most plausible alternative.  

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has exposited on the issue of what they call "Nonpoint Source Runoff Pollution" from streets, roads, parking lots, and bridges.  In 1987, Congress established the Nonpoint Source Management Program under section 319 of the Clean Water Act (CWA), to help states address nonpoint source, or runoff pollution by identifying waters affected by such pollution and adopting and implementing management programs to control it. These programs recommend where and how to use best management practices (BMPs) to prevent runoff from becoming polluted, and where it is polluted, to reduce the amount that reaches surface waters.

There is no indication that Ludington is using a BMP by putting dirty snow filled with soil, oils, grease, road salts, heavy metals, debris, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. less than a stone's throw from perhaps our city's greatest natural resource:  Lake Michigan.  It is not only a poor management practice, but also irresponsible.  

The EPA has several resources to help the City of Ludington craft better practices, but we need not even explore those, as Michigan's own environmental protection agency has plenty of their own (explore here) and they should be invested into protecting the Great Lakes, as this is part of their name:  Environmental, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).  Would they easily forgive the City of Ludington for putting a tremendous Petri dish of environmental contaminants and chemicals on the shores of Lake Michigan, and tell us that such practices are safe? 

If you believe they are not forgiving on this threat to our freshwater great lake, send them an email, and feel free to send them this article and any other supporting data that shows your concern.  We may lose the ability to admire that late-winter glacier, but perhaps we can be more secure that we are not despoiling Lake Michigan or our harbor. 

[Willy]

I was checking out those piles of slush the other day and was wondering the same thing. Now that water levels have lowered and there is a lot more beach area I was thinking that more people would be using the west end beach this summer and what sort of toxic soup was being adsorbed into the sand with all the runoff from the melting snow piles. After years of dumping the snow at the west end i can only imagine how concentrated the pollutants are and how it might be affecting beach goers. With that in mind and the fact that a lot of other toxins flow out of the PM and find there way onto the beach, I would not be surprised to find a large concentration  of all sorts of unwanted and unhealthy toxins, chemicals and bacteria sloshing around the beach and water. 

[XLFD]

Thanks for your comment, Willy, it not only brings home many of the issues for those who think it's only a dirty ice pile and not an ecological hazard, but also because it reminds me of something additional that I probably should have added to the article.  

Let's consider what may be the most prevalent chemical/contaminant in the snow mound:  calcium chloride.  We have a nearby manufacturer of this chemical which is used on dirt roads to 'wet' them down and used as 'salt' to remove the snow, just like halite (sodium chloride) the other chemical popularly used.  Other than on the streets of Ludington, both are often used liberally on sidewalks and parking lots so that folks don't fall; much of the snow at these hills are from these three non-porous surface types.  

If the plowed snow was left at its source, snow melt and rain would have the salt in solution roll off into the nearby soil.  Natural processes filter out most harmful chemicals as the solution makes it down to the groundwater where it is effectively a clean water source.  The chloride salts in the soil don't have much effect on the soil adjacent to the pavement.  This assumes one doesn't have a rain event in the spring where overland runoff may take the saline solutions directly into waterways.

However, when that salty snow is moved to the shore of a freshwater lake, and when you see the flood plains of these man-made glaciers flow downhill and into little feeder streams going directly into the harbor, as it does here, your freshwater lake harbor becomes a salty sea.  Both salts can be toxic to underwater life and is the most harmful for plants due to its high chloride levels.  At that particular place, the salty water can hang around for a while as that is a calm area of the harbor.