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Fourth organ found at Detroit wastewater treatment plant was a deer heart

Posted at 1:36 PM, Dec 28, 2017
and last updated 2017-12-29 11:39:35-05

Officials say the fourth organ found at the Detroit Water Resource Recovery Facility was a deer heart, not a human organ.

Discovered on Saturday, it is the fourth organ that has been found at the facility in the wastewater screening area in nearly just over a week.

Other organs have been found at the plant on Friday, Dec. 15, Saturday, Dec. 17 and Wednesday, Dec. 20.

The organs were found at the Great Lakes Water Authority's Water Resource Recovery Facility where wastewater (sewage) is treated.

We're told the organs being in the wastewater have not posed any problem to the processes in place to treat that wastewater.

Amanda Abukhader, spokesperson for the Great Lakes Water Authority, released the following statement to 7 Action News: 

The Wastewater Treatment Plant is a sewage treatment facility that receives the wastewater (sewage)  from homes, businesses, industries and run off storm water through  the sewer system.  Wastewater is treated at  this facility to meet federal and state environmental quality regulations before it can be discharged to the river.

The screening mechanism was working as intended, filtering out the large objects before the wastewater went into the treatment process. The facility’s treatment processes meets all federal and state regulations, and  we always return water back to the environment cleaner than when we received it.

The wastewater treatment process is completely separate from the drinking water process, conducted in separate facilities located at different sites, and are unrelated. No treated water from the wastewater plant enters into the drinking water facilities.