Litterbugs, Part 10: Zug Island

Just feast your eyes: this blot on the landscape is Zug Island, an industrial wasteland on the Detroit River. I took this picture a number of years back when I lived in Detroit, and lucked into a helicopter ride around town.

To me, Zug Island represents environmental abuse on a massive scale. It says much about what humans have done, and are still doing, to our delicate planet.

Zug Island gets its name from Samuel Zug, who bought the land in the mid-nineteenth century. He intended to build an estate there, and it was probably quite nice back then. But near the end of the century, according to Wikipedia, Zug sold the land "to industries that wanted it as a dumping ground."

And that is what it became.

The air quality around Zug Island is said to be very poor. In published reports in 2000, people living in the area complained of a "rancid odor that permeates their living spaces and causes nausea, headaches and dry heaves. The grass and trees in surrounding neighborhoods are dying and there is rust-colored dust on the streets, homes and cars."