Chapter 46 - The Kalamazoo Site
The Kalamazoo facility had been closed for three years. It had served as a small cross-docking depot before Whitmore sold the building to a local property company.
The note Do not include in regional review had been added to the recovered Fieldstone file. No one knew who wrote it or why the site had been excluded.
Charles asked the audit committee to contact the property owner and request access to the old records. The owner agreed to cooperate but said the building had been renovated and the drainage system had been altered.
The state agency expanded its records request to include the site.
I told Earl when we spoke that evening. He stopped moving and looked at me carefully.
“I worked there for six months,” he said. “Before I came to Grand Rapids.”
“Do you remember any environmental issues?”
“There was an old wash bay. The floor drain backed up every few weeks. We’d get a sharp smell after the maintenance crew cleaned it.”
“Did anyone file a report?”
“Not that I know of. We told the manager.”
“Do you remember who?”
“Tom Becker. He retired years ago.”
Grace asked the board’s counsel to locate him. Tom lived outside Kalamazoo and agreed to speak with the audit team.
Before the interview, the company notified workers who had been assigned to the depot. Several had retired. Others had transferred to different locations. The health provider offered consultations to anyone who wanted one, without claiming that the old site had caused an exposure.
Tom came to the audit office with a box of personal papers. He had kept old schedules and a notebook he used to track maintenance requests.
“I didn’t think these mattered,” he said.
The notebook contained dates when the wash bay drain backed up, as well as notes about a solvent odor. Several entries had a manager’s initials beside them.
“Did you report this through the formal system?” Grace asked.
“I called the maintenance line. Sometimes I wrote it on the shift sheet.”
“Were repairs made?”
“Usually. They’d pump the drain or put down absorbent. I never saw a testing crew.”
“Did you know about any sample reports?”
“No.”
Tom’s notebook provided a practical record that could help the agency locate specific dates and areas. It did not prove that the site had been contaminated.
The property owner allowed the independent team to inspect the old wash bay and drainage system. The first survey found that a section of the floor drain had been replaced during renovation. The contractor’s records said the old pipe had been removed, but there was no soil assessment attached.
“Could that be routine?” I asked the inspector.
“Yes,” she said. “It could. We need to review the work records and take samples.”
The testing was scheduled for the following week.
At work, Earl was unusually quiet. After the shift, he told me he had been thinking about the years he spent at the Kalamazoo site.
“I never thought to ask where the wash water went,” he said. “We were told the drains went to the city system.”
“Did you see the connection?”
“No.”
“You did what you were trained to do.”
“That’s what they told us back then.”
His voice held more regret than anger.
I reminded him that the company was not asking workers to prove anything from memory. The purpose of the records and testing was to determine what could be established.
He nodded, but I knew it would take more than that to put the worry aside.
The state agency sent an inspector to the former depot and requested the original renovation files. The property owner produced a contractor invoice but no disposal manifest for the old pipes.
That night, the auditor found a payment from Northline to a local contractor in Kalamazoo. It was dated one week after the wash bay renovation.
The payment memo read: Off-site removal—special handling.
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The contractor’s name was Becker Industrial Services.
Tom Becker said he had never owned a company by that name.
