Toxic contamination usually gets this dramatic only in Hollywood.
In the week before Christmas 2019, commuters on I-696 in Madison Heights were startled by a fluorescent green chemical ooze weeping from a concrete retaining wall along an earthen embankment, the substance puddling on the freeway s shoulder.
Tests later showed the ooze laden with hexavalent chromium, prolonged exposures to which can cause nasal and sinus cancers, kidney and liver damage. The source was obvious, straight up the embankment from the oozing site: Electro-Plating Services, a struggling chrome plating business long on the radar of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its hazardous waste mismanagement.