Mr. Tawney. Yes; and time thus spent is well spent.
Mr. Knowles. It is not lost.
Mr. Tawney. We will now hear what Mr. Sloman, a member of the bar of the city of Detroit, desires to say on this subject.
STATEMENT OF MR. ADOLPH SLOMAN,
OF DETROIT, MICH.
Mr. Sloman. Prefacing what I have to say, I desire to state that I was born and brought up in the city of Detroit. I have practiced law during the past 37 years. I have had a summer home during the past 18 years at what is called Sans Souci on the St. Clair River about midway between Detroit and Port Huron.
Some little time before your commission was appointed, on an occasion when my eldest daughter was down in the city and there was apparently an epidemic of typhoid she contracted typhoid fever, and we came near losing her. It was that which caused me to interest myself very much in this question of the water supply and its pollution.
Our summer home has a frontage of about 1,400 feet on the river, on the south channel, where all the boats pass. Only as recently as two weeks ago last Saturday there came down the river a quantity of oil in the form of scum that covered the river from the center clear to the shore. An east wind that was prevailing at the time blew that stuff over to the shore, and the launches and rowboats stationed at the dock were covered with that oil clear to the gunwales. It was almost a day before we could get a drop of drinking water from the river. It was that situation that I called to the attention of the minister of fisheries, to which the letter that I have here is a reply. The oil supply supposedly came from the Imperial Oil Co. at Sarnia. The quantity was simply enormous. It came down in spots, covering an area of over 40 feet square. It looked like filth.
Mr. Powell. Was it black?
Mr. Sloman. No; it was a dark brown.
Mr. Gardner. Was it raw oil as it comes from the earth?