Last night and I went wandering a rather interesting local park. This is Walden Ponds in Shelby Township, MI, which is located on part of the old G & H Landfill, which was a Superfund site. The restoration work is now done, and the wetlands have been turned into a Heron Rookery. There’s also an interesting trail which leads out the back of the park and eventually to Yates Cider Mill at 23 Mile and Dequinder. Oh, and you can’t forget the rather forboding water treatment plant which sits off to the side of the park, quietly cleaning up the filth.
Of course, we can’t forget an obligatory satellite photo of the site, complements of ‘s wonderful mapper.ofdoom. Set the format to Metro and the zoom to 0.5m/p for a good view of the site. This starts centered on the pond in front of the plant.
Back in High School, my friends and I would party at the old Bald Mountain Ski Lodge off of m-24 in lake orien. It was built on top of an old appliance landfill. Kinda funny to think that they made a ski hill out of a mound of trash. Sucked when they destroied the building though…for it was in a prime location to party our asses off, with loud tunes…and not bother anybody…not to mention it was PRIME to pick ‘stuff’ up during greatfull dead shows. heh
j03l
I grew up near there, and also the LDI which was also a superfund site. I actually did a big project on that in the 6th grade and spoke with the superfund people about it for my report. I’m sure my mom has it stashed away somewhere. :)
At the corner of 23-Ryan, back in the 70’s, it was a junkyard known as “Danny’s Dump.” An old guy lived on the site in an old trailer with his dogs and ran the place. My dad visited him one day and took photos, I’ll have to try and dig those up and scan them.
Finally, my brother and his friends went back there and did a project for their film class, if memory serves, it was a “kid falls into toxic waste and becomes a mutant” storyline.
I love the name of the subdivision across the street – Crystal Lake or somesuch. If the folks paying buttloads of cash for their homes in that sub only knew that the lake used to be filled with green goo and sludge on a fairly regular basis…
Heh…I was there some years ago, taking a pleasant walk behind Yate’s, when I came face to face with that sign. What a way to freak out a perfectly happy cider day.
Actually, if there wasn’t a risk of arrest, I’d happily go trapsing through the cleaned-up area. It’s supposedly taken care of and capped, so why not? It’d be kinda interesting to wander around some man-made Teletubby-like rolling green hills…