Detroit Contractors Plastic-Wrapped a House to Keep Out Poisoned Dirt
City officials heard we were documenting the incompetence and lurked around the block
Detroit — Sometimes the rumbling and bumbling of the Detroit City bureaucracy is so dumb-assed, you have to write about it.
Who? A gaggle of officials creeping up and down an all but abandoned block in city vehicles, trying to conceal themselves.
Why the cloak-and-dagger routine? Because they were trying to avoid the penetrating gaze of our camera lens.
Where? 4554 25th Street, on the city’s west side near Warren Avenue.
What? This is the site of the city’s most notorious demolition boondoggle. The hole where a house once stood was filled with dirt so contaminated with toxic chemicals and metals that the contractor is charging the city $93,000 to clean it out and refill it. It only cost $22,500 to tear down the house in the first place.
The site is so sick—apparently—that the contractor was ordered by the city’s demolition department to completely wrap the neighboring house in heavy plastic to keep the poison particles from wafting inside.
The problem is, the city never informed the owner of 4545 25th Street.
The house was partially wrapped, but had to be unwrapped because no one from the city had bothered to ask the owner for permission. This turned out to be a good thing since workers weren’t sure if they had wrapped the homeowner inside. Fortunately, they had not.
When the owner finally arrived home from work, the city had her sign a permission slip handwritten on loose-leaf paper. Only then was the house rewrapped, giving it the look of a giant bounce house.
Workers wore hazmat gear and respirators. The homeowner smoked cigarettes.
A young mother across the street was not notified about the removal of the poisoned dirt, either. Once informed, she demanded that her house, too, be wrapped. Her complaints only earned her some plastic sheeting taped across her windows.
When contractors began excavating the super-toxic soil from the lot, they discovered an underground swamp due to a broken water pipe from a previous, adjacent city demolition. Contractors pumped the water out of the super-toxic swamp. Some of it spilled into the street.
After 3 or 4 feet of the toxic soil was removed and carted away, the contractors stopped excavation work altogether. They left a gaping hole, even though the soil was so toxic that the house had to be entombed in plastic.
To prevent the poison particles from going airborne, contractors then built a giant lean-to made of lumber and plastic wrap and placed it across the entire hole. The side facing the house, however, was left open. And when the wind blew, the plastic billowed like sheets on a clothesline before tearing loose from the lumber.
The homeowner informed me that Stevie Wonder used to practice piano in the house where the hole now sits. That hole has now become a billboard of neglect and abuse so large that even a blind man can see it.
We filmed the whole thing over three days. City Hall got wind that we were out there. They panicked. They held emergency meetings. Housing officials, health officials, demolition officials, building officials, and an old white hippy in a silver sedan were dispatched to the site.
When they saw our camera, they would drive up the street, turn the corner, turn the next corner, turn the third corner, and then park at the end of the block from where they had originally come.
Dumb.
