Two years after the event both agencies are still bickering over where the spill began, when it began and who screwed up during the clean up.

The EPA believed the spill began at a Rouge River sewer pipe on 8 or 9 April 2002. The DEQ said it happened a week before, could have been released from a ship and criticised the US$7.5 million clean-up effort conducted by the US Coast guard, with DEQ investigator Brett Wiseley stating, “The Coast Guard screwed-up during the initial phase of the spill, failing to recognise it as an oil spill.”

These allegations are denied by the EPA, who hinted that the State itself was covering up “numerous deficiencies with the state’s regulation of pollutants in the sewerage system”. Independent sources indicate, however, the pollutants were seen on the river days before the clean-up, a charge denied strongly by the Coast Guard.

Michigan has closed its investigation without issuing charges, the EPA has spent US$2 million on its own investigations and none of the two have yet to identify the culprit responsible for the estimated 255,000-gallon mixture of lube oil and diesel fuel flowing into the Rouge River from where it went downstream into the Detroit River and Lake Erie.