[ Lake Erie Death Watch ] By Barry Yeoman for the NRDC

Brought back from the brink once before, a Great Lake again faces biological collapse

What would it mean to lose one of our Great Lakes? The environmental and economic calamity could devastate the region’s tourism, sport fishing industry, drinking water supply, and wildlife, and could also take a toll on human health. And there would be plenty of blame to go around, from changing agricultural methods to inattentive politicians to weaknesses in our nation’s bedrock environmental protections — many of which can partially trace their existence to concern over Lake Erie in the first place.

Erie is the most fertile of the Great Lakes: It contains only 2 percent of their water but 50 percent of their fish. Its biological abundance, and its location in a densely settled corner of the Midwest, make the prospect of collapse all the more frightening. If conditions grow worse, imploding native fish populations could decimate Lake Erie’s recreational fishing industry. (Fishing generates $7 billion a year throughout the Great Lakes.) The water supply for 11 million people could become undrinkable without expensive treatment. And blue-green algae, linked to liver cancer in China and fatal poisonings in Brazil, could pose a grave threat to people here, too, particularly if ingested.

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Thomas Environment, The Water I Drink, What I am Looking at

Another account on how East Chicago is connected to what is happening in Northern Alberta (previous account from Henry).

BP and our Economic Development Gurus have put East Chicago on a diet of Tar Sands. I thought it appropriate for you to see how the TAR SANDS are destroying our most vital and fragile resources - The land, the water, the air, and our peoples.

[ Elemental ]

Elemental - Trailer from Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee on Vimeo.

Elemental is a documentary produced and directed by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee. It explores our essential relationship to water, and the fundamental importance of reevaluating that relationship in the face of the global environmental crisis. It is a universal cause told through three stories on three continents, one of which East Chicago is intimately involved.

Eriel Deranger participated in the film and the telling of her story - the story of her people - the story East Chicago is so dependent on for economic development. Eriel is a native Dené from Northern Alberta, Canada. She is a young mother and activist determined to protect the future of her people from the ecological genocide wrought by living downstream from the largest industrial development in the world: the Albertan Tar Sands. I met Eriel in Edmonton last fall.

Remember the “STUFF” BP is piping into our community to refine is more than the land on which she lives - The Tar Sands, it includes Eriel’s Story and the lives of her people. She will tell more…

Thomas Environment, Tar Sands, The Water I Drink

via [ Post Trib ] “Chromium found in NWI - Jury still out on safe exposure levels, source of chemical” By Gitte Laasby

The cancer-causing chemical made famous in the movie “Erin Brockovich” is finding its way into drinking water in Northwest Indiana — likely at many times the level California scientists consider safe, according to a new report.

Some warn about dangers and blame Northwest Indiana’s steel mills, which discharge thousands of pounds of chromium into Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water for most of the region’s residents. Others say the chromium comes from natural sources and may actually be good for you.

The report by the Environmental Working Group shows levels of chromium in tap water in Lake County averaged 16 to 41 times what California authorities recently suggested is a “safe” level for “bad” chromium.

However, the Northwest Indiana numbers include both “good” and “bad” chromium, and they’re still within the range that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for drinking.

EPA only requires water utilities to test for total chromium, a combination of the “good” chromium (chromium-3) and “bad” chromium (chromium-6, also known as hexavalent chromium.) Good chromium is an essential nutrient often found in multivitamins that regulates glucose metabolism. Bad chromium is carcinogenic.

“It’s difficult to draw conclusions because they’re saying we should have hexavalent chromium at a certain level, but we’re not really testing for that, so it’s hard to say where we are and what’s safe. That’s the big discussion taking place now,” said Mark LeChevallier, director of innovation and environmental stewardship for American Water nationwide.

EPA has set a tap water standard of 100 parts per billion for both kinds of chromium combined.

In Northwest Indiana, the highest level measured in the last six years was 35.4 parts per billion in Cedar Lake, according to the Environmental Working Group. That’s well below the 100 part standard set by EPA, but nearly 600 times the 0.06 parts per billion that California recommends is safe for “bad” chromium.

Indiana American Water — which delivers water to Gary, Burns Harbor, Chesterton, Hobart, Merrillville, Portage, Porter, South Haven, Schererville, Crown Point, Lake Station, New Chicago and Ogden Dunes — has detected chromium in its water only twice since 1999. That was in 2003, when tap water levels were 11 parts per billion in Gary and 10 in Ogden Dunes, said company spokesman Joe Loughmiller.

“We’ve had no detections of total chromium at any of our operations in Indiana last year,” he said.

The utility’s detection limit for combined “good” and “bad” chromium is 7 parts per billion, so anything below that would not show up in tests, he noted.

“We’re detecting total chromium, which is good and bad — or might be all good, who knows?” LeChevallier said.

To the Environmental Working Group, that’s exactly the question. The group has criticized EPA for not setting a legal limit for “bad” chromium in tap water despite a September 2010 review by EPA scientists that said the metal is “likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

“At least 74 million Americans in 42 states drink chromium-polluted tap water, much of it likely in the cancer-causing hexavalent form,” the Working Group said in its report. “Given the scope of exposure and the magnitude of the potential risk, EWG believes the EPA should move expeditiously to establish a legal limit for chromium-6 and require public water suppliers to test for it.”

EPA said its standards are as protective of human health as science warranted when the rules were made.

“EPA’s regulation assumes that the sample is 100 percent chromium-6,” EPA said in a Jan. 11 press release. “This means the current chromium-6 standard has been as protective and precautionary as the science of that time allowed.”

No chromium was found in Porter County, according to the report, but the group said that doesn’t mean there isn’t chromium-6 in the water, only that it wasn’t found above the detection limit, said Leeann Brown, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Working Group.

The report is based on two types of data: Samples taken by volunteers in big cities, including Chicago, tested only for bad chromium. And water quality reports of both good and bad chromium by local utilities averaged over a five-year period and weighted by population, she said.

Unclear if NWI levels are bad

In Chicago, tap water samples showed “bad” chromium levels were 0.18 parts per billion — about three times California’s “safe” level. But there’s no way to tell how large a share of the chromium found in Northwest Indiana is “bad” chromium, Brown said.

“We can’t answer these questions for the nation. We need EPA to do it. From the little we know, this is where we could be finding it,” she said. “There’s no way to give someone (using) a small utility the answers they need. We need someone to step in and require testing and require that this information be articulated to the people buying this water.”

Complicating the matter is that the metal transforms back and forth between good and bad chromium, LeChevallier said. Your stomach can process some, but not all, chromium-6, and chromium in surface water like Lake Michigan can transform when it reacts with oxygen in the air.

“It changes between those two forms,” LeChevallier said. “What is the measurement in water, how stable it is, whether these low levels stay chromium-6 when you ingest it and it goes through your stomach, it’s very complex. It’s hard to know that what you’re measuring is, in fact, having health effects … That’s kind of why EPA is looking at this and taking its time to review the health effects.”

Mills blamed for chromium

Chromium-6 can pollute water through erosion of soil and rock. But it also gets into water supplies after being discharged from steel and pulp mills and metal-plating facilities. That has led some to blame Northwest Indiana’s steel mills for chromium levels in drinking water from Lake Michigan.

The EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory shows that U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittal’s four locations in Lake and Porter counties discharged a combined 3,100 pounds of chromium in 2009.

The closest source to Chicago’s water intake is ArcelorMittal Indiana Harbor West in East Chicago, which discharged 1,000 pounds of chromium about 10 miles from the intake. ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor is the farthest away, about 25 miles.

“We’d expect to see higher chromium if there’s a discharge from steel mill factories and the like in the area … The reasons in Illinois would be hard to say, although we know from EPA they’re planning much further investigation into this chemical,” said Brown of the Environmental Working Group.

EPA vowed at the end of December to find out how widespread the problem is. On Jan. 11, the agency issued enhanced monitoring guidance recommending where utilities should collect samples, how often they should be collected, and what analytical methods should be used for testing.

That should give consumers more information on how much “bad” chromium is in drinking water, how it transforms and how current treatment methods affect levels of bad chromium in drinking water, EPA said.

LeChevallier said some chromium comes from industries, but he didn’t think mills are the source in Northwest Indiana.

“The low levels we’re finding in the water are probably not coming from industrial effluent. They’re coming naturally from the soils,” he said. “The Environmental Working Group targeted groundwater supplies because that comes from the soil. We rarely find this in surface water supplies because oxygen can react with chromium.”

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management reduced the amount of “bad” chromium that the mills can discharge when it recently renewed their wastewater permits.

Remove it yourself

LeChevallier said his own family drinks tap water from American Water in New Jersey and that he’s not worried because levels of chromium are below the standard EPA set as protective.

Eric Rosenthal, senior vice president of marketing at Culligan water, agreed that most or all municipal water systems are safe to use. However, for those who are worried about it, water systems using reverse osmosis can take remove hexavalent chromium, he said. Stores such as WalMart and Meijer sell water in bulk from such a Culligan system.

Buying your own reverse osmosis system costs $700 and up, he said. It’s possible to rent water treatment systems, which cost at least $10 a month. But regular water filters such as Brita won’t do the trick, he said.

“We would not use a pitcher or a faucet-mounted filter to take chromium-6 out,” he said. “You need … a more sophisticated water purification process,” he said.

Chromium: Is region’s

water at risk?Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Toxics Release Inventory, 2009 dataSource: Environmental Working Group database, www.ewg.org/tap-water/home

Who releases chromium?

Here’s how much chromium facilities in Northwest Indiana release, according to their reports to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

LAKE COUNTY

* U.S. Steel Gary Works: 1,400 pounds air dust, 340 pounds air, 800 pounds surface water.

* ArcelorMittal Indiana Harbor West: 1,000 pounds surface water, 51 pounds air.

Harsco Metals, East Chicago: 128 pounds air.

* ArcelorMittal Indiana Harbor East: 104 pounds air, 2 pounds surface water.

* U.S. Steel East Chicago Tin Operations, East Chicago: 2 pounds air dust, 65 pounds air.

* LaSalle Steel Co. Fluid Power OPS, Griffith: 5 pounds air.

* North American Refractories Co., Gary: 5 pounds air.

Total: 1,802 pounds surface water, 2,100 pounds air.

PORTER COUNTY

* ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor: 600 pounds air dust, 500 pounds air, 500 pounds surface water.

* U.S. Steel Midwest, Portage: 13 pounds air dust, 14 pounds air, 800 pounds surface water.

* Sequa Coatings Corp. Precoat Metals, Portage: 392 pounds air.

* Beta Steel Corp., Portage: 269 pounds air.

* NIPSCO Bailly: 253 pounds air.

Total: 1,300 pounds surface water, 2.041 pounds air.

Utilities that found chromium

Here are the utilities in Lake County that detected chromium in their finished tap water some time between 2004 and 2009. Listed as the average (av) and maximum (max) levels found and how many people the utility serves.

A detection of chromium does not mean “bad” chromium (chromium-6) was present.

Utilities not included on the list did not detect chromium.

Hammond (87,600 people:) 0.65 av, 3.9 max

East Chicago Water Works (33,001 people): 3.12 av, 7.1 max

St. John Municipal Water Utility (15,025 people): 10 av, 20 max

Twin Lakes Utilities, Inc. (Crown Point, 8,000 people): 2.4 av, 4.8 max

Lowell Water Department (7,705 people): 0.84 av, 4.2 max

Whiting Water Department (5,200 people): 2.77 av, 11 max

Cedar Lake Water Works (1,923 people): 12.23 av, 35.4 max

Fairway Regional Water District (210 people): 1.85 av, 3.7 max

Cedar Lake Mobile Home Park (200 people): 1.6 av, 3.2 max

Chicagoland Christian Village (150 people): 1.75 av, 3.5 max

Noble Oaks Subdivision Water Association (70 people): 1.37 av, 4.1 max

Bremerton Mobile Home Park (48 people): 8.4 av, 16.8 max.

Thomas The Water I Drink

Thomas The Water I Drink

via [ Post Trib ] “Anti-pollution plan subject of hearing - Grace Davison wants to install diffuser to reduce the toxicity of salt discharges” By Gitte Laasby

EAST CHICAGO — Enough people were concerned about Grace Davison’s proposal to put a diffuser in the Grand Calumet River to dilute pollution that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has decided to hold a hearing on it.

As the Post-Tribune reported on March 26, the chemical manufacturer in East Chicago has been allowed for the past four years to discharge enough acid salt into the Grand Calumet River to kill at least 85 percent of certain small water critters. To make the salt less toxic, the company wants to put in a diffuser to dilute the pollution.

If you go

What: Public hearing on Grace Davison request to put a diffuser in the Grand Calumet River.

Where: Indiana University Northwest, library conference center room LC 105 abc, 3400 Broadway, Gary.

When: 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 26.

For more information: You can view the application and draft documents at the Lake County Health Department, the Gary Health Department, the main branch of the Gary Public Library and at IDEM’s regional office at 8380 Louisiana St. in Merrillville.

How to comment

Questions can be directed to

Ms. Nahir Bacardi, Office of Water Quality/NPDES permits branch, Indiana Department of Environmental Management, 100 N. Senate Ave. (mail code: 65-42), Indianapolis, IN 46204-2251. Phone: (317) 234-4222 or e-mail nbacardi@idem.in.gov. Comments must be postmarked by June 11.

IDEM didn’t initially plan a public hearing but decided to hold one after five Post-Tribune readers requested it.

“The public meeting… is being held to address the concerns of all interested parties prior to a final determination on the proposal,” IDEM said in a public notice.

The hearing will be held on May 26 and is supposed to provide information about the application and allow public participation. IDEM has also made the company’s application available for public review at various local places including IDEM’s Merrillville branch.

In 2006, IDEM permitted Grace Davison to discharge an average 39,000 pounds of sulfates (salt) per day into the Grand Calumet River just east of Kennedy Avenue.

As a condition, the company had to conduct monthly lab tests for six months on how toxic the discharge was to two kinds of water fleas and the fish fathead minnow.

The company’s 2007 lab tests showed that at least 85 percent of the critters died when exposed to undiluted wastewater.

The wastewater had well below the concentration of salt that IDEM allowed.

Thomas The Water I Drink

[ www.ourwaterlife.com ]

A great flash site http://waterlife.nfb.ca/

Thomas The Water I Drink

via [ NWI Times ] “$33.1M RIVER BOTTOM REMEDIATION PROJECT ON WAY TO RESTORING AQUATIC HABITAT” By Steve Zabroski

HAMMOND | The first phase of a long-awaited cleanup of the Grand Calumet River was completed last week, with remediation work on the waterway now moving westward through the heart of the city.

The $33.1 million project aims to remove from the bottom of the river sediment contaminated with toxic and cancer-causing chemicals deposited there through more than a century of industrial activity.

Tainted river bottom between Columbia Avenue and Howard Avenue has been hauled away since work began in December, and excavation all the way to Calumet Avenue is scheduled for completion by June.

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

Read more…

Thomas The Water I Drink

via [ Post-trib ] “Toxicity of pile remains undetermined at site - New test results show waste more toxic than first indicated” By Gitte Laasby

<Drawing Connections>

It ought to be noted that Tom Easterly, IDEM’s commissioner, served as Superintendent for Environmental Services at Bethlehem Steel’s Burns Harbor division. Additionally James Flannery the Executive Director of the Northwest Indiana Quality of Life Council (I can feel the irony), served as the Environment Manager for AcelorMittal and continues to serve on the State of Indiana’s Water Pollution Control Board. Jim also served as Board President for the East Chicago Waterway Management District (E.C.W.M.D.) while I served as it’s Executive Director (how all things lead back to East Chicago).

* The E.C.W.M.D. oversees the Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal (IHSC), the most polluted waterway in the country surrounded by ArcelorMittal, by far its largest user. After more than 35-years since the Clean Water Act was enacted there has never been a project to clean up the waterway. The only project initiated is an USACE project to dredge the canal for navigational purposes only.

</Drawing Connections>

BURNS HARBOR — More than a year and a half after ArcelorMittal first applied for a landfill in Burns Harbor, the company has not disclosed the toxics in all the waste to be landfilled.

The waste — also known as Easterly’s Pile — has been dumped in piles up to three stories tall on open ground a couple hundred feet from Lake Michigan and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore for more than a decade.

What is certain is that some of the waste destined for the landfill is more toxic than ArcelorMittal first indicated.

New test results obtained by the Post-Tribune show the waste is one step short of being considered hazardous because of high contents of lead and cadmium.

Read more…

Thomas The Land I Use, The Water I Drink

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 [ 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

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

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

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

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

via [ The Oil Drum ]

The data in the table originate from “Energy demands on water resources”, report to the congress, 2006 [ link ]

For the past century, America has invested significant research, development, and construction funding to develop both fresh surface- water and groundwater resources. The result is a water infrastructure that allows us to harness the vast resources of the country’s rivers and watersheds, control floods, and store water during droughts to provide reliable supplies of freshwater for agricultural, industrial, domestic, and energy uses. During this same period, the U.S. developed extensive natural resources such as coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium and created an infrastructure to process and transport these resources in an efficient and cost-effective manner to consumers. These two achievements have helped stimulate unprecedented economic growth and development.

However, as population has increased, demand for energy and water has grown. Competing demands for water supply are affecting the value and availability of the resource. Operation of some energy facilities has been curtailed due to water concerns, and siting and operation of new energy facilities must take into account the value of water resources. U.S. efforts to replace imported energy supplies with nonconventional domestic energy sources have the potential to further increase demand for water.

ENERGY AND WATER INTERDEPENDENCIES

Water is an integral element of energy resource development and utilization. It is used in energy-resource extraction, refining and processing, and transportation. Water is also an integral part of electric-power generation. It is used directly in hydroelectric generation and is also used extensively for cooling and emissions scrubbing in thermoelectric generation. For example, in calendar year 2000, thermoelectric power generation accounted for 39 percent of all freshwater withdrawals in the U.S., roughly equivalent to water withdrawals for irrigated agriculture (withdrawals are water diverted or withdrawn from a surface-water or groundwater source) (Hutson et al., 2004).

Thomas Energy, The Water I Drink

via the [ NYTimes ]

This is an incredible series.

>500,000 Violations of the Clean Water Act in the last 5 Years

“Fewer than 3 percent of Clean Water Act violations resulted in fines or other significant punishments by state officials.”

[ Information Graphics ]

“Almost four decades after Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the rate of water pollution violations is rising steadily. In the past five years, companies and workplaces have violated pollution laws more than 500,000 times. But the vast majority of polluters have escaped punishment.”

[ Find the Polluter Near You ]

Indiana's Environmental Stewardship on the Southern Shores of Lake Michigan in Bright Orange

Clean Water Act Violations on Indiana’s Urban Shores of Lake Michigan

East Chicago (My Town) = 277
Gary = 304
Hammond = 253
Whiting = 16
Portage = 68
Burns Harbor = 63
Michigan City = 119

TOTAL = 1,100 Violations

IF inspections were up to date (random but regularly), we would undoubtedly see a radical increase in violations. Some facilities have not seen inspections in more than 11 years, other have no record of inspections - An unacceptable regulatory practice.

What this data does not share is the magnitude of a violation or impact a violation has on the local watershed, nor does it tell us about the total aggregate impact permitted sites have on those systems, and whether we have already saturated those systems to capacity.

Here in indiana we depend on a system of DILUTION AS THE SOLUTION, NATURAL ATTENUATION, and the ENTOMBMENT of contaminants into the sediments of our watersheds to manage the quality of our water resources. IDEM operates without an understanding of what the accumulated harm a hundred years of intense industrialization has done to the carrying capacity of these natural systems. Over time these systems have become severely stressed and degraded lessening their capacity to produce positive results on equivalent levels of contamination as it had only decade ago.

“Across the nation, the system that Congress created to protect the nation’s waters under the Clean Water Act of 1972 today often fails to prevent pollution. The New York Times has compiled data on more than 200,000 facilities that have permits to discharge pollutants and collected responses from states regarding compliance. Information about facilities contained in this database comes from two sources: the Environmental Protection Agency and the California State Water Resources Control Board. The database does not contain information submitted by the states.”

Thomas East Chicago, The Water I Drink

via [ www.liquidassets.psu.edu ] 

This evening I happened to click on the East Chicago Public Government Channel which for all purposes has been the Mayor’s personal campaign channel. But to my enormous surprise this evening they were running this wonderful documentary “Liquid Assets.” I don’t know who coordinated the broadcast, but I was thrilled to see something of real substance and value to the community on the channel. Very Good.  

Liquid Assets is a public media and outreach initiative that seeks to inform the nation about the critical role that our water infrastructure plays in protecting public health and promoting economic prosperity.

Combining a ninety-minute documentary with a community toolkit for facilitating local involvement, Liquid Assets explores the history, engineering, and political and economic challenges of our water infrastructure, and engages communities in local discussion about public water and wastewater issues.

Thomas Adaptive Reuse, Case Studies, East Chicago, The Water I Drink

It has been three decades since the enactment of the Clean Water Act and not a single project has been initiated to clean this country’s most polluted waterway - The Indiana Harbor Shipping Canal (IHSC).

The IHSC is the only body of water to fail all measurable beneficial uses. This human made waterway even impairs the industry that is both dependent on it and responsible for its condition. Yet, industry is not alone East Chicago carries some of the responsibility with its combine sewer overflow system. East Chicago is the single greatest violator of its NPDES permit in the State. Do to politics they haven’t been pursued. The same politics that recently approved BP’s water permit, despite the fact that it was in clear violation of the Clear Water Act. Today, it is not only about the pipe sticking into the waterway, but also surface runoff. Surface runoff is probably an even greater threat. 

Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) likes to refer to data that indicates that non-point source pollution attributed to transportation is an even greater threat to the environment. This is true if you are measuring pollution levels from the concern of middle-class communities in the southern part of the Lake County or you decide to aggregate the data county wide. This does not do justice to those who live under the plumb of industry. 

We can have discussions about whether it is save to drink water from the Chesapeake Bay - But we do know that it is NOT SAFE TO HAVE ANY CONTACT WITH THE WATER IN THE INDIANA HARBOR SHIPPING CANAL.

Perhaps the reason we can have a public discussion about the Chesapeake Bay is because it affects a large middle-class demographic. The IHSC does not. East Chicago is about 56% Hispanic and 38% Black with a medium income < $26,000. Is this an environmental justice issue - Yes. What is right ought to be enough to correct this, but economics of scale is in effect and I concede it needs to be. So why should middle-class midwesterns be concerned?

Because, if you draw any benefit from Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes it effects you. Because the IHSA flows into the world’s greatest fresh water resource - Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes. Because more than 6 million people in the Chicago Metropolitan region draw their drinking water from Lake Michigan (more than the entire population of Indiana which governs the releases). Because every time a barge goes into and out of the channel it scraps the bottom and resuspends contaminated sediments into the water column. Because $500,000,000 (half billion) of your tax dollars are going into maintaining this waterway as a navigation channel and $0 are going into maintaining it for environmental reasons. Because tens of millions of your tax dollars are being diverted into the pockets of a corrupt local political regime [ posted, here, here and here ]. It used to be, when it came to contamination “if you touch it you own it,” but under the Bush administration the constraints of commerce over-road environmental concerns. 

Because of this. 

The products produced in East Chicago factories are shipped across the country. The safety regime protecting consumers are far more stringent and protective than the environmental guidelines protecting residents from the by-products of these products. The IHSC and East Chicago is host to the Largest integrated Steel Mill in the country - Arcelor/Mittal, and the second largest oil refinery in the country - BP. Arcelor/Mittal supplies materials for appliances and vehicles. BP supplies gas to the more than 6 million residents who populate the Chicago Region.

Most of the photos above were taken in the late 1960s during an environmental campaign that eventually resulted in establishing the USEPA and the Clean Water Act. The only difference between then and now is the attenuation of time, where dilution became the solution. I don’t mean to disparage time, it is important. But:

1. we haven’t been proactive to severely stem discharges, and 
2. we haven’t cleaned this body of water, and 
3. we haven’t set up a sustaining environmental regime to ensure it will remain clean well into the future. 

In the end, after 30 years of the Clean Water Act the problem persists, and still no clean-up project has ever been initiated.

Frontline: Poisoned Waters

Thomas The Water I Drink