Just 70 miles upstream from Lake Michigan, a crude oil spill on July 25th, 2010 brought the most expensive onshore incident in US history. 20,082 barrels of crude oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River caused by some material failure of pipe or weld. The U.S. Department of Transportation database explains that this rupture was due to some environmental cracking-related cause (further research finds this was due the flooding via rainstorm ). Although this spill occured underground, the pollution is clearly seen in the river in the first image above.
The next image shows structures built to attempt a remedy to the situation. Gabion baskets are large, heavy rock walls encase in steel mesh used to direct or slow water flow. In this case, the baskets were combined with absorbent snare booms and silt curtains. This and other methods of cleanup were also used for a period of about 3 years to try and undo the damage done by the rainstorm.
The last image shows ducks being released back into the river after some rehabilitation due to the damage. As seen in the Spill Stats Charts tab, water contamination occurs in about 8.3% of spill incidents. This case highlights an instance where significant amount of oil spilled for 17 hours straight into a fresh-water invironment, leading to pollution too close to the Great Lakes for comfort and a large loss of money.