How Muskegon Lake got off the toxic list

The bottom of Muskegon Lake was paved in sawdust. For a hundred years the mills ringing the shore let the leftovers of the lumber boom — wood waste, slag, and worse — sink straight to the lakebed, and the foundries and a paper mill that followed added mercury, heavy metals, and oil to the mix. Wetlands got filled in for industry. By the time anyone tallied the damage, the lake bed was a buried landfill, and in 1987 the EPA named Muskegon Lake a Great Lakes Area of Concern — the official roster of the most poisoned places around the Great Lakes.

Then came one of the longest cleanups in the lake’s history. Over decades, federal, state, and local crews dredged and hauled out more than 190,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment and pulled over 110,000 tons of century-old sawmill debris off the bottom. They rebuilt roughly 134 acres of wetland and natural shoreline where bulkheads and fill had been. The sediment work alone ran about $47 million.

In September 2025 the ledger finally balanced. With every problem on the original list checked off, the EPA struck Muskegon Lake from the Area of Concern roster — one of only a handful of these sites in the whole country to earn its way off.

You can see the difference from a kayak now. Where the shoreline was once a wall of industry, there are restored marshes, returning fish, and water clear enough to make the lake a real draw again. It’s the rare environmental story that ends with a place getting handed back, healthier, to the people who live beside it.