Rockford: a shoe town on the river — with a hard environmental lesson

Rockford is a small, popular town on the Rogue River just north of Grand Rapids, with a busy little downtown next to the Rockford Dam. For almost 140 years it was a company town for Wolverine World Wide — the footwear maker behind Hush Puppies, Merrell, and other brands — which ran a big leather tannery right downtown. That heritage is a point of local pride, and Wolverine still has a store and supports community events in town. But Rockford is also the center of one of Michigan’s biggest pollution problems. For decades, the tannery used a waterproofing chemical (a type of “PFAS,” sometimes called “forever chemicals”) and dumped tannery waste in the area. Starting around 2017, residents and investigators discovered that those chemicals had spread through the groundwater and the Rogue River across a large part of northern Kent County — one of the largest PFAS-contaminated areas in the state. Some families were told not to drink their well water, and signs still warn people about foam on the river. Wolverine has paid tens of millions of dollars to extend clean municipal water to affected neighborhoods, and state and federal agencies are still overseeing the cleanup today. It’s a reminder that even a beloved hometown industry can leave a complicated legacy.