Detroit River Raised Us. It Has Been Poisoned for 40 Years. Demand Action.
The Issue
The Detroit River is not a policy issue. It is the reason we live here.
It is the water we fish from the pier at Bishop Park and from the fishing pier at the John D. Dingell Jr. Visitor Center in Trenton. It is the walleye run that brings out every boat in every marina from Ecorse to Gibraltar. It is where we kayak with our kids through Humbug Marsh on a Saturday morning. It is where we walk the riverwalk after dinner. It is the old couple on the bench who have been watching the same water for 30 years. It is the thousands of acres of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, the only international wildlife refuge in North America. It runs through our backyards.
It is ours.
And it has been poisoned.
For over 40 years, contaminated groundwater has been flowing from BASF's North Works facility into the Trenton Channel of the Detroit River. PFAS. Mercury. Benzene. Cyanide. Arsenic. Water so alkaline the EPA itself classifies it as hazardous waste. Up to 60 gallons every minute, by the state's own estimate. Day after day. Year after year. From a facility that sits 1,700 feet from where Wyandotte pulls its drinking water.
Nobody told us.
Not the city. Not the mayor. Not a single member of council. Nine months of public meetings in Wyandotte and the word PFAS was never spoken. The word BASF was never spoken. Not once.
They had time to change our billing cycle. They had time to add a late fee. The state flagged our water system for significant deficiencies that the state's own regulator said pose an immediate health risk to consumers of water. Those are not our words. Those are the state's words. April 30, 2025.
They just did not have time to tell us what was in the water.
In 2025, state regulators told BASF in writing that the company has been violating the 1986 consent decree that was supposed to stop this contamination. BASF wrote back and said they are in compliance. By the state's own estimate, BASF is intercepting less than 2 percent of the contaminated groundwater leaving its property. A geological engineer quoted in Planet Detroit looked at that number and called it window dressing. The full cleanup will not begin construction until February 2027. The state's PFAS compliance deadline at BASF's primary outfall is September 30, 2028.
That is two and a half more years of poison flowing into a river our children touch with their bare hands.
May 19, 2026 was the EPA deadline for BASF's final cleanup design. That deadline passed. BASF said nothing. EPA said nothing. We got silence.
One Wyandotte resident, a retired Army sergeant who spent ten years training to detect chemical threats you cannot see, came home and found one in his own tap water. He had his blood tested. Two independent laboratories, nine days apart, both detected PFHxS, an industrial compound specifically documented in BASF's groundwater at the facility up the street. He paid $350 out of his own pocket because no one else was going to.
Three of his dogs died between 2021 and 2024. Charlie. Dude. Jinju. They all suffered before they passed.
He and his wife are not leaving. His wife is from Wyandotte. Her mother lives in the home with them. Their rescue dog Bowie, who lost his leg before they adopted him, has a backyard here. This is their home. They are asking for it to be safe.
He is not alone. Read the comments on this petition. Neighbor after neighbor telling the same kind of story. Pets lost too soon. Children with unexplained illness. Families who have lived here for decades and never knew what was upstream. Every one of those comments is a witness.
This river is ours. Ecorse. River Rouge. Lincoln Park. Allen Park. Southgate. Riverview. Trenton. Grosse Ile. Woodhaven. Brownstown. Flat Rock. Gibraltar. Almost 300,000 of us share this river. We fish it. We paddle it. We cross its bridges every day. We raised our families on it.
Mercury from industrial sites on this river is one of the pollutants behind Michigan's fish consumption advisories for the Detroit River. Every family that puts a walleye or perch on the table is affected. Every parent who takes their kid to Elizabeth Park to learn to cast is affected. Every resident who walks the Downriver Linked Greenway along the water is affected.
We are paying for this cleanup with our own tax dollars. Federal Great Lakes Legacy Act funding has been dedicated to restoring the Upper Trenton Channel, the stretch of river immediately adjacent to BASF. Our money. Our river. BASF is threatening that investment with every gallon they fail to contain.
The May 19 deadline has passed. The silence continues. Here is what needs to happen now.
Tell us what happened. BASF and EPA need to disclose the status of the May 19 design submittal. If BASF missed the deadline, say that. If EPA is reviewing the design, publish the timeline for approval and the start of construction. No more silence. The community that drinks this water deserves to know.
Tell the people. Require the City of Wyandotte to formally notify every water customer about the contamination upstream of their intake and the federal health assessment already underway. Require every Downriver public water supplier drawing from the Detroit River to disclose what is flowing into their source water. They should have done this on their own. They chose silence.
Test our blood. Provide blood testing and health screening for all Wyandotte residents exposed to BASF contamination. Baseline PFAS blood panels. Liver and kidney function tests. Thyroid screening. Paid for by BASF and coordinated by Wayne County Health Department and MDHHS. The sergeant paid $350 out of pocket to learn what was in his blood. No resident should have to do that.
Show us the lead lines. Congressman Thanedar just secured $1,092,000 in federal funding for Wyandotte lead line replacement. Publish which homes have lead service lines. Publish the replacement schedule. Prioritize homes with children. No resident should have to FOIA their own drinking water infrastructure. This applies to every Downriver city. If federal money is coming for lead lines, residents deserve to know where those lines are and when they are getting replaced.
Help the families who have been harmed. Provide residential remediation cost assistance for Wyandotte residents whose homes have been affected by BASF contamination. Water filtration systems. Plumbing remediation. Medical costs. Property value losses. BASF is responsible.
Publish the truth. Require Wyandotte and every Downriver city to publish annual water infrastructure transparency reports. System deficiencies. Treatment performance. Source water monitoring results. Lead service line progress. Billing changes. Everything that affects what comes out of the tap gets published where residents can see it.
Audit the system. Intercepting less than 2 percent of the contamination is not a cleanup. It is a gesture. Order an independent audit of BASF's current interim measures and require expanded pump-and-treat capacity before EPA approves the final design.
Speed it up. 2028 is not good enough. 2027 is not fast enough. This contamination has been flowing since before many of us were born. The EPA has the authority under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to require faster timelines. Use it.
Show us the work. EPA and EGLE need to enforce construction start February 2027 with monthly public progress reports. The public deserves to see construction photos, performance data, and independent verification that the system is actually intercepting contaminated groundwater. Not window dressing. Real cleanup.
Open the doors. Hold a public forum in Wyandotte and at the John D. Dingell Jr. Visitor Center in Trenton. Let the people who drink this water and fish this water see the plan and ask questions. We have earned that seat at the table.
Follow the money. BASF is one of Wyandotte's largest taxpayers and a major contributor to the city's Water Fund. The company has received substantial tax abatements from the city. Attorney General Nessel, investigate why a city this financially entangled with a polluter has never once publicly discussed the contamination in a council meeting. And reopen the Ostaszewski whistleblower complaint your office declined in March 2025. EGLE has since formally found BASF in violation of the 1986 consent decree. That is new evidence.
This river raised us. It fed us. It gave us sunrises and Saturdays and the best fishing stories we will ever tell. It gave us the only international wildlife refuge on this continent. It deserves better than this.
And so do we.
Sign this petition. Tell your story in the comments. Share it with the neighbor on your left and the neighbor on your right. Every name here is someone who loves this river enough to fight for it. Every signature tells the EPA, the Governor, and the Attorney General that Downriver is watching.
The deadline passed. The work continues.
Sergeant Brian Burgess, U.S. Army, Ret.
CBRN Specialist
Wyandotte, Michigan
NeoKhufu@gmail.com
3,511
The Issue
The Detroit River is not a policy issue. It is the reason we live here.
It is the water we fish from the pier at Bishop Park and from the fishing pier at the John D. Dingell Jr. Visitor Center in Trenton. It is the walleye run that brings out every boat in every marina from Ecorse to Gibraltar. It is where we kayak with our kids through Humbug Marsh on a Saturday morning. It is where we walk the riverwalk after dinner. It is the old couple on the bench who have been watching the same water for 30 years. It is the thousands of acres of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, the only international wildlife refuge in North America. It runs through our backyards.
It is ours.
And it has been poisoned.
For over 40 years, contaminated groundwater has been flowing from BASF's North Works facility into the Trenton Channel of the Detroit River. PFAS. Mercury. Benzene. Cyanide. Arsenic. Water so alkaline the EPA itself classifies it as hazardous waste. Up to 60 gallons every minute, by the state's own estimate. Day after day. Year after year. From a facility that sits 1,700 feet from where Wyandotte pulls its drinking water.
Nobody told us.
Not the city. Not the mayor. Not a single member of council. Nine months of public meetings in Wyandotte and the word PFAS was never spoken. The word BASF was never spoken. Not once.
They had time to change our billing cycle. They had time to add a late fee. The state flagged our water system for significant deficiencies that the state's own regulator said pose an immediate health risk to consumers of water. Those are not our words. Those are the state's words. April 30, 2025.
They just did not have time to tell us what was in the water.
In 2025, state regulators told BASF in writing that the company has been violating the 1986 consent decree that was supposed to stop this contamination. BASF wrote back and said they are in compliance. By the state's own estimate, BASF is intercepting less than 2 percent of the contaminated groundwater leaving its property. A geological engineer quoted in Planet Detroit looked at that number and called it window dressing. The full cleanup will not begin construction until February 2027. The state's PFAS compliance deadline at BASF's primary outfall is September 30, 2028.
That is two and a half more years of poison flowing into a river our children touch with their bare hands.
May 19, 2026 was the EPA deadline for BASF's final cleanup design. That deadline passed. BASF said nothing. EPA said nothing. We got silence.
One Wyandotte resident, a retired Army sergeant who spent ten years training to detect chemical threats you cannot see, came home and found one in his own tap water. He had his blood tested. Two independent laboratories, nine days apart, both detected PFHxS, an industrial compound specifically documented in BASF's groundwater at the facility up the street. He paid $350 out of his own pocket because no one else was going to.
Three of his dogs died between 2021 and 2024. Charlie. Dude. Jinju. They all suffered before they passed.
He and his wife are not leaving. His wife is from Wyandotte. Her mother lives in the home with them. Their rescue dog Bowie, who lost his leg before they adopted him, has a backyard here. This is their home. They are asking for it to be safe.
He is not alone. Read the comments on this petition. Neighbor after neighbor telling the same kind of story. Pets lost too soon. Children with unexplained illness. Families who have lived here for decades and never knew what was upstream. Every one of those comments is a witness.
This river is ours. Ecorse. River Rouge. Lincoln Park. Allen Park. Southgate. Riverview. Trenton. Grosse Ile. Woodhaven. Brownstown. Flat Rock. Gibraltar. Almost 300,000 of us share this river. We fish it. We paddle it. We cross its bridges every day. We raised our families on it.
Mercury from industrial sites on this river is one of the pollutants behind Michigan's fish consumption advisories for the Detroit River. Every family that puts a walleye or perch on the table is affected. Every parent who takes their kid to Elizabeth Park to learn to cast is affected. Every resident who walks the Downriver Linked Greenway along the water is affected.
We are paying for this cleanup with our own tax dollars. Federal Great Lakes Legacy Act funding has been dedicated to restoring the Upper Trenton Channel, the stretch of river immediately adjacent to BASF. Our money. Our river. BASF is threatening that investment with every gallon they fail to contain.
The May 19 deadline has passed. The silence continues. Here is what needs to happen now.
Tell us what happened. BASF and EPA need to disclose the status of the May 19 design submittal. If BASF missed the deadline, say that. If EPA is reviewing the design, publish the timeline for approval and the start of construction. No more silence. The community that drinks this water deserves to know.
Tell the people. Require the City of Wyandotte to formally notify every water customer about the contamination upstream of their intake and the federal health assessment already underway. Require every Downriver public water supplier drawing from the Detroit River to disclose what is flowing into their source water. They should have done this on their own. They chose silence.
Test our blood. Provide blood testing and health screening for all Wyandotte residents exposed to BASF contamination. Baseline PFAS blood panels. Liver and kidney function tests. Thyroid screening. Paid for by BASF and coordinated by Wayne County Health Department and MDHHS. The sergeant paid $350 out of pocket to learn what was in his blood. No resident should have to do that.
Show us the lead lines. Congressman Thanedar just secured $1,092,000 in federal funding for Wyandotte lead line replacement. Publish which homes have lead service lines. Publish the replacement schedule. Prioritize homes with children. No resident should have to FOIA their own drinking water infrastructure. This applies to every Downriver city. If federal money is coming for lead lines, residents deserve to know where those lines are and when they are getting replaced.
Help the families who have been harmed. Provide residential remediation cost assistance for Wyandotte residents whose homes have been affected by BASF contamination. Water filtration systems. Plumbing remediation. Medical costs. Property value losses. BASF is responsible.
Publish the truth. Require Wyandotte and every Downriver city to publish annual water infrastructure transparency reports. System deficiencies. Treatment performance. Source water monitoring results. Lead service line progress. Billing changes. Everything that affects what comes out of the tap gets published where residents can see it.
Audit the system. Intercepting less than 2 percent of the contamination is not a cleanup. It is a gesture. Order an independent audit of BASF's current interim measures and require expanded pump-and-treat capacity before EPA approves the final design.
Speed it up. 2028 is not good enough. 2027 is not fast enough. This contamination has been flowing since before many of us were born. The EPA has the authority under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to require faster timelines. Use it.
Show us the work. EPA and EGLE need to enforce construction start February 2027 with monthly public progress reports. The public deserves to see construction photos, performance data, and independent verification that the system is actually intercepting contaminated groundwater. Not window dressing. Real cleanup.
Open the doors. Hold a public forum in Wyandotte and at the John D. Dingell Jr. Visitor Center in Trenton. Let the people who drink this water and fish this water see the plan and ask questions. We have earned that seat at the table.
Follow the money. BASF is one of Wyandotte's largest taxpayers and a major contributor to the city's Water Fund. The company has received substantial tax abatements from the city. Attorney General Nessel, investigate why a city this financially entangled with a polluter has never once publicly discussed the contamination in a council meeting. And reopen the Ostaszewski whistleblower complaint your office declined in March 2025. EGLE has since formally found BASF in violation of the 1986 consent decree. That is new evidence.
This river raised us. It fed us. It gave us sunrises and Saturdays and the best fishing stories we will ever tell. It gave us the only international wildlife refuge on this continent. It deserves better than this.
And so do we.
Sign this petition. Tell your story in the comments. Share it with the neighbor on your left and the neighbor on your right. Every name here is someone who loves this river enough to fight for it. Every signature tells the EPA, the Governor, and the Attorney General that Downriver is watching.
The deadline passed. The work continues.
Sergeant Brian Burgess, U.S. Army, Ret.
CBRN Specialist
Wyandotte, Michigan
NeoKhufu@gmail.com
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Petition created on April 5, 2026