MADISON HEIGHTS (WWJ) - The Madison Heights City Council said the building responsible for the infamous toxic green sludge that leaked out on to I-696 in 2019 is scheduled to be demolished on Friday.
City officials said they put demo plans for the Electro-Plating Services (EPS) building in motion after they awarded the contract for the job to The Adams Group in Rochester Hills several weeks ago.
“It will start on Friday,” Madison Height Mayor Roslyn Grafstein said of the demo to The Oakland Press. “This (site) is at the entrance to our city on 10 Mile Road. It’s an eyesore. This is not what our city is about.”
The demolition brings to close a massive environmental clean up that started three years ago when a mysterious 'green ooze' was spotted by drivers along I-696 in Madison Heights on Dec. 20, 2019.
The Environmental Protection Agency said contaminants at the EPS site leaked from the building and came up through a drain near Couzens and gargled out onto the freeway.
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Tests conducted by the EPA revealed the ooze was hazardous; the substance consisted of hexavalent chromium, trichloroethylene (TCE), cyanide and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
Cleanup efforts spearheaded by the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) and the federal Environmental Protection Agency cost more than $3 million.
In early 2020, EPA testing done on groundwater from the property surrounding the EPS building no longer showed high levels of hazardous material moving off-site.
“What the public didn’t see was that our lawyers were continually working on this,” Grafstein said to The Oakland Press,
Gary Sayers, owner of Electro-Plating Services, had been battling the city for years before the chemical sludge oozed out on 696.
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The state closed down the EPS site in 2016 after Sayers was found guilty of illegally storing hazardous materials. A year later, EPA authorities found over 5,000 degrading and leaking containers during a cleanup and criminal investigation.
Sayers was sentenced to a year in federal prison and fined more than million dollars a month before the green slime showed up in 2019.
The hazardous material seeped into the environment and the EPA had to remove more than 350,000 gallons of polluted groundwater.
Up until last month when a judge ruled against him, Sayers tried to stop the city from tearing down the EPS site.
For residents and city officials, the demolition of the building marks the end of a wearisome environmental and legal battle.
“The building should be down by the first week in May,” City Manager Melissa Marsh said. “This has been a long process, but I think the residents and everyone else will be glad to see it coming to an end.”
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