Listen to Fred Kemp speak.
Standing about 200 yards from the base of the Blue Water Bridge on the shore of the St. Clair River, Fred Kemp remembers how this exact place looked more than half a century ago.
“There was the cement plant, which was mammoth, and it was almost impossible to even get down here to look at the river,” he recalls.
Years ago, this area of the St. Clair River in Port Huron was more industrial than it is today. It was a hub for commercial shipping. The cement plant closed in the late 1960s, along with other large factories.
“No value was placed on the environment or the health of the river,” Kemp says. “But that attitude changed in the 1960s when the public started to become aware of how badly the water resources were being abused.”
The St. Clair River was designated an Area of Concern (AOC) in 1987 under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the United States and Canadian governments. Contaminated sediments from years of industrial pollution have negatively affected the area’s fish, wildlife and recreational opportunities.
Kemp has been a member of the Binational Public Advisory Council (BPAC) since the group’s formation in 1987. There were 10 Beneficial Use Impairments identified within the St. Clair River, but now half of those have been eliminated.
Born and raised in Port Huron, just two miles from the Blue Water Bridge, Kemp remembers regularly coming down to the water to fish for breakfast with his father. He got his first boat at 9 years old, and started diving in 1961.
After serving in the United States Air Force in Vietnam, Kemp took a job as a claims investigator for State Farm Insurance in Detroit. After four years, Kemp says he missed Port Huron, and returned to his hometown with a clearer idea of “what he didn’t want to do.”
In 1978, Kemp began what would be a more than 30-year-long career working in Port Huron’s wastewater treatment plant.
“The more I learned, the more I liked it,” he says. In 2008, Kemp retired, but also stayed involved in the BPAC as United States Co-Vice Chairman, and remained in that role until 2012.
Kemp says this BPAC is unique because it has been “effective and successful since day one.” He says the success relates to the group’s ability to meet and produce results without having received much initial support from the government.
Kemp also notes that many members who were first around when the group formed in 1988 have since passed away. And he explains that volunteer efforts require an amount of time that most working people don’t have until they reach retirement. So there's a need for more help.
The St. Clair River is unique because of its speed and depth -- the water column itself doesn't have problems because the river’s water volume is replaced every three hours.
“To give you an idea of how fast that is, Lake Huron turns over every 90 years,” says Kemp.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, Kemp says the United States and Canada put steel seawalls up along the banks of the St. Clair River.
“It gave people greater access but was devastating to the habitat,” he says. The seawalls destroyed the area that had previously been an important point of natural water access for wildlife, along with areas that were spawning grounds for sturgeon.
“It’s just another example of unintended consequences,” he says.
According to Kemp, the most significant visual change to this area was putting an end to the construction of those steel walls. Soft erosion control methods, including concrete riprap, replaced the walls, and people started to utilize shipwrecks and logs as natural reefs for fish.
The St. Clair River is one of the biggest sturgeon spawning areas in North America, and in the last decade, a large amount of work has been done to repopulate the area with the fish species. Kemp says there have even been reports of some whitefish in the river in recent years.
“People are fishing here almost year-round, and it’s an excellent spot for walleye, bass, and occasionally perch,” he says.
Unfortunately, securing funding for projects to improve the river’s health has been complicated because of tax laws in the United States and Canada. Despite this, the BPAC has managed to transform the river in a meaningful way.
“One of the things that make it important is that it’s such a huge drinking water source,” he says. Including the two water intakes that are within 10 miles of where Kemp is standing at the top of the river, this area is the water supply for about 40 percent of Michigan residents.
“Water quality is important, but public perception of how safe it is as a drinking water source is also important, regardless if their concerns are founded in fact or not," says Kemp. "So that’s where the educational component of what the Public Advisory Council has done is really important."
As the wind picks up on the river, Kemp says that he’s confident the St. Clair River will be delisted from the Area of Concern program, but it won’t happen as quickly as some people first thought, because the cost of dealing with legacy contamination exceeded expectations.
The river's velocity also makes it difficult to remove contaminated sediments, so studies on alternative methods of contaminant removal are being conducted.
Kemp considers himself lucky to call many of the local advocates for the river, both American and Canadian, his friends.
"What a good experience it’s been to work with similar people with similar concerns on both sides of the border.”
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