Open Letter to the City of Adrian Commission

Honorable Mayor, City Administrator, and City Commissioners,

I am very disappointed with your decision to agree to the Savoy proposal as you now all personally signed off to oil business as usual in our city. In contrary to what several of you repeatedly stated over the last weeks, Savoy needed this decision to be able to go ahead and build pipelines from the current and all future drill sites in Heritage Park to Witt Farm. As some of you are into common sense arguments: it is in fact common sense that a corporation would not spend $80,000 for something that they already own. As a matter of fact, the new drilling operation in Heritage Park that used the same well head as the previous successful drilling could not be exploited and was on hold until you agreed to their proposal yesterday night. Evidence for this is the presence of a temporary overflow storage tank and a small flare-off chimney.

Now the field is cleared to burry pipelines right across sensitive wetlands and valuable recreational park land, crossing Beaver Creek or the South Branch of River Raisin, run under farmland and Howell Hwy to Witt Farm. The currently tiny, nevertheless smelly flare that emits cancerous vapors will grow into a massive flare, gasing off large amounts of benzene and other toxic substances. As I said before, this is by no means a better solution than processing oil and transporting it off by tank trucks from each well site – but it is certainly better and cheaper for Savoy!

Some decisions on oil exploitation in Adrian were made before your time on the City Commission but you just sold the last corner stone and put the last nail in the coffin of the city’s environmental health. And the worst thing is that you did not even demand concessions from Savoy. It is true that baseline testing of air, soil, and water should have been performed BEFORE Savoy’s operations started. However, we were still in the beginnings, meaning that baseline tests would have served some purpose as to the state of natural resources now – compared to when Savoy is done. Again, you wound yourself out of responsibility by a very weak and invalid argument. As it stands now, what is the sense of Savoy’s promise to clean up the Witt Farm site after their operations are complete? How will you proof to them that they caused the mess? Will they also call back all the oil that seeped out of the pipelines underground?

Finally, despite statements of some of you about the need to have the public more involved in this topic, you failed again to organize a city sponsored public forum about oil and gas exportation in and around Adrian BEFORE making a crucial decision. How was the public meeting on the changes in the recreation department and the city’s budget more important to justify such an event? Not that that particular meeting served the purpose to screen the opinions of the public but rather was a presentation of the excellent work of the honorable City Administrator… As I stated before, and to connect to ex-mayor Berryman’s statement about the city commission session of April 1^st being a teaching piece in democracy – real democracy would be to engage the public to be more involved in city affairs, and to be really interested in the public opinion beyond voting day – meaning organizing regular public assemblies about important topics shaping the future of the city…

And a very last comment. For me and many other Adrian citizens, Heritage Park was the one and only, still nearly pristine site in the entire city, allowing for peace and tranquility in our troubled times. It is a shame that such values do not count for you as it will now go down the tubes - if Savoy is lucky to hit the jackpot and it becomes economically rewarding for them to establish several more wells on park land.

Tom Wassmer

P.S. I will also post this open letter on adrianoil.blogspot.com

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Thomas Wassmer, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biology
Siena Heights University

1247 E. Siena Heights Dr.
Adrian, MI 49221

517-264-7637