On a recent sunny fall morning, a couple dozen people paddled in bright-colored kayaks past factories, a docked freighter and miniature mountains of industrial materials on southeast Michigan’s Lower Rouge River.
“This is really exciting to have this many people out here kayaking the Rouge because, when I was a kid, the Rouge was so dirty they told you, ‘Don’t touch it,’” said Sally Petrella, watershed ecologist with Friends of the Rouge, which organized the paddling event.
