Ronald Kushner

Jocelyn Benson MUST be de-certified. The law says so. @Charlieleduff

Is Northland Selling Poisoned Dirt as Topsoil? The feds are digging in, and one of the companies that dumped contaminated dirt into the city is now responsible for part of the cleanup By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff There are so many scoundrels involved in the potential mass poisoning of Metro Detroit that it was right for the Detroit Police to turn their case over to the FBI. The conflicts of interest are obvious. The tendrils of this scandal reach to the highest levels of Detroit and Southfield city halls, where the leaders continue to claim they know nothing. And the feds are digging. The case is widening, according to sources. And the case is starting reveal the tell-tale signs of an organized racket. In the meantime, the ding-dongs of the public bureaucracy bury their heads and hide behind rule books and claims of jurisdiction. All the while, tests have shown that the dirt in hundreds of holes contains toxins and heavy metals so pernicious they can permeate cell walls and lead to cancer and cognitive impairment. The Michigan Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy will not involve itself, preferring to pass jurisdiction to city leaders who are subjects of the federal investigation themselves. The Center for Disease Control told me two weeks ago that the data the city of Detroit collected on 77 poisoned holes last year is useless because the city did not test the topsoil—an industry standard. Moreover, no new results have been publicly posted since last November. The Michigan Department of Transportation does not sufficiently track where its highway slag is being dumped (hint: in Detroit's demolition holes). The Michigan Economic Development Corporation doles out graft to pay for $4,500 coffee makers but can’t supply soil analytics for brownfield redevelopment projects. The City of Detroit itself has handpicked 650 sites for testing. How? By what criteria? Why so few? To date, just 175 of those 650 have been tested. About 145 have come back hot. That’s more than 80%. Back in 2019, Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield wrote to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib asking for a federal investigation into the poisoned dirt. A couple months later, Sheffield flew off to Miami for an Easter weekend with Brian McKinney, the founder of Gayanga Co. who is now in the federal crosshairs for dumping the poisoned dirt. In turn, Tlaib called for a federal investigation. Nothing came of it then. And today Tlaib stands mute while running for re-election as a protector of the people and the environment. Meanwhile, a company named SC Environmental won contracts from the City of Detroit to clean up some of Gayanga’s poisoned holes. But SC Environmental has been found to have been involved in at least 25 poisoned holes itself. Gayanga was suspended from the demolition program. SC Environmental continues to work. Why was Gayanga suspended and SC Environmental wasn’t? Further adding to the plot is that SC Environmental was kicked out of the program back in 2022 for using unsourced dirt, leaving demo holes open, and not abating asbestos. Calls to the company were not returned. Then there’s this: Dirt at the old Northland Mall redevelopment site is being sifted and sold for top soil, sources say. Northland is the very place the Detroit Office of Inspector General believes to be the source for at least some of Gayanga’s killer dirt. Southfield Mayor Ken Siver and his bureaucrats promised interviews, and then canceled. Health bureaucracies refuse to step in. I leave it to you to suppose why. But the question remains: How big is this? Hundreds of holes. Thousands? Tens of thousands? We may never know. And that’s precisely the game being played here by the government. Collective stupidity and amnesia. Bury your head and hope it all goes away. The old saying goes you can’t fight city hall. But the FBI can. I wish Johnny Fed all the luck. He’s the only hope we have.