Residents and local officials of St. Louis, Michigan, look to finally shed their image as a toxic landmark. However, with large shortages in the federal Superfund budget their efforts couldn't have come at a worse time.
"For more than two decades, the tiny city [of St. Louis, Michigan] 50 miles north of Lansing has tried to escape the shadow of its polluted past, and it's failed every time. The government found old pesticides laced deep into the bottom of the river that cuts through the middle of town and a syrupy ooze of industrial poisons pouring out of the dump where the city's old chemical plant is buried. Every time it solves one problem, another bubbles up.
And now something has bled into the city's drinking water.
Federal officials insist the pesticide-making byproduct they detected in three of the city's wells in tests over the past year is not dangerous, though many people don't believe them. Either way, the chemical plant that played a key role in the state's PBB livestock contamination crisis almost 30 years ago -- leaving behind one of the worst and potentially most expensive toxic messes in Michigan -- has found yet another way to haunt this city."
Thanks to Mike Lydon
Read the full story: Toxic Town
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