Officer Polansky closed his notebook. He thanked Margaret for her statement. He walked her back to the cruiser. He drove her back to the Birch Harbor Estates gate. He did not write her a citation that morning. He did not need to. The citation would arrive in her mailbox by certified mail 31 days later, after Annika Ronquist's office had built the surrounding file.
The incident report number was 2024-0114-017. The body cam footage was preserved per departmental policy. The dispatch recording was preserved per departmental policy. Officer Polansky filed the report at the Oakdale Police Department at 9:48 a.m. that morning. He copied me on it at 9:51 a.m.
I called my old friend, Lieutenant Hannelore Itakoski, at the Michigan State Police Negaunee post at 10:14 a.m. I had known Hannelore since 1991, when we were both academy cadets at the State Police Training Center outside Lansing. I told her the whole story. I told her about Margaret's 2022 wholesale fuel sentence. I told her about the unspecified private fuel facility at Birch Harbor Estates. I asked her whether her post had any pending complaints involving Birch Harbor Estates.
Hannelore said: "Wyatt, hang on. Let me pull the master." She came back on the line in three minutes. She said in the careful tone she used when she had bad news, but the kind of bad news her old friend would actually be glad to get:
"Wyatt, we have 11 open complaints against Margaret Kilroy across 19 months. Three are false police report incidents. Two are consumer fraud allegations against Birch Harbor Estates members. One is an unlicensed fuel handling tip we received in November from a former Birch Harbor groundskeeper named Pella Laitinen. The Pella tip says, and I am reading directly: 'They have an underground tank by the gatehouse that I personally helped pour the pad for in May 2020, and that I have never seen an inspector come to look at in three years of working there.'"
I said: "Hannelore, Pella Laitinen worked for my father at the gas station in the summer of 1988. He is going to be the most helpful witness in this case." She said: "Wyatt, you want me to bring this to EPA?" I said: "Hannelore, I want you to bring this to EPA, EGLE, the Marquette County prosecutor, and the Oakdale Township Board. I want every regulator at the same table by Thursday morning. I am buying the coffee at the pasty cafe at 8:00 a.m. Patty Sanderson is going to be the one who calls the meeting."
Hannelore laughed for the first time in our phone call. She said: "Wyatt, Sheriff Halford is going to want to be there too." I said: "Hannelore, Sheriff Halford is going to be there because Patty Sanderson is going to call him at 7:30."
Patty Sanderson called Sheriff Halford at 7:31 a.m. on Wednesday. He was there at 8:00 a.m. Thursday.
Pella Laitinen, 66 years old, retired Birch Harbor Estates groundskeeper, born in Eagle Harbor, walked into the Oakdale Pasty Cafe at 8:14 a.m. Thursday with a manila folder under his arm and a Stanley thermos of black coffee in his other hand. He sat down at the table with me, Hannelore, Sheriff Halford, the Marquette County assistant prosecutor (a 32-year-old named Annika Ronquist, who had been hired in 2022 and was, in Hannelore's words, "the kind of prosecutor who reads the file twice before her first cup"), and Charles Kotila of EGLE District 6 in Marquette.
Pella's manila folder contained 16 photographs he had taken with a flip phone between 2020 and 2023 of the underground fuel tank installation at Birch Harbor Estates: specifically, the gatehouse pump, the unlabeled tank monitor box, the missing observation well caps, the visible groundwater seepage at the base of the concrete pad in spring 2023, and a black tarp the HOA had thrown over the tank truck delivery hose every Saturday morning at sunrise across 41 consecutive Saturdays.
Charles Kotila of EGLE looked at the photographs for 11 minutes without speaking. Then he said: "Mr. Hollis, this is an unpermitted Class C underground storage tank in a documented Lake Superior shoreline zone, in a federally designated wellhead protection area. The EPA is going to declare an Imminent and Substantial Endangerment under RCRA Subtitle I. We will have a regional response coordinator on site within 48 hours. The tank will be pumped, removed, and the soil tested at the HOA's expense. The HOA will be cited for unpermitted operation. The HOA president will personally be subject to civil penalties up to $37,500 per day every day the tank has been operating without a permit. By my count, the days run from May 22nd, 2020 to today."
Annika Ronquist of the prosecutor's office wrote down the number of days on a yellow legal pad. The number was 1,322 days. She underlined the multiplication. She said in the careful voice she used in court: "That is a potential civil penalty exposure of $49,500,000 before federal criminal charges."
The pasty cafe was quiet. Sheriff Halford said: "Wyatt, I don't think Mrs. Kilroy knows." I said: "Sheriff, Mrs. Kilroy does not know. Mrs. Kilroy is, as we sit here, drafting a complaint to the township board requesting the revocation of the commercial license at my gas station. The complaint is on Birch Harbor Estates HOA letterhead. I have a copy. Pella's wife works at the Marquette UPS store where Mrs. Kilroy mailed it. The complaint is scheduled for the next regular township meeting on Tuesday, April 16th at 7:00 p.m. at the Oakdale Township Hall."
Sheriff Halford said: "Wyatt, that is convenient." I said: "Sheriff, 'convenient' is not the word my father would have used." Hannelore said: "What is the word your father would have used?" I said: "Hannelore, my father would have called it Providence."
The two weeks between the pasty cafe meeting and the April 16th township board meeting were the most productive two weeks of my career as Chief of the Oakdale Police Department. I did not work my regular schedule; I worked 16-hour days. Bobby drove up from Marquette every evening to help Cora cover the station. My sister did not complain once.
Across those two weeks, the EPA Region 5 emergency response team in Chicago dispatched a coordinator named Trinidad Vega to Marquette. Charles Kotila of EGLE dispatched a Class A inspector named Petar Barisic to the Birch Harbor property. Petar visited under the cover of a routine wellhead protection survey on the morning of April 8th. He confirmed everything in Pella's photographs. He took core samples of the soil around the tank pad and found hydrocarbon contamination above the state's action level at six of seven sample points, and groundwater contamination at the seventh. The contamination was, in Charles Kotila's professional opinion, moderate to significant for a recent leak from an unpermitted tank.