I just got back from visiting the oil spill site in Marshall, Michigan. Even after several hard rains, the Kalamazoo River’s banks are still covered in oil, and the smell hangs in the air. I’m not much of a photographer, and I’m sorry that the pictures I took don’t really show the full extent of the disaster, but take a look: http://www.greatlakeslaw.org/photos/enbridge_spill_8_4_2010/.
As I was photographing the condition of the Kalamazoo River, I met a local amateur outdoor filmmaker who goes by “Nomadic Dog.” He’s just one of the thousands of Michigan citizens who loves the outdoors and is heartbroken over the spill. He made a short video a few days after the spill that conveys both the impact of the pollution and the emotion of this disaster. In the middle of the video, while surveying the Kalamazoo River covered in oil, he says: “The aftermath of human error. And what suffers? Everything downstream.”