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With the last of the oil removed from the Rouge River in Detroit, investigators are focusing on finding those responsible for last month's mysterious spill.

The U.S. Coast Guard and its contractor, Marine Pollution Control Inc., of Detroit, removed 89,086 gallons of liquid waste from the river.

The total includes emulsified oil, carbon filter media and runoff from decontamination operations, said Lt. Robert Hemp, chief of the port operations department of the Coast Guard's Marine Safety Office.

Advanced Resource Recovery Facility LLC of Inkster, Mich. handled 59,568 gallons of material, filtering water and solids from it to recover the oil. The material consisted of about 50 percent oil, said Nick Dibrano, vice president and general manager of Advanced Resource Recovery. Solids made up about 10 percent and water the other 40 percent.

``The debris and the materials that were in there made it very difficult,'' Dibrano said. ``From A to Z, it was in there. It needed some severe screening and separation before it even got to our pumps.''

The company recovered all of the oil and is marketing it to local utilities, cement kilns and other companies that use natural gas or fuel oil to fire their boilers.

Houston-based U.S. Liquids Inc. processed the remaining 29,518 gallons of the material recovered from the river, Hemp said.

The Coast Guard originally intended to recycle the oil recovered from the spill, but the large amount of debris and contamination in the oil had threatened to thwart recycling efforts.

The cost of the cleanup has reached $3.5 million. Investigators continue to search for the responsible party. The culprit may have to pay as much as three times the cleanup cost plus fines of up to $27,500 per day.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is leading the investigation of the April 9 spill with assistance from the Coast Guard. Investigators have ruled out ships and boats as the cause and are focusing instead on sources such as sewage discharge lines that empty into the river.

The Coast Guard reopened the Rouge River to commercial traffic April 12. Officials continue to monitor that area of the river for additional oil.

Contact Waste News reporter Joe Truini at (330) 865-6166 or

Gale Document Number:A86501048