After World War II, A Pollution Deluge

The post-World War II economic boom created jobs but also sharply accelerated pollution. At the same time, a Michigan conservation community growing in numbers and volume was clamoring for cleanup of the state’s fouled waters. In a 1947 edition of its magazine Michigan Out-of-Doors, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs (MUCC) called water pollution “an inexcusable waste of a most important resource.” Noting that 235 out of 755 municipalities, industries and institutions covered by the 1929 water pollution law were not complying with it, and that 131 rivers and 43 lakes were seriously polluted, the MUCC derided industry claims that tougher state laws and policies would drive business from the state.

But memories of the Great Depression lingered in the minds of many, and the post-World War II industrial boom was reaping huge economic benefits for Michigan. Between 1939 and 1947, the number of manufacturing establishments in the state rose from 5,961 to 9,889, and the number of production workers jumped from 520,000 to 822,000. Wages and salaries paid the workers shot up 189 per cent from $1.8 to $5.2 billion. The manufacturing lobby exercised considerable influence in state politics.

Agitation by the sportsmen led to the appointment of a special study committee on water pollution by Governor Kim Sigler in 1947. Industry spokespersons turned up at the committee’s meetings to argue that some streams should not be reclaimed. Howard Cowles of the Detroit Creamery Company said, “We are of the opinion that in any proposed legislation distinction should be made between the streams in the thickly settled, essentially industrial areas, and those in less settled regions where more opportunity exists for maintaining conditions favorable to native fish and game. In other words, where industry employing considerable numbers of persons exists, and where it would appear difficult to again produce native conditions, we doubt if established industries should be compelled to spend huge sums.”

Another witness was John L. Lovett, General Manager of the Michigan Manufacturers’ Association. He suggested that the threat of tougher water pollution laws had caused General Motors Corporation to decentralize its operations, moving jobs out of state. Lovett added that the issue of public health was not related to water pollution, saying “it is simply an argument that is dragged into it.”

The MUCC sharply opposed the business association’s view, calling it “obstructionist” and “pathetic,” and noting that swimming had been forbidden at its children’s summer camp on Lake Allegan the previous summer because of pollution.

An angry witness before the study panel was K. J. Dahlka, chairman of the pollution committee of the Trenton Sportsmen Club in downriver Detroit. “I have lived in Trenton, Mich., located sixteen miles down the Detroit River at the head of Lake Erie for thirty six years. I have watched the Detroit River change from one of the most beautiful rivers in the State of Mich. to the filthiest river in these United States, with the exception of the River Rouge,” Dahlka said in prepared testimony. “…[P]ollution has increased to the extant [sic] that no longer fish are eatable, paint on bottoms of boats that use these waters is eaten off, aquatic vegetation has diminished to the extant that it has practically stoped [sic] the income from muskrat trappers, of which hundreds of citizens participate annually. Also swimming in these waters is a thing of the past.”

Public outrage mounted when, in the winter of 1948, pollution killed off large numbers of waterfowl in a widely-publicized incident on the Detroit River. In its report on the matter, the Department of Conservation called the incident a “catastrophe” caused by a combination of harsh winter conditions that left little open water for the ducks – and terrible water pollution. “Miles of busy factories representing one of the world’s most concentrated industrial areas, making automobiles, steel, chemicals, etc., line the west bank of the river and its tributaries. Industrial wastes find their way into the river. One of the worst of these wastes is oil of various types.”

In mid-January 1948 a thick flow of oil coiled along the west side of the river, coating several thousand ducks. Some of them died quickly, the insulation of their feathers broken down by the oil. Others were “easy prey” for crows, gulls and eagles, and “dozens of freshly picked skeletons were mute evidence of the magnitude of the tragedy.” The department pointedly observed, “The control of pollution evidently offers the best possibility of avoiding future occurrences…So, we should not regard the loss of several thousand ducks in recent weeks as having been without some gain. The loss has forcibly driven home in the minds of many persons the evil effects of water pollution; called attention to those effects in a way that perhaps nothing else could have done outside of the actual loss of human life.”

Hoping to call the Legislature’s attention to the problem in the most forceful way, MUCC activists dumped over a thousand of the dead ducks on the front walkway of the Capitol in March, 1948 in a graphic protest that long predated the demonstrations of the 1960s.

Spurred by these incidents and by an anti-water pollution crusade by the conservation writer Jack Van Coevering of the Detroit Free Press in 1947 and 1948, the Legislature abolished the state’s old stream control commission and replaced it with the Water Resources Commission, whose membership included representatives of the public for the first time. In addition to directors of four state agencies, the commission included one member of a conservation group, one member from a municipality, and one from industry. But the commission had less than 30 employees to cover the pollution problems of the entire state. And, said one commission staff member, “Lots of these companies thought they had a right to put their waste in a river.” Pollution would continue to worsen for the next two decades before even stronger laws were enacted.