Detroit and progressive liberalism

By JIM THOMPSON
HCP columnist

My personal experience with Detroit was an attempt to save an old paper mill on notorious West Jefferson Avenue around 2003-04.

The president of the company had hired me to go into this hell-hole to see if I could help the management team turn it around. This mill had been in business since before Henry Ford built River Rouge.

In its glory days, one of the paper machines in this mill had been devoted to making “Cut-Rite” wax paper. When I arrived, the owner of the “Cut-Rite” brand was long gone. The place was bleeding money, and a large source of the bleed sat right across the street at 9300 West Jefferson Avenue: The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department Wastewater Treatment Plant.

We were the closest industrial customer, but as I understood, this department had a lock on waste water treatment as far as 70 miles away. You don’t have to be an engineer to figure out pumping waste 70 miles is likely not for economic reasons – politics, kickbacks and payola no doubt were (are?) in the equation.

But I digress.

The old paper mill was spending about $500,000 per month having their wastewater treated at the only game in town – the legal monopoly across the street.

The technicians that operated the sewage plant loved our effluent – it was full of organic fiber that actually helped their plant work better.

However, the rules are the rules, so their business office charged the paper mill what they could get away with.

Negotiations to reduce the bill went nowhere, so my job was to cut off the flow at the source. Of course, there were no drawings of this ancient place, so I resorted to taking spray paint of various colors and going to the basement and tracing the lines with colors and arrows. I was under a firm contract to do the job for a specific fee, and by “doing the job” I mean solve the problem, intellectually. Long story short, I solved the problem with an epiphany late one night, ironically, sitting in the Greystone Motel in Hillsboro, a place I had gone to retreat and think about this mess.

For $25,000 worth of piping and a used pump, I put in a cross leg internal to the mill, saving the effluent for reuse and instantaneously cutting the sewer bill to less than $75,000 per month.

Detroit was not happy, but my client was.

So how does a silly little engineering story sort out the progressive liberal agenda?

I’ll repeat: “Detroit was not happy.” It sums up the progressive liberal agenda perfectly.

The entire chest-thumping about saving the environment (or any other liberal agenda item you care to choose) is nothing but rhetoric. My thinking epiphany “saved the environment” but cost them money – lots of money.

Unfortunately, in the long run, it was not enough to save the mill, but it staved off disaster for a bit.

If progressive liberals were about making a better world (and I doubt it, but we’ll save that for another day), when we shut down this large stream, they should have been handing out awards.

Unfortunately, the company I was dealing with was one of those nasty profit-making companies. There are no headlines for trying to save one of those.

And Detroit? For the couple of years I had an assignment there, I stayed at the Hampton Inn in Dearborn. It would be impossible to count the number of crack houses and derelict properties I drove by daily to get from the hotel to the facility. And this was 10 years ago.

Progressive liberalism, thy name is Detroit. You own it.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., following decades of wandering the world, and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.