I plan to plot the more than 600 contributers of contamination

Why would any community agree to such extreme negative costs to its land, water, air and residents?

Is there any doubt that East Chicago should be the epicenter for the dialogue on environmental justice and stewardship?

Simple thoughts:

• If we solve the environmental problems for fence-line industrial communities like East Chicago we solve the problem for middle-class America and the causes of global warming.
• When negative costs outweigh positive benefits is there justification to revoke the responsible party’s “Land Use” privileges?
• Does the Law of the Commons apply?

[ EPA's EnviroMapper ] [ Grand Calumet River Area of Concern ]

via [ Post-Trib ] Region’s sewer: Grand Cal faces long recuperation
By Gitte Laasby

Read more…

Thomas The Water I Drink

via [ The National Academies Press ] “Understanding Climate’s Influence on Human Evolution”

I have always been fascinated by a spatial understanding of “who we are” and “what we know.” In my mind there is an innately spatial component to both “Climate” and “Evolution”

[ Correlation Between Genetic and Geographic Structure in Europe ]

Description:

The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The geological record suggests that some of these evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the intriguing possibility that key junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected or controlled by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. However, with both a sparse hominin fossil record and an incomplete understanding of past climates, the particular effect of the environment on hominin evolution remains speculative. This presents an opportunity for exciting and fundamental scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped to shape our species, and thereby to shed light on the evolutionary forces that made us distinctively human

Thomas Case Studies, The Biodiversity I Live, What I am Looking at

via [ EPA ] “EPA Adds Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal to the National Superfund List of Hazardous Waste Sites; Agency will Pursue Polluters to Pay for Comprehensive Cleanup”

(New York, NY) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced that it has officially placed the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY on its Superfund National Priorities List of the country’s most hazardous waste sites. Since EPA proposed the listing in April 2009, Agency officials have met with government and elected officials, business representatives, representatives of civic organizations, and community members, and reviewed more than 1,300 comments received on its proposal to list the site. The Agency has determined that adding the site to the Superfund list is the best way to clean up the heavily contaminated canal.

“After conducting our own evaluations and consulting extensively with the many people who have expressed interest in the future of the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding area, we have determined that a Superfund designation is the best path to a cleanup of this heavily contaminated and long neglected urban waterway,” said Judith Enck, Regional Administrator. “We plan to continue our work with the same spirit of inclusion and involvement that has already been demonstrated, and thank everyone for their focus on this pollution problem.”

Read more…

Thomas The Water I Drink

via [ WSJ ] “Great Lakes Stakes Face Tough Choices in Carp Battle” By Douglas Belkin

CHICAGO—More than a century ago, this city reversed the flow of its eponymous river, connecting the Great Lakes with the Gulf of Mexico and defining itself as the can-do capital of the American heartland.

Today, that engineering feat is coming under growing scrutiny, as scientists and politicians intensify their battle against a voracious flying fish that has been traveling up the Mississippi for 20 years. Amid signs that Asian carp have breached the last defensive barrier, calls are mounting for a massive do-over.

“We know these barriers aren’t working,” said Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes and the lead author of a 2008 report that laid out how this project might look. “An ecological separation is the only permanent solution.”

vince of Ontario have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to separate the water basins in a last-ditch effort to prevent the Asian carp from decimating the $7 billion Great Lakes fishing industry. The Army Corps of Engineers has launched a $10 million, five-year feasibility study of the idea. And the plan became the focus of a hearing on the Asian carp problem on Capitol Hill last week.

Rep. Jim Oberstar (D., Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said at the hearing that he hasn’t seen such public alarm about any Great Lakes issue since the Cuyahoga River caught fire near the shores of Lake Erie in 1969. That incident spurred the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and later, the Clean Water Act.

“We must do everything within our power to prevent the Asian carp from entering the lakes,” Mr. Oberstar said.

Still, any effort to cut ties between the waterways faces big hurdles. The shipping industry says closing down locks that grant access from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi would be a devastating blow to the local economy. And flood control in Chicago, which currently involves dumping large amounts of water via Chicago waterways into Lake Michigan on a semi-regular basis, would require a huge, multi-billion-dollar infrastructure fix.

Read more…

Thomas The Water I Drink

via [ Post-Trib ] “ArcelorMittal seeks new deep well - Hazardous waste slated for disposal at least a half-mile below surface” By Gitte Laasby

BURNS HARBOR — ArcelorMittal has proposed adding a new underground injection well at its Burns Harbor plant to dispose of hazardous waste for the next 10 years.

The company also is seeking 10-year permission to continue to use three existing wells, where the company disposes of up to 240 gallons of hazardous waste per minute from any of ArcelorMittal’s American plants. The company has an exemption from a federal ban on underground disposal of hazardous waste.

ArcelorMittal seeks new deep well :: Post-Tribune.

Thomas The Land I Use

As there are multiplier effects for economic development around large industrial projects so there are large negative externalities that go unaccounted for.

Town of Pines, Indiana

The problem in these financial equations is that local communities end up carrying a disproportionate burden of the negative effects while the benefits are often directed elsewhere. These kinds of social economic arrangements are dependent on an asymmetrical knowledge base. This tends to be more true than not when the local community is minority and poor.

This is a continuing problem for communities on the southern shores of Lake Michigan in Northwest Indiana. Here, we have a particular knack for amplifying negative effects. It usually involves; an archaic industry (Steel, Oil, and Coal dependent energy) with archaic ways looking to offload an ungodly large environmental risk, a few prominent environmentalists, a cozy environmental protection agency - IDEM, a few economic development gurus, and opportunistic politicians. From one community to the next, the Southern Shore has become a string of environmental hazards.

via [ Circle of Blue ] Coal Ash: Town’s Toxic Water Embodies National Challenge: Dirty Legacy Contaminates Groundwater of an Indiana Town by Aaron Jaffe

Faces from the Town of Pines from Aaron Jaffe on Vimeo.

TOWN OF PINES, Ind. — Peggy Richardson was still in high school nearly 40 years ago when trucks began dumping the ash from a nearby coal-fired power plant in this working-class community 50 miles east of Chicago.

Like the other 800 residents, she and her family never considered whether there was a risk when a heap of ash –- known here as Yard 520 — steadily grew into a mountain of coal wastes a half-mile long and four stories tall, higher than any building in town.

Even today the risks of coal ash in the Town of Pines are not perfectly clear. In addition to Yard 520, ash was spread across the town, dumped as the foundation for roads and as fill for construction sites. Nine years ago, a resident alerted the federal Environmental Protection Agency that there was something wrong with their drinking water. The EPA found heavy metals and other contaminants in groundwater in the region.

EPA testing resulted in the discovery of about 30 homes with contaminated wells. The affected homes were located in two areas. One section is between Liberty and Ash streets, and U.S. 12 and 20. The other, smaller area is located between Columbia and Idaho streets and U.S. 12 and East Johns Street.

EPA site [ Pines Ground Water Plumb ]

Though it is one of the largest coal ash piles in the Great Lakes basin, Yard 520 nevertheless is just one example of the trail of some 600 impoundments, landfills, and storage ponds for coal wastes that are scattered across the Midwest and other regions of the United States, according to the EPA. Some 63 are toxic and leaking. Most have grown to huge dimensions, in part because neither the federal nor state governments required the same stringent health and environmental safeguards that apply to municipal landfills or chemical toxic waste sites.

That may change. In December a coal ash storage pond in Tennessee ruptured, spilling more than a billion gallons of ash slurry laden with heavy metals — a spill 50 times larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster — into tributaries of the Tennessee River. In a new report published earlier this month that was prompted by the Tennessee incident, the EPA detailed 44 “high hazard potential” coal ash storage pond dump sites across the country.

Yard 520 is not one of those high hazard sites. But its rigorously documented history of seeps and water contamination make it an emblem of the multiple costs of generating power from coal and a factor in the growing national debate over clean energy, climate change and the American economy.
There are more than 500 power plants across the United States that burn coal, producing more than 100 million tons of coal ash annually — enough to fill a million railroad cars. Some ash finds its way into industry products, but more than half of it is dumped into landfills like Yard 520 or into holding ponds like those in Tennessee.

Regardless of the storage method, environmental scientists say, when water and coal ash mix they generate hazardous compounds that are readily mobile. In the Town of Pines, toxins from the coal ash mixed with the shallow water table to release a plume of contamination into the town’s groundwater. The legacy of this town’s ash pile is the long-running struggle here to secure clean fresh water.

In the early 1970s, the Northern Indiana Public Service Corporation began dumping ash from its nearby coal-fired power plant in a cattail-filled wetland in the Town of Pines. Mixing with the groundwater, the ash generated a plume of contaminants that seeped from the landfill, according to the EPA. Toxic levels of heavy metals, including lead, arsenic, manganese and boron seeped into the town’s wells.

[ Read more ]

To think these properties are adjacent to the Dune National Lakeshore

Thomas The Water I Drink

Thomas View of Lake Michigan

During these difficult economic times there are many losers, including our land, water, air, biology and the local population.

This is what I see when I look at existing conditions and opportunities along the southern shores of Lake Michigan here in East Chicago. Below you will find someone else’s vision to reindustrialize our lakefront.

Existing Conditions:

• A Gated Industrial Community
• Arguably the most polluted waters in the country - the Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal (IHSC)
  • Joerse Beach: most contaminated beach in the Great Lakes and third most in the country.
• Arguably the most polluted air-shed in the country - Lake county indiana ranking as the 9th most polluted air-shed in the country with the sources of pollution concentrated on East Chicago’s lakefront
• >80% of East Chicago’s land-use is dedicated to heavy industry - ~50 of these industrial lands are out of productive use and considered contaminated, e.g., brownfields
  • 14% of East Chicago’s land-use is dedicated Residential - ~17% of these residential properties are apart of a superfund site.

via [ NWI Times ]

“Blast furnace restart could jump-start 750 jobs - MARKET DEMAND PROMPTS MITTAL TO FIRE UP INDIANA HARBOR WORKS NO. 4 FURNACE” by

Read more…

Thomas East Chicago, Northwest Indiana, View of Lake Michigan

via [ Post-Trib ] “Hauler of no help, cleanup crew says” by Teresa Auch Schultz

HAMMOND — Officials are at a loss to know what, if any, pollutants were in a spill on 165th Street on Monday because the hauling company doesn’t have the necessary records, an official said.

The spill happened when a truck carrying sediment from the Grand Calumet dredging project was cut off by another driver and hit the breaks around 11 a.m. Monday on 165th between Columbia Avenue and Indianapolis Boulevard, said Ron Novak, Hammond environmental manager director.

The material in the truck shifted and spilled onto the road, causing police to shut it down for about three to four hours, Hammond Police Lt. Rich Hoyda said.

Read more…

Thomas Environment

via [ Planetizen ]

For possibly the first time, the EPA has issued a report the directly links climate change mitigation with local land use strategies, says Patty Salkin.

The EPA’s new report is called “An Assessment of Decision-Making Processes: The Feasibility of Incorporating Climate Change Information into Land Protection Planning.

“Says Prof. Salkin, “Although this report focuses only on land preservation programs, it may signal the beginning of some thoughtful and needed discussions in (the) area of federalism and climate change.”

Abstract via [ Law of the land ]

Land protection decisions are long-term, hard to reverse, and resource intensive.  Therefore these decisions are important to consider in the context of climate change, because climate change may directly affect the services intended for protection and because parcel selection can exacerbate or ameliorate certain impacts. This research examined the decision-making processes of selected programs that protect land to assess the feasibility of incorporating climate-change impacts into the evaluation of land protection programs. The research focused on a sample of the LandVote database, which documents land protection ballot initiatives that sought to protect wildlife and watersheds. Of this sample, we reviewed the decision-making frameworks of 19 programs. Most programs use quantitative evaluation criteria and a bottom-up process for selecting parcels. Almost all programs have one or more advisory committees. The  analysis revealed that strategies that might be useful for incorporating climate change into decision making include new decision-support tools for advisory committees, promulgation of different land protection models, and educational outreach for elected officials. As jurisdictions learn more about possible climate change impacts, certain land protection strategies may become more desirable and feasible as part of a portfolio of adaptation strategies that ameliorate impacts on watersheds and wildlife.

Full Report

Thomas Case Studies, The Land I Use, Urbanism

via [ Post-Trib ] by Gitte Laasby

DNA from Asian carp has been detected in Lake Michigan for the first time — but it’s still not certain whether the fish themselves have entered the lake, a federal official said Tuesday.

Major Gen. John Peabody of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that two pathways for the carp to reach Lake Michigan are the Grand Calumet River and the Little Calumet River, which might be sampled next.

“We have not sampled in that area, but we will take a look at that,” Peabody said. “Both of those waterways are possible vectors for the migration or the travel of Asian carp or other species between the lake and the Chicago-area waterway system.”

Peabody said federal officials will confer with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources on where water samples should be collected next. A plan should be ready in a month or two.

One sample of genetic material from the invasive carp was found Dec. 8 in Calumet Harbor, which is part of Lake Michigan. Federal officials insisted that does not mean carp have actually reached the lake.

“Our current eDNA process provides indications of likely presence, but it does not yet provide information about Asian carp quantity that may be present, age, size, how they got there or how long they may have been there,” said David Lodge, director of the eDNA project at the University of Notre Dame.

Peabody said no live or dead fish have been spotted in Lake Michigan but that agencies will use netting and other tactics to search for stronger evidence.

The university processes 40 samples a week and has a backlog of 440 samples from the region, he said.

But the Army Corps still doesn’t intend to close the locks and gates that form the final barrier between waterways near Chicago and the lake, he said.

The Supreme Court had refused earlier Tuesday to order the immediate closure of two shipping locks — Navy Pier and O’Brien south of downtown Chicago — to prevent Asian carp from infesting the Great Lakes.

Scientists fear if carp reach the Great Lakes, they could disrupt the food chain and endanger the $7 billion fishery.

Asian carp can grow 4 feet long and weigh 100 pounds while consuming up to 40 percent of their body weight daily in plankton — the foundation of the Great Lakes food web. Scientists have said the carp, which have no predators, could starve out sport fish, such as trout and salmon.

The carp are spooked by passing motors and often hurtle from the water, colliding with boaters forcefully enough to break bones.

The court rejected Michigan’s request to shut the locks and gates temporarily while officials and interest groups debate a long-term strategy. Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin filed briefs supporting Michigan.

The Obama administration opposes closing the locks, saying such action could cause flooding in Chicago and would disrupt the transportation of coal and other commodities on waterways linking Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River system.

Asian carp have been migrating up the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades. Federal officials said they weren’t sure how the carp may have come so close to Lake Michigan.

Biologists have speculated that carp might have slipped through the electric barriers when the Army Corps turned off power to them for about a week in October 2008 to do maintenance. Another theory is that the barriers may not have been strong enough, or turned up enough, to fend off younger fish.

– The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Alliance for the Great Lakes response

Thomas The Water I Drink, View of Lake Michigan

via [ AP ]

DETROIT — Water levels in the Great Lakes are continuing a two-year rebound.

The Detroit News reports today that the latest estimates from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers show levels in the Lake Michigan-Huron system and Lake Superior are between five inches and nine inches above levels from one year ago.

Statistics also show Lake St. Clair is one inch lower than last year, and Ontario is three inches lower.

Army Corps data indicates Lakes Ontario, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Superior ended November within inches of historical levels for this time of year. Lake St. Clair is slightly above its historical level.

The lakes had been declining for most of the past decade

Thomas View of Lake Michigan

via [ Journal Sentinel ]

Michigan asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to close shipping locks near Chicago to prevent Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes and endangering their $7 billion fishery.

State Attorney General Mike Cox filed a lawsuit Monday with the nation’s highest court against Illinois, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. They operate canals and other waterways that open into Lake Michigan.

Bighead and silver carp from Asia have been detected in those waterways after migrating north in the Mississippi and Illinois rivers for decades

via [ Chicago Public Radio ]

Ohio Endorses Lawsuit Against Illinois in Battle over Carp.

Thomas View of Lake Michigan

Quarterly average water bills for high-volume industrial customers:

• Sheboygan: $37,119
• Milwaukee: $41,151
• St. Louis: $53,497
• Green Bay: $64,086
• Chicago: $65,800
• Dallas: $79,512
• Louisville: $80,087
• Kansas City: $90,544
• Philadelphia: $105,717
• Denver: $110,717
• New York: $115,528
• Cleveland: $121,430
• San Diego: $157,557
• Pittsburgh: $172,367
• Phoenix: $176,405
• Seattle: $209,482
• Atlanta: $251,984
• Los Angeles: $274,000

Source: Public Service Commission of Wisconsin

via [ Journal Sentinel ]

Milwaukee, which has a lackluster record in luring new industry with tax breaks or subsidies, has a new plan up its sleeve: giving deeply discounted water to new companies that create jobs.

At a time when regions such as metro Atlanta and the Southwest face acute water shortages, the Milwaukee Water Works operates at only a third of its capacity. And it draws off the Great Lakes, which hold a fifth of the world’s surface supply of freshwater.

That means the city, which operates the utility, can add new water customers at marginal cost - even if they guzzle prodigious volumes of water.

“This is our comparative advantage,” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said Monday at a conference on the economics of water at Marquette University. “We have to sell on our comparative advantage. We cannot sell our winter weather.”

“We would be the first city to offer water for jobs,” said Richard Meeusen, the chief executive of Badger Meter Inc., a Brown Deer-based maker of water meters.

Meeusen said Milwaukee should begin by poaching industries from metro Atlanta, which was regarded as an economic boomtown for the past two decades. Atlanta, which already faces water shortages, will confront even tougher challenges after a federal judge ruled in July that Atlanta must stop drawing water from its Lake Lanier reservoir within three years.

“Their taps are going to run dry in three years,” Meeusen told the conference. “We should be running full-page ads in the Atlanta papers, ‘Worried about Water?’

John Laumer of Treehugger offers a response Milwaukee’s plan for economic development.
via [ Treehugger ]

Although superficially, this may seem quite sensible, there is a high risk of unintended and unwanted consequences if a cheap water incentive were offered to all comers. The choice is one of seeking sustainable industry or returning to the Iron Age trade offs of environmental degradation and hidden impacts on taxpayers.

Strategic context.
Duluth, Green Bay, Escanaba, Marquette, Munising, Green Bay, Racine, Kenosha, Chicago, Toledo, Erie, Buffalo, Toronto and other Great Lakes cities all are capable of making a similar offer of cheap water for jobs. In that context, any well-led business would step back into due dillegence, looking for possible unintended consequence down the road.

High industrial water consumption brings other intensities.
Water-intensive industries very often also are energy intensive, and also tend to have high air and water pollution burdens. The much diminished paper and steel industries, once common in the Midwest, exemplify the pairing of water and energy intensities with water and air pollution.

For every gallon of water taken in by industry, there will be some fraction of a gallon discharged into public sewers: typically flowing into a publicly owned treatment works (POTW), constructed and operated at public expense.

Water supplies from Lake Michigan are, for local purposes, near infinite. On the other hand, both sewerage treatment capacity and ability of Lake Michigan to assimilate pollution are limited. Overuse can have hidden direct and indirect costs. Logical questions to precede any water sale to industry, then are:

is there excess treatment capacity at the sewerage treatment plant which matches the discharge potential of water intensive industries?

could waste water discharges from a single, new polluting industry potentially “limit out’ waste water treatment capacity, excluding other job opportunities?

is it possible to compare jobs creation potential per million gallons per day of wastewater discharged by industry sector?

Thomas The Water I Drink, View of Lake Michigan

Thomas View Outside My Window

Thomas View of Lake Michigan

The economic downtown has some benefits for fence-line industrial communities.

View Outside My Window

It is becoming clear that Gitte Laasby is one of the most important journalist in Northwest Indiana. Here again she writes on a subject I am acutely sensitive towards.

via [ Post-Tribune ] “Lake County pollution bad despite reduction” By Gitte Laasby

New toxic release data from EPA shows Lake County industries released the ninth-most pollution in the nation in 2008 — more than 31.5 million pounds.

The high ranking, released Monday, comes despite a 31.1 percent reduction in releases from Lake County industrial plants compared to 2007.

The data, self-reported by the industries to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory, also shows that two Lake County steel mills are among the nation’s 50 biggest polluters.

U.S. Steel Gary Works is No. 37 with about 12.6 million pounds. ArcelorMittal in East Chicago is No. 46 despite cutting its releases by more than half, from about 25.8 million pounds in 2007 to 11 million pounds in 2008.

By comparison, BP Whiting increased its releases 33.8 percent from nearly 529,000 pounds in 2007 to nearly 708,000 pounds in 2008.

Among the 650 chemicals included in the data are carcinogens and other toxic material that cause adverse health effects and potential environmental harm.

Not all toxic releases are harmful or bad. The numbers include toxic material emitted into the air, discharged into water and disposed of in underground injection wells, but also materials that are landfilled or recycled.

A Post-Tribune analysis of preliminary TRI data published in September concluded that Northwest Indiana industries had reduced their overall pollution by about 30 percent. The most significant reductions were at area steel mills.

At the time, Branch Chief of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s Office of Pollution Prevention Jennifer Schick said the reductions were likely a result of production cuts rather than regulatory requirements or voluntary reductions.

On Tuesday, IDEM spokeswoman Amy Hartsock stopped short of drawing such a conclusion.

“Because an analysis has not been done for the 2008 data for Northwest Indiana, in particular, it would be speculation on our part to attribute reductions to the economic downturn,” Hartsock said. “What we do know based on information available to us for the state is that industry is doing a better job reducing pollutants than what the decrease in economic activity would account for.”

Lake County polluters reduced their releases by 31.1 percent compared to 2007, Porter County polluters by 5.8 percent. Lake and Porter counties released 36.9 million pounds of toxics — 17.6 percent of the total 209.3 million pounds released by Indiana facilities.

Four of the 20 counties in the nation that released the most toxic material were in Indiana, according to EPA.

Thomas The Air I Breath

~ 17% of East Chicago’s residential properties are apart of a Superfund Site. After more than 20-years of knowledge of the real potential for contamination, and clearing the legal slate of PRPs (prior responsible parties) the site was placed on the National Priority List (NPL) in March 2009.

via [ Post-Tribune ] “EPA Testing Soil for Lead Contamination” By Gitte Laasby

EAST CHICAGO — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is collecting soil samples in East Chicago to find out whether residential yards are contaminated with lead.

The residences are located between East Chicago Avenue and 151st Street and between Aster and Parrish avenues near one of the most contaminated sites in the nation, the former U.S. Smelter and Lead Refinery Inc. site at 5300 Kennedy Ave.

The EPA began collecting samples from front and back yards Monday and will continue for about two weeks. The soil samples are free to residents and all work is done outside the homes.

The EPA held an informational session to explain the testing process and answer questions about the site Monday and will hold another one today.

EPA will also hold a meeting on Dec. 17, to update the community about sampling and clean-up plans. Representatives from EPA and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management will be available to answer questions.

The U.S. Smelter site was added to the EPA’s Superfund list in early September. The list contains the most toxic sites in the nation that pose a risk to health and the environment.

The site and residential properties north of it are contaminated with lead. The lead was most likely dispersed from long-removed smokestacks while the business operated between 1920 and 1985. The company recovered lead from car batteries.

In July 2008, EPA removed lead-contaminated soil from 15 homes near the site. Exposure to high levels of lead can cause developmental problems and lower intelligence in young children. Lead exposure can also increase blood pressure in middle-aged men, according to IDEM.

Thomas The Land I Use

via [ TreeHugger ] “Was it Worth It? One Asian Carp Found After Six Miles of River Poisoned in Illinois”

An emergency operation to stop invasive Asian Carp from reaching the Great Lakes used more than 2,000 gallons of rotenone to poison six miles of a canal near Chicago this week. Tens of thousands of fish were killed. Just one Asian carp, the target of the poisoning, was found. An esitmated 100 tons of dead fish will be taken to a landfill.
via [ AP ]

image via the Journal Sentinel

LOCKPORT, Ill. — An Obama administration adviser says a decision could come within days on whether to temporarily close a shipping lock in a bid to stop the Asian carp from reaching Lake Michigan.

Cameron Davis is the Great Lakes adviser to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He tells The Associated Press on Friday that discussions are under way about closing the O’Brien Lock while crews poison part of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

The goal is to ensure the voracious carp don’t get into Lake Michigan and devastate the $7 billion-a-year Great Lakes fishing industry.

On Thursday, officials said they’d found one Asian carp during a fish-kill operation on another part of the canal. DNA tests have indicated the fish might be even closer to the lock.

Thomas View of Lake Michigan

via [ NWI Times ] “Grand Cal cleanup in Hammond set to begin” By Steve Zabroski

HAMMOND | Cleanup of the Grand Calumet River, a former industrial sewer running through the heart of the city, has begun, with the first scoops of polluted sediment pulled from the bottom as early as this weekend.

Crews will work westward from Columbia Avenue, digging down 3 feet into mud contaminated by pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, benzene, xylene, toluene, mercury, lead and other cancer-causing or toxic materials, and then hauling the mess away.

Sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the remediation project aims to remove close to 82,000 cubic yards of the polluted river bottom — last dredged in 1895 — all the way to Hohman Avenue.

Some $21.5 million of the total $33.1 million cost of the Hammond river cleanup is covered through the federal Great Lakes Legacy Act, a law enacted by Congress in 2002 to restore beneficial uses to polluted areas of the Great Lakes.

The remaining $11.6 million comes from fines collected from polluting industries into an account administered by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

Plans call for covering the exposed river bottom with a plastic liner infused with carbon particles, and then 2 feet of clean sand and gravel, to permanently separate any remaining toxins from the restored aquatic habitat above.

The first phase of the cleanup extends to Calumet Avenue, said Scott Ireland, manager with the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office, which administers Legacy Act funding, and it should be completed in June.

A team of 25 will work through the winter, said Mike Lock, project manager with Sevenson Environmental Services Inc. in Merrillville, a time frame chosen not only because the river is then at its lowest levels, but below-freezing temperatures keep odors down.

People nevertheless sometimes will smell odors, said John Dirgo, with engineering consultant Sultrac, a joint venture of two California-based environmental remediation specialists.

An array of air monitors around the river will sample the air for dangerous levels of chemicals during the work, Dirgo said, and dredging will stop in the unlikely event that local air quality is affected.

Residents also will see trucks. Plans call for 20 trucks a day to move wet sediment to a drying area just west of the Irving Little League and Babe Ruth baseball fields, and then take the dry dirt to the Newton County Landfill for disposal.

Timing of the second phase — from Calumet Avenue to Hohman Avenue — depends on when the Hammond Sanitary District can begin construction of an EPA-ordered 25 million-gallon stormwater retention basin to prevent further pollution of the river.

A large water main needs to be installed to bring stormwater from two west side pumping stations to the new 14-acre basin, and the construction is scheduled to coincide with the Calumet-to-Hohman phase of the river remediation.

Sanitary District Manager Michael Unger said he is working with the EPA to kick-start the $23 million project, and Sultrac’s Dirgo said current remediation plans call for the second phase to begin shortly after the end of next year’s baseball season.

The Grand Calumet River cleanup is the first Great Lakes Legacy Act project in Indiana. Six others worth $120 million have been completed in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio.

Thomas The Water I Drink