NEWSPAPERS n o i t i d E l a i c e p S
JANUARY 3, 2024 candgnews.com
Oakland County papers
Oakland Township’s historic big red logging wheels have been restored. Photo by Frank Ferriolo
One of the Road Commission’s 140 plow trucks is loaded with salt. Photo provided by Craig Bryson
‘When you put salt on the road, a lot of it flows right into the river’ NONPROFIT GROUP TESTS FOR ROAD SALT IN THE ROUGE
Oakland Township’s ‘big red logging wheels’ return after complete rebuild BY MARY BETH ALMOND malmond@candgnews.com
OAKLAND TOWNSHIP — The big red logging wheels that have been a fixture in front of the Paint Creek Cider Mill for decades have returned following a complete rebuild. The Oakland Township Historic District Commission, with support from the Oakland Town-
BY KATHRYN PENTIUK kpentiuk@candgnews.com
ship Historical Society, dedicated funds for the big wheels’ restoration. The historical society gave over $10,0000 — $5,000 in fundraising from donors, with a $5,000 historical society match — toward the restoration project, which cost around $30,000. The remainder of the funding came from the township’s Historic Preservation Millage Fund, which is overseen by the
METRO DETROIT — A local environmental group will be testing four different data collection methods to assess chloride contamination in the Rouge River this winter. Starting Jan. 20 at its stonefly search to assess river health, the Friends of the Rouge will also focus on chloride contamination in the Rouge River, thanks to a Rouge River Watershed Council grant of around $40,000 from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. “As an urban watershed, when you put salt on the road, a lot of it flows right into the river. So we’ve kind of known that this is a problem,” said Lauren Eaton, the monitoring manager for Friends of the Rouge. Eaton explained that the Friends of the Rouge has been monitoring road salt in the river since 2020 using free salt watch strips from the Izaak Walton League of America. These test strips have been used at the bug hunts and stonefly searches to collect data to determine how toxic the salt levels are to the aquatic life in the Rouge. EGLE has set water quality values to protect surface water from chlo-
See WHEELS on page 4A
See SALT on page 9A