New book on Detroit River covers blighted history, partial recovery

John H. Hartig, adjunct professor and river navigator for the Greater Detroit American Heritage River Initiative, has spent a lot of time on and near the Detroit River. Whether teaching classes in environmental management and sustainable development, leading various groups on boat tours up and downstream along its storied banks, or working with community leaders on various river improvement projects, Hartig is always sharing his vast knowledge and love for the river.

Now, with the publication of a new book edited by Hartig, Honoring Our Detroit River: Caring for Our Home (by Cranbrook Institute of Science), readers have the opportunity to learn much from this wise steward of the Detroit River. Hartig has assembled a group of expert local authors who know it best - the biologists, historians, engineers, and policymakers - whose essays weave a checkered environmental history. The book looks at the river from its early legacy as a beautiful riparian area inhabited with rich wildlife cherished by the American Indians, to its trashing during the Industrial Revolution, and finally to current efforts at restoring parts of what was, and energizing residents to reclaim what it could be.

"There are many great rivers throughout the world, including the Euphrates, the Nile, the Ganges, the Mississippi, and the Amazon. This is a book about another great river called the Detroit River," Hartig writes in his introduction. This is a rather bold statement about a working river in the industrial heartland with a reputation for being 'polluted river in the rust belt'. But as one progresses through the early chapters covering local Indian history, biodiversity, the American beaver exploitation, and early industrialization, Hartig's words begin to make sense. Man's impact on the river does not change its greatness, in the natural world sense. "The entire upper Great Lakes flow through the Detroit River, making it truly unique in water quantity and other features," Hartig writes. "It should be no surprise why people and major chemical, steel, automotive, and ship building industries located along the Detroit River's plentiful water supplies, outstanding transportation routes, and access to minerals and resources."

Today, a newcomer's first glimpse of the Detroit River usually occurs from the Ambassador Bridge, at the annual Detroit Fireworks Festival, or from between buildings along Jefferson Boulevard. The impression is of concrete and steel banks on the American side, and some open green spaces on the Windsor side. On the lower river, close to the intersection of the River Rouge, it is uglier, of course.

In 1699 French explorer Antoine De La Motte Cadillac wrote about his first impression of the river: "On both sides of this strait lie fine, open plains where the deer roam in graceful herds, by no means fierce." Twenty years earlier, Father Louis Hennepin, wrote this account of his encounter: "The banks of the straight are vast meadows, and the prospect is terminated with some hills covered with vineyards (from early French fur traders), trees bearing fruit, groves and forests well disposed that one would think nature alone could not have made, without the help of art so charming a prospect."

Hartig's book finely documents the adverse impacts on the river in the 325 years since - the growing population and waterborne disease epidemics of the late 1800s and early 1900s, intense auto and steel production and subsequent oil pollution in the mid-1900s, the phosphorus pollution and fish kills first identified in the early 1960s, followed by the toxic substance (i.e. PCBs and mercury) contamination, and finally, the loss of habitat and biodiversity first documented by scientists in the early 1930s. No wonder, by contemporary times, the city posture and architecture had turned its back on this 'great river'.

But Hartig, The River Navigator, and optimist, compels us to take a second look. "We have now entered a new era that emphasizes sustainability and healthy communities," writes Hartig, who uses the success story of the Rouge River rehabilitation begun in 1984 as a model for what grass roots community work can do to turn around the health of a river. In the past, environmental restoration took on a top-down governmental approach, led by federal and state agencies. "Today, more and more programs are being implemented in a bottom-up, cooperative fashion," Hartig writes. "Further, these new programs are striving for a balanced approach, among environment, economy and community."

Hartig's biggest strength is his vision and optimism, combined with his skill to assemble partners, including both friends of the river and the polluters themselves, to work toward solutions. In his last chapter, Hartig writes about other smaller successful environmental Detroit River watershed management projects and plans for other major ones - improving Belle Isle ('the crown jewel of Detroit's public park system'), restoring Fort Wayne, redeveloping the McLouth Steel brownfield site, restoring Black Lagoon in the Trenton Channel, implementing habitat friendly soft engineering along the shoreline, and linking riverfront greenways.

Both in his opening and concluding chapters, Hartig quotes A. Golding, a writer of another urban river, the Los Angeles River: "To deny the river is to deny the origin of the city. To rethink the river is to discover a unique opportunity to define urban places, the neighborhoods and communities together, and reconnect us to our landscape and history."