Years of food processors' waste turns Michigan's natural treasures to ruins

While searching for a lost cow, farmer Charlie Brozofsky discovered in late 2002 that a stream on his property was tainted. The stream, usually clear and rippling, was slimy orange.
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What unfolded next was a saga of illegal blueberry waste dumping, which contaminated the groundwater that fed the stream, killing fish and other aquatic life in it.

In Michigan's prized fruit and vegetable industry, processors have contaminated groundwater with metals and arsenic by spraying wastewater on fields -- a 40-year-old practice that has led to polluted wells.

But in some cases, they also have dumped or spilled their waste into streams, marshes and wetlands, damaging them for years to come.

Two companies responsible for dumping the blueberry waste are still arguing with the state over cleaning up the stream, which flows to Platte Lake.

Eric Chatterson, the Department of Environmental Quality official overseeing the cleanup, visited the stream last week. There's still no life in it seven years later, he said.

"Even leaves don't decay in there," he said. Trees along the stream are still dying. The spring that feeds the stream gushes like orange paint.

The fixes are complex and expensive.

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