Manistee -- Brad Kamaloski was surprised to see the expanse of cigarette lighters, plastic cups, orange plastic fencing and milk jugs strewn about the Lake Michigan shoreline near Bar Lake in Manistee Township.
"It's kind of disgusting. We swim down there all the time," said Kamaloski, of Manistee. "It's a mess, it looks like a dump."
Piles of garbage sporadically washed up along more than 13 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline in Manistee County, from Magoon Creek south of Manistee north to Portage Lake in Onekama, officials said. Trash also was found south of Ludington, said local health department official Tom Reichard.
Manistee's First Street beach was closed Monday morning, and city workers collected more than 12 cubic yards of debris from the site, city Manager Mitch Deisch said.
"We're lucky in the fact that we have a driveable beach cleaner," he said. "That greatly enhanced our ability to clean our beach."
Test results on Tuesday showed acceptable levels of E. coli at Manistee beaches, Reichard said.
"Those winds on Monday certainly did carry a lot of stuff here," he said. "But when you find this much trash over a concentrated area, more than likely it is from a single source."
Most of the garbage appeared to be household refuse, but Reichard said he heard reports of medical waste, such as prescription bottles and syringes.
Petty Officer Ryan Bedes from the U.S. Coast Guard station in Manistee said labels on a lot of the rubbish came from Wisconsin, but "there's no way to pinpoint where it came from."
Coast Guard intelligence agents are investigating the case, and staff from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's medical waste program also were on site.
Kamaloski, who picked up some litter along the shore on Monday, said he wants to know where it came from.
"Somebody should be paying for the cleanup," he said.
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