Battle Creek -- Calhoun County health officials will evacuate 30 to 50 more homes in the area surrounding this week's oil pipeline leak, while the line's owners have vowed to pick up the tab for those inconveniences and the cleanup. Jim Lynch / The Detroit News

Concerns over air quality in the area south of Battle Creek led to the evacuations, which come on the heels of 30 voluntary evacuations earlier this week. In addition, 100 families along the contaminated Kalamazoo River have been asked to use bottled water for consumption.

The latest precautions came Thursday, when increasing manpower and machine power were added to efforts to stop the spread of oil from Calgary-based Enbridge Energy Co. Inc.'s failed pipeline. Estimates of the amount of oil lost from the line range from 800,000 gallons to 1 million gallons.

"We will spend whatever it takes to clean it up," Enbridge's President and CEO Patrick Daniel said Thursday afternoon. "...We will clean it up to the satisfaction of the people here and the regulatory agencies involved. We have more than enough (money available) to do that."

Daniel said efforts to date had collected "most" of the oil from the river but added there is plenty of work left. The 30-inch-diameter line ruptured some time Sunday evening or early Monday morning, sending oil into nearby Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River.

Daniel reiterated the company's commitment to paying for those forced to stay in area hotel rooms. And that's welcome news to 53-year-old Carolyn Parish of Charleston.

The Kalamazoo River comes straight at her front porch until it veers west. Thursday morning, standing outside her small two-story home, the air was thick with the smell of crude oil.

"I have been sick," she said. "I already had breathing problems but this makes it worse. I've lost sleep every night. I've had to vomit."

Several miles away in Augusta, Wyandotte native Diane LeBlanc was feeling sick for a completely different reason. She runs the Shady Bend Campground, a park that markets itself almost exclusively on its proximity to the Kalamazoo River and the opportunities for swimming, fishing and floating on inner tubes it provides.

Local health officials arrived on Wednesday and posted signs warning people not to have contact with the water. Asked what it has meant to her business in just three days, she said: "Honey, I can't even guess or estimate how bad it's been. We don't even know if we're going to be able to open this weekend or even next month."

Several issues surrounding the spill continue to be without definitive answers. What caused the rupture? How many gallons of crude oil were released? And how far has the contamination spread?

A day after a Michigan State Police official said he'd seen oil sheen as far as the dam at Morrow Lake near Galesburg, EPA's on-site personnel said they don't believe the oil has gone that far.

"An hour ago I completed a fly-over of the spill site, the river and Morrow Lake," Susan Hedman, district administrator for the EPA, said Thursday afternoon. "The good news is that I saw many, many resources deployed to contain the oil. The other good news is that I did not observe any sheen of oil on Morrow Lake. The more sobering news is we have a lot of work left to do."

Ralph Dollhopf, the EPA's on-scene coordinator, said the spill does not pose a threat to Lake Michigan.

"We don't anticipate any risk to Lake Michigan," he said. "We don't even want it go get farther than it is now.

Source: The Detroit News