Paul Stark, July 17th, 2024

Paul Stark, July 17th, 2024

Paul Stark shares his history of involvement with Detroit’s Rouge Park, and the issues the board of Friends of the Rouge Park have been working to address since 2002. He discusses the various environmental challenges faced by the park, including sewage overflow, dumping, and a loss of biodiversity.

Detroit Historical Society

Detroit Historical Society

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Paul Stark

Paul Stark has been on the board of the Friends of Rouge Park since the organization formed in 2002, primarily in a secretarial capacity. He taught high school at Detroit Public Schools for twenty-five years and is now a contractor for the Bureau of Services for Blind Persons and the Greater Detroit Agency for the Blind and Visually Impaired. Previously a resident of Detroit’s Warrendale neighborhood, he now lives in Dearborn Heights.

Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo

7/17/2024

39:06

Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo: I'm Doris Lanzkron-Tamarazo. It's July 17th, 2024, and I'm here with, please say your name.

Paul Stark: I'm Paul Stark. Paul P a u l. Stark S t a r k.

DLT: Do you live in the city of Detroit?

PS: No, I don't.

DLT: Where do you live?

PS: I live in Dearborn Heights.

DLT: And do you work in the city of Detroit?

PS: No, I don't.

DLT: Where do you work?

PS: Well, I contract with the Bureau of Services for Blind Persons and with the Greater Detroit Agency for the Blind and Visually Impaired. And so, I'm basically self-employed. I contract with them, and I provide services to blind residents. Mostly in Detroit, although some in the suburbs as well. So, I guess Detroit in that sense. But I don't work for a business located in Detroit.

DLT: And how did you become involved with the Rouge Park?

PS: Well, I lived, about a mile and a quarter from the park in Detroit from about 1987 to about 2012. So about 25 years. And so it was my neighborhood park. And so, I just spent, you know, a lot of my free time there walking my dog and then just exploring the park. And, it was just the main place I'd go for walks and recreation, for that time. And actually, when I moved to Dearborn Heights, I actually lived closer to Rouge Park now, but just on the other side of the park that's in Dearborn Heights and continued to spend time there. A lot of people that I knew in the neighborhood. I lived in the Warrendale neighborhood near Southfield Freeway and Warren. I set up a block club, headed a block club for many years. And I was also president of the Warrendale Community Organization for several years, and involved in many other capacities with them. And we've, being our neighborhood bordering Rouge Park, we've always been very concerned with Rouge Park. And so, through my community involvement, I just kept meeting more and more people that felt that the park was really grossly underfunded and underutilized, and it would be just a wonderful, important asset for the citizens of Detroit. So, in 2002, I was, together with several other people, founding members of the Friends of Rouge Park. And so the rest is history.

DLT: And would you say that the park has changed over time since you've started being more involved?

PS: Oh, yes, very much so. You know, the park went through a extremely difficult time from when we first organized. Well, from before we organized, the park used to have, I think it was seventeen ball fields and just numerous picnic areas and playgrounds. And by 2002, they had mostly been removed, because they were not maintained and they basically collapsed in on themselves. And so where much of the park had so many recreational things, there used to be a recreation center and nature center, a little Merry-Go-Round pony bar and pony rides. I mean, there was just toboggan runs. I mean, I can go on and on of all this stuff that was there from the 1930s to the 70s. But basically, all those park amenities, pretty much all of them—except for the Brennan Pools, although even they were closed for many years—really just fell into disrepair. And so, our goal was to put Rouge Park back on the map and bring these facilities back, bring back the day camp and so many other things. But from 2002, especially ‘till about 2012, those first ten years of our organization, they were really in crisis mode. While we were dreaming of seeing things get better in the park, we spent most of our time struggling to try to keep the park open. During the Kwame Kilpatrick administration, they attempted to sell a pretty large percentage of all the non-floodplain, area in the park, most of the recreation areas, for condo development. And so, we organized a massive public movement to fight that. And we won. And we kept that kind of development from happening. And then 2010 and Dave Bing attempted to close the park, literally wanted to put a fence around it and close it and stop maintaining it entirely. And we fought that and won that one, too.

And then it really wasn't until the city came out of bankruptcy and under the Duggan administration that things have really turned around. The pools are back open—Lear Corporation footed the bill for a lot of that. And then we developed a master plan with a lot of community input and really made a point to the city how much the park was valued, and how important it is to the residents, and the impacts to the whole metropolitan area. It's the largest urban park in Michigan, largest urban city park in the entire Detroit Metro Area. And it's very centrally located for the whole population of the Detroit Metro Area. So it's just incredible potential. So we, working with state representatives, city, state, county governments, we worked to get money available. And as a result of that, there are a new splash pad, new—with the Pistons—have put in new basketball courts. We have, I think, eleven new soccer fields, several new playgrounds, new walking track down at the south end of the park. I could go on and on to say now that the park is turned around, and it's starting to look like it did back in the 60s and 70s with the— And the maintenance has improved a lot, too. Plus, we have also been working to restore the old nature trails that used to be very heavily used for decades in the park, including the Scout Hollow Campground, which was a youth campground for Boy Scout, Girl Scout camping and other camps, youth camps throughout the summer for thirty, forty years. We've worked with Detroit Outdoors and YMCA and the city together to get that campground reopened. And so, yeah, things have really, really turned around for the park.

DLT: And has Rouge Park been affected by the flooding in Detroit?

PS: Yes. The main area, all— If you look at a map of Rouge Park, all of the roads that were built through the park were all built outside of the floodplain of the Rouge River. All except one part from Tireman to Warren, where Spinoza Road— For whatever reason, at the time, they decided to put the road down right parallel to the river. And of course, at the time, in the 1920s, when it was built, Rouge Park wasn't even in the city of Detroit yet. It became a park— They started purchasing the land in 1922, 23. It wasn't until 1925 that the city actually annexed the park, the land from Dearborn Township. And at that time, it was all farms, so for— And it was five miles outside of the city limits of Detroit. At that time, I think Livernois was the city limits, and beyond Livernois was farms. So back then, when it rained, there were wetlands and lots of farmland to absorb all the water. And so, when they first put that road in the floodplain, it probably seemed like a good idea, because that was already the most most beautiful part of the park, because it was the most forested. And so, they put picnic areas right along the river. Right in that floodplain area. And it probably never flooded for decades. But as Dearborn Heights, Dearborn, Livonia and on and on, all the development happened. Basically, they took all the pervious surface that could absorb water and replaced it with roads and concrete and buildings. And so today the Rouge River is extremely flashy and floods when it didn't used to. I've read statistics that I think 95% of the wetlands in Wayne County have been destroyed. There's only 5% left. And so, that water has to go somewhere, and it's all, from storm sewers, it's all straight into the river. So now that area of the park now floods several times a year where it used to be, that would be like a hundred-year event, now every single year it floods.

And there is the old bathroom building structure, which we're still working on trying to get it demolished, because it floods every time it rains. And it's been closed for many years now, so. And it really can't be reopened because of how that area floods. And of course, it's not just flooding with rainwater. We have a combined sewer system in Detroit Metro Area. So, what's happening is every time we have, like, an inch of rain or more, to keep water from going into the basements, sewage gets mixed with stormwater and gets dumped into the river. So, it is literally sewage flowing into Rouge Park. And back in 2010, 2011, there was a tunnel project, DWSD [Detroit Water and Sewerage Department], and it was supposed to, it would have completely alleviated the problems. But because of the Great Recession, the water department asked for a hardship exemption, and they got it put off till 2037. So unfortunately, we got 25 more years of sewage running through the state's most beautiful and largest city park. [Laughter] So that's been another massive headache that we're always, we're working on bringing attention to, and trying to see things that can be done to reduce the flooding and especially the sewage coming into the park.

DLT: And how does it impact the park to have this sewage running through? Is there impacts on the animals, on the plants, on just the people coming through?

PS: Oh, everything. Yes. The mixing, mixing that much e-coli and sewage. And then, I mean, you can just imagine what that does to all the fish, the turtles, the birds. [Laughter] And so you have all the insects and the macro invertebrates in the water, the things that the fish and birds eat, are all, you know, I mean, pretty severely polluted with really dangerous levels of e-coli and other things that we all flush down our systems that go into the river.
So, yeah. After the water, the flood, recedes, you're left with the whole grass, what was the picnic area and the bathroom building in that beautiful, forested area that used to be the most attractive part of the park, is left all the grass and up to several feet up trees with a layer of scum, which is basically sewage, dried sewage. So, it’s a very unhealthy environment for humans and for animals. We don't have any— No one is monitoring the amount of sickness that squirrels and other wildlife are contending with. But, they’re certainly, given how dangerously ill humans get being in contact with that, you know that the same would be for the animals.

DLT: And does the park attempt to mitigate any of these effects in any way? Is there anything that's done regularly?

PS: Well, like I said, they did. I mean, the tunnel project would have completely resolved the problem. But I guess the judge they got didn't think that sewage running through the park was a problem. And getting 25 more years before they had to address the problem. And, well, DWSD has done some projects that actually take park land. They are, the project keeps the water, the sewage out of our southern neighbor, Dearborn Heights. [Laughter] Not out of the park itself. Our water, our overflow, CSO [Combined Sewer Overflow] overflows are still all the sewage coming from us all the way north up to Eight Mile. So, the water projects that we're losing park land for is not even solving the problem. Now, there are some projects they're looking at now, some very small projects up in [?] Golf course and Brightmoor area that will reduce the amount of water running into Rouge Park and will help a little bit, but nothing compared to the solution we had. If the tunnel project had been built, we would now, our campground could have people canoeing in the river and we would have put in canoe lodges. We would love to have canoeing be accessible for Detroit residents. But unfortunately, until that issue is tackled, I mean, it's all on hold.

DLT: Are there any other environmental issues that affect the park?

PS: Well, it depends on how broadly I define environmental. One big issue in terms of quality of park is the amount of traffic and litter. And Rouge Park was originally designed to be a self-contained park like Belle Isle or Eliza Howell, many other parks. But unfortunately, at the time the Rouge Park was being designed, the city was also designing the Outer Drive belt system, and there were, people that were pushing for Rouge Park to be kept separate from Outer Drive. But then there were the cost savings of just using all the park land they just bought and just running out a drive through that instead of purchasing, because they purchased thirty-seven miles of land to build the entire Outer Drive. And they basically, by having that two and a half miles of Rouge Park, it saved them having to purchase that land separately. But it was a disaster for Rouge Park because you can imagine, any park you just take and put a four-lane thoroughfare down the middle. It's no longer a park, you know, it's more of a parkway. [Laughter]

And so, Rouge Park unfortunately lost that alley battle really early on in its history. And our master plan actually calls for sort of restoring the park and actually cutting off that thoroughfare and making the roads be a circular loop within the park, like Eliza Howell, for instance, so that only cars in the park are parkgoers. Right now, almost 100% of the traffic in Rouge Park is not parkgoers. There’s constant traffic, and along with the constant traffic to the park goes the problems of illegal dumping. Tons and tons of litter thrown out of car windows, all by people who aren't going to the park. They're just taking a shortcut through the city and use the park as basically a big garbage can. And so we've been doing—I can’t imagine the number—hundreds of volunteer cleanups, throughout the twenty-two years we've been organized, cleaning up trash basically thrown out from cars and reporting dumping from people, usually contractors after doing a kitchen job or some sort of job, just come to Rouge Park and drive in, dump, and continue on their way, as it's so simple to do because of the thoroughfare down the middle. So. So that degrades the environment in the park with the litter. Also with the noise, the amount of wildlife that gets killed, with the cars speeding through.

And it's a four-lane road built in 1920s. At the time, the most advanced car was the Model T. And it was really designed as— And I think the reason that it was accepted then is that the car was such a new thing, such a novelty, the idea of a road going through, five miles outside of Detroit, through this new park so people who got their new Model T could motor along at top speed at [Laughter] thirty-five miles an hour through the park seemed like a good idea. But of course, now it's the antithesis of what quality park land is, is having— And the roads are built in such a way that you can easily drive forty, forty-five. And of course, people do. It's not designed to go five miles an hour as a park, like it should be. They’re too wide, the lanes are too wide, the road's too wide. It's more of a freeway, a highway going through the park. And that's been a real, that's really hurt the, had a lot of environmental impacts, park user impacts. Because you don't want a picnic with cars going by at forty-five miles an hour, [Laughter] throwing trash out their window, when it should be like Belle Isle or Eliza Howell, where you just have a little loop road, and the only other cars are other parkgoers, not in a rush trying to commute to work. So. Other environmental issues? I mean, there are legacy issues. The park, much of the park was used by the military. The Nike Missile Base was in what's now the prairie. And I know there are questions about the, you know, exactly what was left there in the 1950s.

And there's a couple other, there were two big projects in the early 1990s. One was a building up at the toboggan hill, with a plan of reopening the toboggan hill. And also to make it into a amphitheater with— And they used the soil when they excavated I-696. And that soil was pretty clean soil. But, the other project was a downhill ski hill that was built on Joy and Lahser across from the Buffalo Soldiers horse barn. And that was built from the dredging of St. Aubin Marina. And so that location is an old area of concern because it had been a lot of industry there. And so there was concern that that would be toxic leaching of heavy metals and such. It was kept. And to the best of our understanding, it's well-kept and not a hazard. But there have been many of us, have been talking about wanting to look at that again over these many years of erosion and to make sure that no heavy metals or other cancer-causing chemicals are leaching out of that. And I guess the other environmental problem we’ve been dealing with has been the Ashcroft[-Sherwood] Drain. It's a stream that flows from the Redford neighborhood, into Rouge parking, down to the Rouge river. And there has been a problem, ongoing problem for decades, of people dumping motor oil. And we think it might be some oil change place that's been doing it. And over the years, we've tried to, there have been many times that it's, oil has been dumped in there. And we've called in had, you know, it’s been looked at and they've tried to find the culprit. And so— And I think, and I don't know what else has been dumped in that drain, but that has been a, that area is very degraded because of those environmental pollutants there. So, I think that’s all I can think of now in terms of other environmental issues dealt with.

DLT: And would you say that Rouge Park is affected by climate change?

PS: Well, you know, I tried to think about ways in which we've been affected by climate change. Of course, the more, the greater severity of storms does mean that these more common three- and five-inch rainfalls have made the amount of flooding even more severe. I’d still say the biggest impact was the loss of pervious surface and the overdevelopment of the entire Rouge River watershed, because that problem’s everywhere in the watershed. And that's really degraded. Because when it rains, normally when it rains, the land can absorb the water. When it all rushes in the river, what it does, it scours the banks. So all the plants that normally used to live in the Rouge River no longer exist, because the water rushes so fast and so hard, it basically rips all the, any plant life out of the river. And also where the banks should have a lot of river bank native species around the bank, the banks in the Rouge Park, and most of Rouge River, are all just barren clay, because the force of the water is so strong, stronger than it ever would be naturally, that it scours all those plants.

So, we've lost a huge amount of plant diversity. And with that plant diversity goes a lot of insect diversity. And with that goes the bird and mammals. And so a lot of animal diversity is gone. Plus, you know, turtles, frogs, a lot of muskrat, a lot of animals that can live in a river well can't in the Rouge, because you just suddenly washed out. And a lot of the vernal— Vernal ponds are really important for places for amphibians. And, we have salamanders, toads, a lot of frogs that need them. But when you have these huge, heavy, sudden rainfalls that we get now, especially with global warming, the water rises up and it flushes out those vernal ponds. If it happens in the spring, you've wiped out an entire, you know, every species of frog you would have in the park. So as a result, we don't have the species. Even though we have habitat, excellent habitat for them. And they used to be in Rouge River and Rouge Park. They can't survive. And that's a combination of overdevelopment, as well as climate change. And then I guess I would add to that some of the extremely mild winters also has an impact. Because, a lot of the natural process is a lot of plants have evolved—and animals—to deal with a long frozen period followed by a slow thaw. And when you don't have the ground freezing, and it's too warm in the spring, when you have what snow melt we might have, along with these heavy rains, it really does a lot more to just scour out and remove the soil from the floodplain and wash it downstream, taking all the nutrients with it. Also impacting the quality of the park.

DLT: What would you say would be the best steps that could be taken to deal with some of these issues?

PS: Well, realistically or unrealistically? [Laughter]

DLT: Uh, both.

PS: Yeah. Well the real solutions are we could do, like, you know, Canada and all of Europe and much of the world does, and actually enforces zoning laws, and actually have urban planning where you say, if the population isn't growing and we don't need more mega mansions built out in Northville, then we really, government needs to be able to say, if you build all that, then we have to build more water lines, more sewer lines, and all that is going to cost money, which is going to be increase in taxes. But if the only people who are going to move into those homes are ones who are going to leave the homes they’re in now, because the population is not increasing in the metro area, then people are just going to move from one house to another and then people from smaller homes move into their previous homes. And that, of course, gives opportunity for people in our poorest areas—Detroit, Inkster, etc.—to be able to move out into a new home in the suburbs. But then with no new immigrants or no new increase in population, that's exactly what's led to forty square miles of abandoned areas and loss of homes in Detroit. You know, the several decades we've been, the city has been racing to demolish as many abandoned homes as possible. But the whole problem was we were building new homes in an area that didn't need them, you know, and then there's no zoning that says that, oh, if you want to build new homes, government should be able to say, we need homes in Detroit. We need to rebuild these areas. We don't need to lose more headwater areas, or we don't need to lose more forests and wetlands and farmland in the outside, the outside of the metro area.

What we really need is a development moratorium and say, Detroit is already, they have more infrastructure than we can afford. And we have so many areas that have infrastructure, but no homes, no businesses, no buildings. Especially in Detroit. And we need to stop developing. On the fringe of our area, we need to focus that money on brownfields development and redeveloping Detroit, and put that money into the homes and the type of homes people need: affordable housing, not the mega mansions for the few. And that would make, that would stop it from getting worse.
Of course, in terms of climate change, I'm not going to repeat all the obvious solutions of moving to wind and solar and way from all that, of course, those big things. But I guess you're asking more specifically for Rouge Park. You know, one of the realities of the park is that as, if we accept that climate change is going to continue and we're not going to really reverse it, there is the issue of a lot of species moving north. Species that, like of trees that used to only be found in Ohio or Kentucky are now able to survive in lower Michigan, and plants and animals and insects and those things that, used to, do well here now are able to do well farther north. So sort of ranges of plants and animals and insects are all sort of moving north, as in moving with the climate as it changes. And so that's something we thought about is, is if we're going to do tree planting in Rouge Park, do we want to think about planting species that are more common south of us? They may be more likely to survive into the future than trees that maybe this is the bottom of their range and they thrive farther north. If we plant them now, then in 50 years, they may not survive. So that's, I guess, that's one of the things, is to, if we're going to accept the average increase in the temperature, we have to think of which plants, which animals and insects are we going to, are we going to become more like southern Ohio [Laughter] in terms of our plant and animal diversity, in order to, keep the ecosystem healthy?

You know, we have talked about, in terms of the Spinoza road being underwater all the time. There were a couple apartment buildings that burned and then were empty for many years. And we've been talking about, and talking to the city, and working with options of perhaps annexing that land to the park, and then being able to move the road up out of the floodplain and have the park road go around so that none of the roads in Rouge Park go through the floodplain. And that could be done, pretty easily. Tyerman and Spinoza, where they meet is high enough, where you just turn Tyerman up. And there's already a road, Pierson, that almost is—except for the apartment building—almost goes right along the top of the floodplain, so that road could become a park road. I guess you would have homes on one side of it, but there's no homes on the park side now anyway, so that could be annexed. The park could be just annexed and move the road out. And then the other solution is that the tunnel project should never have been canceled. And, it should either do the project that's going to solve the issue, or if there's other technology retention basins, or— I know the big the big buzzword is green infrastructure. And creating large areas with land that can absorb it. But again, you have to understand that 95% of the wetlands are gone. [Laughter] Creating a couple new ones, there's no way— We would have to remove tens of thousands of homes and businesses to develop a green infrastructure program that's really going to handle the water.

So while I think a lot of people like to use it as a buzzword and a solution, it’s not a realistic solution. We do need local gray infrastructure. We need some retention basins and tunnel projects that can really accommodate the amount of stormwater. And that would make a huge difference in the park. And a difference for all of the people in Metro Detroit, especially the Detroiters who live around the park. It would make a huge difference in making that park safe. You wouldn't be, you know, walking through dried sewage [Laughter] through the playground. It would be safe and clean. And then the recreational opportunities, if the river was healthier and the plants and animals were healthier, it'd be a far healthier ecosystem. The nature trails, the Prairie Trail, the campground could be used much more often, not worrying about the flooding. More Detroit youth can have the opportunity to camp, and to canoe, and other water sports. And it would just be a great asset for the whole region, if those problems were solved.

DLT: And has Rouge Park been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic?

PS: Yes. At first, of course, when the pandemic first began, we were in a panic mode of, okay, how do we keep people safe? And I know at first people didn't want to do our normal trash pickups, trash cleanups, because we didn't—we were afraid if we touched garbage that had been touched by someone with Covid, that we'd get it, you know? They actually had us, the city asked us to put up caution tape around the playgrounds, because at that time, we thought it was spreading through what people touched. And I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, it was, you know, use bleach in your groceries [Laughter] so if anyone touched it. So, at first, it really just sort of shut down the park. But then as the information came out, that was really spread through aerosols and really wasn’t through, hand sanitizer wasn't making a difference. It was just breathing other people's, you know, after they’ve coughed or breathed or talked too close to you for too long. So, at that point, everything changed, and parks became, and outdoor activities became the only thing you could do, because all indoor activities were being canceled for safety concerns. And so, we saw a huge increase of use of the park. Our nature trails became crowded, [Laughter] almost to the point where you had to worry about people, too many people being close to each other. But being outdoors, of course—especially on a breezy day and a long trail—is one of the things people could do.

So, we saw a huge increase in park use, which was actually great for us because a lot of people discovered Rouge Park. And that's always been our goal of our organization, is try to get the word out that this wonderful park is here and people should explore it. And so, and even as the pandemic waned, so many people discovered Rouge Park that to this day, there's still far heavier use. You can't go to the Prairie Pathway and not see people walking it. The mountain bike trail has bikes on it all the time. The nature trails are getting really well-used. They still have more capacity, and we're still in the process of restoring those trails. There are about nine miles of trails we want to restore. We've only got about three miles so far, so we still have a lot of work to reopen these trails that were closed due to lack of use in the past, because the demand is much greater, too. So, the pandemic actually helped draw attention to the value of the park for us.

DLT: And was there anything else you wanted to discuss that none of my questions have brought up?

PS: Well, I always struggle with the questions of climate change and trying to sort of wrap my head around what aspects of climate change could affect the park that I'm not thinking of, you know? So I guess sort of my question for you is, in terms of the questions of climate change and environmental concerns, I'm sure you've done several of these interviews. Are there areas that have to do with parkland that come to mind for you that I could elaborate on?

DLT: You pretty much discussed everything that I had in mind about how it affects the park.

PS: Okay. So, no, then I think that's— I think I covered it pretty well.

DLT: Yeah, absolutely.

PS: Okay.

DLT: That was all the questions I have for you today. Thank you so much for your time.

PS: Okay. No problem.