Never any rail yard out that far that I know of, would have to have been before my time, and I'm in my 60's. But I suspect that possibly over the years, there may have been some "dirty soil" removed form the yard area's in Grand Blanc and moved to that location for disposal, prior to there ever being any EPA. This was not uncommon 40 to 50 years ago. We all know that contaminated foundry sand was used exclusively to form the approaches to the former Saginaw River draw bridge on I-75. When they started to replace that bridge with the new Zilwaukee bridge, EPA was just coming on line. As time continued, they discovered that the soil was contaminated, and some of it had already been used under the new bridge approaches. I'm thinking that as late as last year there were still some issues going on up there over this. So, it may be that the area in GB your talking about is somewhat of a similar situation. The only other thing that it could be is, before the relocation of Cook Road to it's current spot, there was a crossing there, marked only with wooden crossbucks. There was also a little retention pond next that crossing. One night, a dump truck hit the side of the first unit of a passing train, and punctured the fuel tank. No fire resulted, but, there was a lot of diesel fuel spilled there. Now of course, this is a little farther out than Mcandlish road, so, who knows?
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