KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Thirteen years ago the Kalamazoo River was unrecognizable after an Enbridge Energy pipeline burst. Crude oil gushed into the Talmadge Creek and the river.
If you told wildlife biologist Joshua Otten at least 1 million gallons of oil spilled into the river, he says he probably wouldn't believe you if he wasn't there to see it himself.
"There was so much oil that had gotten pushed up into the floodplains. It starts sticking to all of the vegetation, the trees, any of the down woody debris that was in the river; all of that would have this tacky oil to it," he recalled.
The spill happened July 25, 2010. Otten was in Iowa when he got the call.
"This had occurred just after BP had happened, and so not a lot of people had heard about this because BP had gotten a lot more of the publicity," he said.
According to Otten, due to the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, not many people realized that this was the largest inland freshwater oil spill to happen in the U.S. For the next two years, he lived in Southwest Michigan helping rescue the river's wildlife.
At the time, it was also at a flood stage. This not only impacted the animals but the land and vegetation they relied on.
"If they have that oil on their skin, their fur, you know, it makes it difficult to survive," Otten explained.
He remembered that turtles were the most vulnerable species out there.
"Those turtles would bask, come out of the water every day to get sun. ... They would climb up on the woody debris, the banks that had that oil, so they'd pick up oil from that. And then they would also pick up oil that was floating in the water column," he says. They spent the next 12 months catching and cleaning over 3,000 turtles.
While residents that lived along the river had to deal with things like black oil on their lawn, headaches from the smell, and even having to evacuate, he says it didn't stop people from contributing to save the river.
