More looking back: 30 years ago, this is what was happening in the tri-community

We are celebrating completion of our 30th year of publication by printing stories from our earliest issues to show what was happening in Belleville, Van Buren, and Sumpter.
In our third issue of the Independent on Jan. 19, 1995, which had 12 pages, our front-page story was headlined: “Critics: Cleanup plan moving too fast” and concerned the cleanup of toxic Willow Creek with much work to be done in Van Buren Township.
A long story detailed the Department of Natural Resources public hearing on Jan. 12, 1995, that was held at Van Buren Township Hall, but contained only a handful of residents from VBT of the 150 present. VBT residents said the township didn’t let them know about the hearing.
VBT officials said the township didn’t put out any notices because the meeting was being announced by the DNR.
Most of those present were public officials and residents of Ypsilanti Township. Ypsilanti Township Trustee Karen Lovejoy Roe said her township tried to put inserts in the weekly Ypsilanti Courier to alert citizens, but they didn’t know how many people get that paper.
Trustee Roe said the 30 days of public comment, which was to end Jan. 23, was not long enough.
She said she and others asked the DNR for an extension of the public comment period since the 2-inch-thick Proposed Remedial Action Plan was put into the official depository, the Ypsilanti District Library, on Dec. 23 and then the next day the library closed for 9 days for the holidays.
VBT property owner Marilyn Hieber said she found out about the meeting by accident after she found stakes behind her property. She said it took eight calls to VBT hall before she found out about the project in her back yard.
The $70 million cleanup plan involves Edison Pond on the north shore of Belleville Lake and a possible toxic landfill on the North I-94 Service Drive in VBT.
The story said everyone wants to see a cleanup of the Willow Run Creek, but several chemists questioned the methods proposed by Conestoga-Rovers, Ltd, a Canadian firm with offices in Romulus.
The firm was hired as a consultant by the parties potentially responsible for the pollutions: General Motors, Ford Motor, the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority, Ypsilanti Township, Wayne County, Chrysler Corporation and the University of Michigan.
A high concentration of PCBs and a host of heavy metals and other toxins polluted Willow Creek, which empties into Belleville Lake, starting in 1942. The chemicals came from wastewater treatment systems at the Willow Run Bomber Plant. The creek was last used to deposit sludge in 1964.
Now there is a thick mat of vegetation covering toxic sludge up to 15 feet thick.
Although authorities have been studying the problem since 1978, the pending International Tradeport zone around Willow Run Airport has put the cleanup on a fast track.
Promoters of Tradeport fear businesses will not want to be a part of the project if the Willow Creek pollution problem is given federal Superfund designation, which is threatened.
The potentially responsible parties are voluntarily paying for the cleanup, but work must begin by September to avoid Superfund.
Sites slated for dredging include a lagoon and Tyler Pond in Ypsilanti Township near Willow Run Airport and Edison Pond, which is surrounded by Van Buren Park on three sides and a residenial area on the fourth.
In addition, since Conestoga-Rovers proposes on-site landfilling of the sludge, a toxic landfill is to be constructed. There are three sites proposed, two of them in Van Buren Township.
To clean up Edison Pond, the sludge is to be trucked out the VBT Park entrance on Old Denton Road to the on-site landfill north of I-94 and will take a route from Old Denton west on the South Service Drive to Rawsonville Road and north to the landfill.
Also, in the Jan. 19, 1995 paper there were the following stories:
• “Belmont Manor tenants voice concerns over apartments,” where people who live in the Belleville apartment complex say they cannot get the management company to act on their concerns, such as frost on the inside walls of their apartments and heating problems. Tenants said they have had no success going through the proper channels, so they are bringing them to public attention by going to the Belleville City Council. Mayor Glenn Silvenis directed City Manager Reid Charles to look into the problems. Mayor Silvenis said the problem at Belmont is one of the reasons the city is tightening up the rental codes.
• Belleville City Council hired McKenna Associates to put together a recreation plan that would make the city eligible for more than $500,000 in state recreation grants for a five-year period. The council plans to go to the Downtown Development Authority for reimbursement for the $6,500 project.
• More than 175 people packed the Van Buren Township Hall for the Jan. 17 regular township board meeting to support the reinstatement of Jennifer Delano as director of the September Days Senior Center. More than 50 people stood along the walls of the meeting room and spilled out into the hallway. Delano was fired after 3.5 years on the job. Township Supervisor David Jacokes and Community Services Director Michael Long repeated there were deficiencies in the program, but the seniors wouldn’t listen.
• In the “Extra Things I Know” column, we wrote about the Ann Arbor News doing a story about the Independent, which touched off a string of radio reports in Ann Arbor, WAAM news shows carried my comments and I was interviewed live on the stations Morning Show. It sure is a lot of fuss over a free, tabloid newspaper in the 48111 area. When I asked the radio show producer what the big deal was about a newspaper in a town that is covered by four others, he replied, “When you start a newspaper from scratch, that’s news.” We thanked Ann Arbor News Reporter Marjorie Kauth Karjala of Van Buren Township for a balanced, fair report on the birth of our paper.
• The Community Quilt Block of the Week described by Marilyn Greca Locke was the Robson House on Tyler Road built in 1852. This beautifully preserved home in 1964 was awarded a Centennial Farm designation by the Michigan Historical Commission in cooperation with the Detroit Edison Company. It was built in a wild settin and the homestead and farm was known as Bear Hollow because of the large number of bears in the area. In an ongoing series in the Independent, Locke is describing each block in the Community Quilt, which was on display at the Fred C. Fischer Library.
• Michael Beaudrie, a lifelong Sumpter Township resident, was announced as a new volunteer fire fighter. He lives in the southern part of the township and Fire Chief Les Powell said he has been trying to get fire fighters in that area. He is a qualified truck driver with no fire-fighting experience but he can be trained, Chief Powell said.
• Sumpter Police Chief Clinton Brown said his department is looking into an ordinance to penalize residents for false emergency calls, such as 911 or alarms. At the Jan. 10 township board meeting, Trustee Arness Cox said he was listening to his scanner recently and heard three out of four successvie 911 calls were made by children playing with the phone. Township Supervisor Marvin Banotai said, “We have to teach the children that 911 is there to help someone,” noting an officer can be injured responding to an emergency call.
• Three adults and two juveniles were arrested by Belleville Police in the Belmont Manor parking lot after one teen was stabbed in the back and slashed. Police Chief William Zsenyuk said the five were due to be arraigned at 34th District Court. He said the 18-year-old victim was admitted to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital for treatment. Chief Zsenyuk said 10 to 15 young people were in the parking lot when the stabbing occurred, which seems to indicate gang activity.
We will publish more history from 30 years ago as space allows.