The national conservation group American Rivers on Tuesday named the Chicago River to its annual “America’s Most Endangered Rivers” list, a move likely to raise the clamor in an ongoing battle over the river’s future.
The Chicago River, which famously was reversed by engineers more than a century ago to keep pollution out of Lake Michigan, is one of the nation’s few major rivers with sewage that isn’t treated to kill viruses and bacteria. Environmental advocates are fighting to change the river’s official regulatory status, and its image, from a working industrial waterway to a river safe for kayaking and fishing.
The move by American Rivers comes a week after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency demanded state regulators impose more stringent water quality standards on the river. And two weeks ago, environmental groups filed a lawsuit charging that the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) regularly violates the Clean Water Act by releasing untreated sewage and high levels of phosphorus into the river.
Additionally, the U.S. Department of Justice is in the midst of negotiating a consent decree aimed at reducing the sewage releases, and the Illinois Pollution Control Board is in the final stages of a lengthy regulatory process that could force the MWRD to disinfect its treated sewage to kill viruses and bacteria.
American Rivers uses its “most endangered” designation to draw attention to rivers embroiled in regulatory or political controversy. With the designation, the group places the Chicago River among the ranks of rivers symbolic of some of the nation’s most heated environmental and political debates. The group considers sewage to be the main problem facing the Chicago River.
The list this year for the first time also includes the Susquehanna River in New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania, which is affected by hydraulic “fracking” for natural gas. The Bristol Bay Rivers in Alaska, where a proposed massive gold mine threatens one of the world’s largest salmon fisheries, also are new to the list.
Other additions include the Yuba River in California, where activists charge hydropower dams are decimating threatened salmon and steelhead populations, and the Black Warrior River in Alabama, polluted by coal mining and coal bed methane extraction.
Like many older cities, Chicago has a drainage system that combines sewage and rain water in the same underground pipes. Heavy storms often overwhelm the system, causing water laden with untreated sewage to be released into Lake Michigan and the Chicago River, and flooding basements as sewage backs up in pipes.
The MWRD is banking on the Deep Tunnel project, begun in the 1970s, to control sewage releases and flooding. A federal consent decree currently in the works would force the agency to commit to finishing the Deep Tunnel by 2029, the agency’s own stated goal, and meeting deadlines for earlier phases of the project.
One of the major impediments to meeting the Deep Tunnel timeline is the slower-than-expected development of huge quarries that would serve as reservoirs for storm-water overflows. The economic crisis has chilled demand from the concrete and asphalt plants that buy raw material from the quarries, so companies that mine the rock are not removing it as fast as expected.
“You can only afford to pull it out of the ground and process it if there are customers to come pick it up,” said Joshua Robbins, spokesman for Vulcan Materials, a company that mines limestone at the quarry beside the Stevenson Expressway that will become a Deep Tunnel reservoir.
The draft consent decree has loopholes, critics say, because it allows any deadlines to be renegotiated if mining at the quarries proceeds more slowly than expected.
Meanwhile environmental and planning groups say focusing on the reservoirs will not fully address the problem. No matter how big the reservoirs are, they contend, there still will be overflows of sewage because of bottlenecks in the smaller pipes that channel water to the Deep Tunnel.
“You can have infinite storage capacity, but unless you can move enough water quickly enough to the storage area, you’re still going to have problems,” said Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. “We shouldn’t bank on the Deep Tunnel solving all of our sewage overflow problems, even when it is complete.”
Overhauling the massive network of pipes below the city and suburbs is considered prohibitively expensive. Planners say the solution is “green infrastructure” that would greatly reduce the amount of rain water running into sewers.
“It is about finding different ways of controlling storm water run-off that don’t involve large concrete structures,” said Andy Buchsbaum, Great Lakes regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation. “Strategies that involve allowing rainwater to percolate through natural surfaces like grass or gravel or dirt; getting rid of the hard surfaces of roofs by putting in green roofs, which Chicago has been a leader in; enhancing urban and suburban wetlands.”
On April 20 the federal Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to its regional directors telling them to emphasize those kinds of green measures in their dealings with cities.
The draft consent decree for the MWRD includes $325,000 for green infrastructure, an amount that environmental groups say is too little. By comparison, the EPA required Cleveland, Kansas City, Mo., Louisville and Cincinnati to spend millions–$42 million in Cleveland alone–on green strategies.
Spokespeople for the MWRD, Department of Justice and EPA said they could not comment on the consent decree given the ongoing negotiations.
The county sewer district that serves Milwaukee has gained international attention for its wide range of storm-water reduction projects, including parking lots and roads outfitted with permeable pavement, sunken flower beds lining streets, green roofs on government buildings, water retention ponds built as public spaces amid bike trails and bird-viewing decks.
“You get beautiful new parks and trees and you’re reducing storm water run-off,” said Ann Alexander, senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “If cities all over the country are doing it, there’s no reason Chicago can’t. But this is like so many other things with the [water reclamation district], they don’t want to do it so they say it’s too expensive or find other reasons why they won’t do it.”
Pat Young, a spokeswoman for the district, said in an email that the agency is carrying out various green infrastructure projects, including a program to promote the use of rain barrels to reduce rainwater runoff.
On May 3 the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and Prairie Rivers Network filed a lawsuit alleging the reclamation district has violated the Clean Water Act over the last five years by releasing untreated sewage and also by continuously releasing large amounts of phosphorus that lead to oxygen levels they say are lower than allowed under the Clean Water Act.
Young said in an emailed statement that since there are no numeric limits for phosphorus releases, the water reclamation district is not in violation of any regulations. She said the agency is investing in enhanced phosphorus removal, but eliminating all phosphorus would cost between $2.8 billion and $5 billion initially and then hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
While dealing with the MWRD through the consent decree, the EPA is also pressuring state regulators to improve water quality in the Chicago River. On May 11 the federal agency sent the Illinois EPA a letter demanding the state agency demand higher water quality in the river, since people use it more for recreation than they did when water quality standards were last evaluated in 1985.
The Illinois Pollution Control Board issues regulations based on the Illinois EPA’s proposals. The board has for several years been reviewing proposed new standards for the Chicago River that would require the MWRD to disinfect wastewater.
The MWRD and industries are currently allowed to discharge more pollution in the river than they could in Lake Michigan. But the federal EPA’s letter demands the river be cleaned up enough for recreational uses, such as kayaking, that could involve full body contact with water.
Most other major U.S. cities already disinfect their wastewater. Young said disinfection of all Chicago waste water would cost more than $500 million initially and then about $23 million per year.
