Today a friend and I decided to take our biweekly trip of aimlessly wandering the country side in search of portraits. We headed towards Kalamazoo, Michigan to bear witness firsthand of the tragedy that is unfolding there, an oil spill. Yes it does seem that spilling astronomical amounts of that black bubbly crude into an ecosystem has become all the rage as of late. Not to make light of this matter it really just makes me seriously angry. So we packed up the Tahoe and drove about 3 hours into Michigan (we like to take the country roads thus taking our time) in search of a catastrophe.
We finally hit our destination not knowing what to expect we arrived into the seemingly sleepy town of Battle Creek,Michigan. Constantly searching for information on my iPhone we started our search and with a good tip from a gas station attendant we were headed straight for Kalamazoo River. As I was asking where the spill sight was a local told me that it was pretty bad ,crews cleaning the 850,000 barrels that have poisoned this beautiful meandering river. After about 40 minutes of driving around we finally found a road going over the river and right next to the metal barrier was a placard on a stick. It was about three feet high that simply stated, "Recent contamination as a result of the Enbridge Oil Spill has recently made this river unsafe to use." So there it was a simple little sign basically stating 850,000 barrels of oil have poisoned an entire waterway and contaminated a town, in not so many words. The sign was pretty small low to the ground very indiscreet, hummmm I wonder who put those signs there. As Jeff and I peered over the edge there we saw the spectacular colors, colors that only hydrocarbons can produce with their silver,purple,yellow and blue toxic ribbons glimmering in the sunlight.
This was a sad sight to see all of this crude oil swirling about mixing with the water and flowing down stream at a pace of about 8 miles a day. I had my camera and I made my way down to the rivers edge, a bit compelled by the stench of the oil I traversed down the rocky slope to catch a few images. As I got near the water I noticed all the oils that has infiltrated the vegetation along the bank, then I looked up and noticed that both sides of the river were like this as far as the eye could see, I instantly thought, "ohhh man this is bad,real bad." We eventually found the crews that were cleaning up parts of the river, it was hard to get close as no one wanted there photographs taken and most of the roads were closed. We headed up stream to get closer to the actual spill site and that was a task in itself it seems Enbridge had hired an industrial clean up crew and they had blocked a lot of roads close to the actual site of the ruptured pipeline. We did find a road eventually that went right over the river it was a small road that was heavy with traffic and people stopping to see firsthand the oil that everyone was talking about. As we were taking images people would walk up and just look down at the water shaking their heads almost like it wasn't all that shocking.
I remember thinking to myself I wonder how this will affect these people and this river and for how long. I was talking with an older couple and they had told me that Enbridge had evacuated an entire town that was closer to the actual spill sight, this couple had also told me that their grand daughter and the employees at the bank she works at all had to go to the hospital as everyone was getting ill from exposure to the oil, the oil you could smell in the air and see in the river. I remember I had asked how this spill has been affecting her personally and this women had told me it breaks her heart and her face just sort of became expressionless and she sort of just sunk her head down and watched the oil floating past her. I went back up to the road and found about 5 strangers just standing on the bridge looking down into the water, everyone silent and the sounds of cars speeding past.
