Southfield Mayor Won't Answer Question About Northland's Poisoned Dirt
When I arrived for our interview with a slew of documents, I was told he wouldn't be coming in
I phoned the mayor of Southfield.
He picked up on the second bell.
“Hello, Ken Siver,” he said.
“Yes sir, this is Charlie LeDuff from the Michigan Enjoyer.”
First, a prolonged silence.
Then: “ I don’t want to talk to you,” he said. “You’re a sensationalist. You twist things. You have trouble with the truth.”
After 30 years in the news business, I’ve gotten used to being called an “ist”. Misogynist. Plagiarist. Urine-ologist.
Now a Sensationalist. Who knows? Siver did teach 9th-grade journalism.
Hizzoner was complaining about our series of reports chronicling what is starting to look like the mass poisoning of Metro Detroit with the scandal emanating from the center of his city.
In short—at Siver’s urging—the city of Southfield bought the old Northland Mall thinking they could redevelop it. To fill the miles of tunnels beneath the mall, Siver had leftover construction dirt hauled in from around the area. The city claims it has no records of having ever tested the dirt.
When city leaders realized they were too dumb for development, they went into partnership with a private developer who has a string of lawsuits trailing him across the county. The dirt was supposed to got into a landfill. Instead, it got diverted from Southfield to Detroit, where it was used to fill demolition holes. Everybody made money that way.
Everybody but the people living next to the Northland dirt. Tests reveal that the soil is so contaminated that it is too toxic for direct human contact.
The Enjoyer has learned that the Organized Crime Bureau of the Detroit Police has referred its case to state and federal authorities.
In the meantime, mountains of the stuff remain piled high at the old Northland Mall site, blowing over the neighborhood like a cancerous dust devil. So what does Siver do about it? Nothing. He buries his head and fails to inform the citizens.
What kind of leader does that? No leader at all. I’m not the mayor of anywhere, but if I were the mayor of Detroit or Southfield, I know I’d do everything in my power to protect my people. Instead, we get name calling and coverup.
“I wouldn’t know about that dirt,” Siver squealed. “I was told it is clean.”
Siver claimed he had no soil test results despite telling his community for years that the dirt was safe.
“Where’s your proof?” he demanded.
I told Siver I had transcripts from eight whistleblowers involved with the scandal. Film clips including an interview he himself gave a decade ago. Government reports. Environmental consent agreements. Soil analytics. I told him I’d be happy to show him the materials.
He agreed to an interview.
I arrived at Southfield City Hall at the appointed hour—Monday at 1 o’clock. I was told by the receptionist that Siver had called in to say that he would not be coming into the office.
The weasel has ducked me.
As I stood in the lobby staring at a potted plant, I began to think of it. Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit and Mayor Ken Siver of Southfield. Two white guys leading majority-black cities. Men who have made careers spewing empty Democratic dogma, tossing around trendy phrases like “environmental racism” while perpetrating it in plain sight. When caught, they deny, name call and use the machinery of municipal politics to cover it up.
I might be a sensationalist, but those two guys just caught a federal case.
Siver will have to come to the office eventually, and I’ll be there.
In the meantime, I went next door to the Southfield Police Department to file a missing persons report.
