Healing Our Waters Coalition » Polluted Run-off

$50 million pollution cleanup aims to make Indiana’s Grand Calumet River grand again

Jeff Alexander — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:36:16 +0000

A few miles southeast of Chicago, in the shadow of an elevated toll road that links the Windy City to Indiana, crews are transforming one of America’s most polluted rivers into an oasis for wildlife.

The Grand Calumet River was abused for more than a century by cities and industries that used it as a sewer. Decades of toxic discharges blanketed the river bottom with a thick layer of poisonous mud that fouled the water, drove away every species of fish except carp and goldfish, and coated birds in oil.

A $50 million cleanup of the Grand Calumet’s west branch project aims to reverse the damage and restore life to a river and associated wetlands that once attracted scores of migratory birds.

“We’re returning this to a real river,” said Scott Ireland, a scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “We’re already seeing some bird species returning.”

Before the cleanup, the Roxana Marsh was choked with cattails and Phragmites. (EPA photo)

Daniel Sparks, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who has worked on the Grand Calumet River project since 1989, said aquatic life could return to the river’s west branch soon after the cleanup is finished.

“We’re making real progress; I’m excited,” Sparks said. “Fish could spawn again in this river someday.”

River is one of many Great Lakes toxic hotspots
The Grand Calumet River is one of 42 Great Lakes Areas of Concern. The river flows 13 miles through the heavily industrialized cities of Gary, East Chicago and Hammond, Ind., before flowing into Lake Michigan via the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal.

Roxana Marsh after contaminated sediments and invasive plants were removed. (EPA photo)

The river and harbor — which drain an area that is home to 57 severe pollution sites and wastewater treatment plants that still discharge untreated sewage into the river — contain between 5 million and 10 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment. About 150,000 cubic yards of that polluted sediment washes out of the river and into Lake Michigan annually, according to government studies.

The river’s toxic underbelly was fouled by a witch’s brew of toxic wastes, including oil and grease, heavy metals, PCBs, according to government records.

Cleaning up all of the Grand Calumet River and the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal will cost more than $100 million, according to federal officials.

Since last year, crews working for the U.S. EPA and Indiana Department of Environmental Management have dredged 232,000 cubic yards of toxic sediment from the west branch of the Grand Calumet and one of its largest wetlands, the 19-acre Roxana Marsh. Workers also removed several acres of invasive Phragmites and, in February, will begin depositing a layer of clean sand, clay and rugged fabric on the river bottom that will serve as a cap atop 345,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediments that will be left behind.

Ireland said the sand and clay cap would isolate the remaining pollutants from the river and allow the waterway to heal. He said there wasn’t enough money to remove all of the toxic mud.

“In some areas toxins are found 15 feet below the bottom of the river,” Ireland said.

Federal program is cleansing the lakes
Funding for the cleanup came from the EPA’s Great Lakes Legacy Act program and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. State and federal agencies collected $72 million from companies that polluted the river, Ireland said.

The Great Lakes Legacy Act, which is now implemented through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, has proven to be one of the region’s most effective cleanup programs since it was established in 2002. Money from the program has cleaned up 1.5 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment at sites in Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin. Go here to learn more about the program.

This map shows the location of all 42 Great Lakes Areas of Concern.

U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky, a Democrat who represents northern Indiana, championed the Great Lakes Legacy Act in Congress and helped secure funding to clean up the Grand Calumet River.

Visclosky in 2008 told the Post Tribune of Gary, Ind., that the benefits of cleaning up the Grand Calumet extend far beyond the boundaries of the river’s basin.

“It will help improve water quality in all areas downstream, including the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal and Lake Michigan,” Visclosky said. “It is one in a series of historic efforts to clean up over a century of contamination in those waters and return them to their natural purity.”

Ireland, who has worked on the Grand Calumet project for 20 years, said he wasn’t sure the cleanup would ever get off the ground.

“If you had asked me 15 years ago if I thought this river would ever be cleaned up, I would have been hard pressed to say yes,” Ireland said recently. “People thought this river would be polluted forever.”

Cornell Davidson, a lifelong resident of East Chicago, Ind., called the Grand Calumet River cleanup “a very good thing.”

“I’m hoping they can get rid of all of the pollution,” Davidson said. “Maybe it will improve our quality of life and we can live longer.”

What’s All the Stink About?

tpache — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 19:20:35 +0000

Huge swaths of western Lake Erie are cloaked in massive algae blooms that are chasing away tourists, harming the walleye population (part of the region’s $7 billion sport fishery), closing down beaches, driving down property values and incurring costs on cities that have to incur more costs to ensure that people in the region have safe, clean drinking water. But that’s not all, algae blooms are gross. Why? Poo, it all goes back to poo and it really is ahem, a pooey situation. Algae blooms are caused by excessive nutrients in the water—basically, human and animal waste, as well as farm fertilizer run-off.

Western Lake Erie is under siege from billions of gallons of sewage overflows from Detroit and Toledo as well as animal waste and fertilizer run-off from surrounding agricultural land. The result is a lake that—after having made one of the biggest comebacks in environmental history—is now in danger been declared “dead” again. In the 1960s and 1970s sewage contamination was the dominant source of algae-causing pollution. Now, farms are the leading cause of pollution contaminating Lake Erie.

“The number one source of algae-growing phosphorus continues to be farm runoff,” according to an interview the Toledo Blade did with David Barker, a professor at Heidelberg University Center for Water Quality. http://www.toledoonthemove.com/news/story.aspx?id=503124

The acres of algae that have been ubiquitous over the past month are very troubling. Western Lake Erie is one of the most biologically productive freshwater resources on the planet—though as the shallowest, warmest Great Lakes, it is also the most ecologically fragile. The toxins in the algae blooms are capable of sickening people and hurting and killing wildlife, livestock and pets which drink the water or absorb the poison through their skin. The illness causes diarrhea, vomiting and stomach cramps and some dogs that have drunk the shoreline waters have died from it.

The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency formed the Ohio Lake Erie Phosphorus Task Force to study the algae blooms and the level of phosphorus pollution to find correlations. The study finds that farm runoff from commercial fertilizers and livestock is the most significant source of phosphorus and the most impacted area is in Erie’s western basin where the Maumee and Sandusky river watersheds exist.

It has been estimated that it will take a 75 percent reduction in phosphorus runoff to make the algae problem dissipate.http://www.toledoonthemove.com/news/story.aspx?id=503124

The Task Force’s report emphasizes that agriculture run-off is the biggest problem. To solve vexing problem of algal blooms, the state leaders need to work with farmers to cut agriculture pollution and reduce the amount of fertilizer and animal waste that gets into our region’s rivers, lakes and streams.

It is high time that the region tackle this problem. After making so much progress in the 1970s and 1980s to reduce phosphorus loads into our waterways and curb algae blooms, it is inexcusable to allow the problem to come back.

We have solutions to this problem. It is time to use them.

Original Intent

tpache — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:11:44 +0000

Using the Clean Water Act as their compass, Rep. Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) are navigating murky political waters to deliver legislation that would return the brawn and intent to the original Act signed by President Nixon in 1972.

More than one-third of America’s waterways are subject to “No Fishing and No Swimming” signs because polluters continue to evade the rules set by the Clean Water Act. After years of poisonous industrial waste invading U.S. waterways, the Clean Water Act was passed by Congress in 1972. It was meant to stop the abuse of all water resources. But in the intervening decades, court decisions and the deliberate whittling away at the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority have resulted in a muddled law that has lost touch with the original intentions of the Congress that approved it and has allowed more pollution to seep into our waterways.

U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 require regulators to prove a body of water’s connection to larger, navigable waters before the federal government can protect them. Unless reversed soon, the effect will surely be increased erosion, pollution, flooding and the destruction of fish and wildlife habitat.

Wetlands are especially endangered as more than half have been drained for development, farming and other reasons. At this point, 100 million acres of once pristine wetlands have been destroyed, according to the Great Lakes Restoration Council.

In a recent Op-ed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Oberstar make it clear that the Clean Water Act was meant to cover all water not just “navigable waters” – the goal was to prevent pollution. They wrote:

“Contrary to what some would have you believe, Congress intended the Clean Water Act’s protection to extend to all waters and wetlands, including tributaries that flow only intermittently and do not have a continuous surface connection.”

The Oberstar-Feingold bill would restore the Act by clearly reaffirming its intention to protect all waters of the United States, thereby turning back recent court decisions, cleaning up the confusion among regulators, and jumpstarting stalled projects. The bill has more than 170 cosponsors from both parties in the House; 20 cosponsors in the Senate; and more than 300 organizations supporting it, including dozens of members of the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.

It’s now time to finish the job and pass the Clean Water Restoration Act to protect all U.S. waters that serve as the basis for our economy, public health, and way of life.

Polluted Runoff

Jordan Lubetkin — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 17:20:23 +0000

Polluted Runoff

Eroding soils from a construction site, fertilizers and pesticides that have been applied to the land, or oil and grease dripped from vehicles can all be carried by stormwater to local waterways and degrade aquatic ecosystems. Storm sewers help clear our streets of rainwater, but they also channel the water – and everything that comes with it – directly into the lakes.

Oil and grease create oil slicks and build up in sediments. Pesticides and other toxic chemicals can kill insects that fish feed on or build up in the food chain. Soil, fertilizers, and phosphorous promote algae blooms that can choke out fish and limit recreational opportunities.

Water Quality

Jordan Lubetkin — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 18:04:31 +0000

Despite much progress since the Clean Water Act was passed more than thirty years ago, the Great Lakes still suffer from water pollution. The Great Lakes are virtually a closed system, with less than one percent of the water in the lakes renewed each year. This means that what we put in the lakes generally stays in the lakes and certain types of pollutants have been building up in the Great Lakes ecosystem for many years. Major water quality problems in the lakes include toxic pollution, polluted runoff, and sewage overflows and beach closings.