First Frost; Sticking it to the Man.

First frost came last night. Fall is gathering momentum.



This item reported by Detroit's WXYZ-TV this morning:

A Ypsilanti landlord will spend the next five years in prison for illegally pumping raw sewage into the Huron River.

David Kircher was sent to prison this week after the Michigan Court of Appeals denied his case.

The 66-year-old landlord of the Eastern Highland Apartment complex was sentenced in 2006 to five years prison and $1 million fine. He posted the bail and remained free until this week. Kircher was found guilty of knowingly pumping raw sewage from his 168-unit apartment complex in Ypsilanti Township.

Testimony revealed that in October 2004, Kircher instructed his employees to pump between 25,000 to 100,000 gallons of untreated sewage from a sewer line into a storm drain that discharged into the Huron Valley because he didn't want to pay to have the clogged pipe fixed.

E. coli levels in the Huron River tested high and shortly after two children became sick from ingesting the contaminated water.

The case was the first to be prosecuted under the state's clean water law.

The narrator in Jim Harrison's novel Wolf states he is "privately in favor of capital punishment for any form of pollution not speedily rectified." I wouldn't go that far, but it's heartening to see environmental laws with some teeth.