On Sunday a regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency announced that notable progress had been achieved at the spot of an oil spill in a southern Michigan river, however the agency warned cleaning up the mess completely could take up several more months.

EPA regional administrator Susan Hedman said during a media briefing in Marshall that the hard work put into it, keeping an eye on water and air quality; continues to amplify along the spill hit area of the Kalamazoo River,.

The spill was blocked and limited to 25-mile stretch of the river from Marshall westward past Battle Creek. Various hundred workers are on squads all along the river dedicated to the cleaning.

Mark Durno, the EPA's deputy incident commander said that, "Containment is adequate now. Now it's a matter of recovery and removal of the remainder of the sheen and small patches of oil that remain on the Kalamazoo River."

The EPA claims that it will need weeks to remove the oil from the river and perhaps months to cleanse it off the flood plain and river banks. The agency said that it could take numerous months to tidy up the marshy area where the spill started near a creek that flows into the Kalamazoo River.

Officials with Enbridge Inc., which controls and owns the faulty pipeline, claimed on Sunday that the company had gotten back a little more than half the oil that had spilt.

Enbridge CEO Patrick D. Daniel said that, "Our goal is to return the river to the state it was in before this incident. These individuals are doing a disservice to the people of this community and to the agencies who are working so hard to address this issue."

EPA has named Enbridge or its associates for 30 enforcement actions since 2002.