Sunday, June 22, 2014

Burning trash in Davis Park Bridgeport Township, MI June 13th, 2014

I posted this video on YouTube on June 13th of the trash pile they burn in Davis Park here in Bridgeport Township. I can remember them burning this trash going back probably at least two decades and another person I talked to about it said they have been doing it for as long as they can remember since the dump was closed and they turned this area into a park.  I went back the next day and that pile was still burning.


"Bridgeport Township has had a huge trash and brush pile in a wooded area of Davis Park that they have been burning for years.  You can find every kind of piece of trash in this pile that you can imagine. They also pile brush and logs etc...  into the pile.  Normally when they burn this trash pile, they burn it all the way down and there have been years when you go there and the ground is smoldering for days.  This time they did not burn it all the way down, just burned it half way down and then covered one side of the pile with more trash and dirt.  That new trash will get burnt the next time they burn this pile.  Some of the trash in this pile appears to be illegal to burn.
Here is a link from Michigan DEQ concerning Michigan Laws about the trash you can and cannot burn, also the health dangers posed by the burning - http://www.michigan.gov/deq/0,4561,7-135-3310_4148_55793-234558--,00.html
So I suspect that this burn pile leaves behind some contaminant's on the ground there, then come the flooding season, this burn spot is under water, it sits just 10 to 20 yards from the Cass River.  Do the contaminant's then wash downstream in the Cass River with the floodwater's?   If so, then they end up eventually in the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge. 
There was some lumber and big logs that were still smoldering and one piece actually started burning again.  There was no one down to monitor this burning, not while my dog and I were there.
Here are Bridgeport's "Rules for Burning" from their own website - http://www.bridgeportmi.org/index.php/open-burning
There are some photos in this blog post of the trash pile taken 3 days ago before they burned it - http://bridgeportmusings.blogspot.com/2014/06/june-10th-update-on-bridgeports-lyle.html"

No comments:

Post a Comment