Residents of the Tittabawassee area were largely ignorant of Dow’s poisoning of the river with dioxin until 2002, when it was revealed through an FOIA request by the Lone Tree Council that the floodplain was polluted at 80 times the “acceptable” rate for the state of Michigan. Dow has repeatedly tried to suppress information, disseminate disinformation, and convince residents that the dioxin hazard is not that bad. But now not only fish in the river but also deer and wild turkeys in the area are found to be toxic. And it also appears that Dow is going to spin this out as long as it possibly can, as it has already created major delays in the clean-up process.

Several of my ancestors came to the Tittabawassee area from Germany to avoid arrest after their participation in the March Revolution of 1848. I have letters they wrote from their wilderness home, and they clearly regarded the area as a kind of paradise with everything they needed to live–clean water, good soil, plentiful game. One of my family graveyards overlooks the river. This doesn’t make the circumstances more tragic, just more personal to me because I have family stories of what the area was like before it was savaged by corporate “interests.”