The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago voted Tuesday to disinfect the wastewater dumped into the Chicago River from two of its treatment plants, a major switch for the agency which for years resisted calls to treat the water to kill pathogens.
The MWRD had long opposed disinfection, arguing that using UV light to kill germs would cost too much and would use too much electricity. The district has also said that cleaning up the river would tempt people to swim in areas that are dangerous because of barge traffic and steep walls. Chicago is the only major city that does not disinfect its wastewater. That distinction led the river to be named one of America’s Most Endangered Rivers last month by a national conservation group.
The vote came as federal and state regulators were threatening to force the agency to adopt disinfection. Last month the federal Environmental Protection Agency sent a letter to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency demanding the Chicago River, Little Calumet River and Cal-Sag Channel on the South Side be made safe for swimming. On June 16, the Illinois Pollution Control Board is expected to issue a mandate that the same waterways be safe to swim in. The Pollution Control Board’s proposal is open for public comment through Friday.
“The letter from the federal EPA was a game changer for some of my colleagues,” said MWRD commissioner Debra Shore. “That helped shift the balance. Cultural change, changing norms takes time.”
Environmental groups have been calling for disinfection for more than a decade and politicians have recently joined the cause. Last week a majority of aldermen signed on to a resolution demanding disinfection. U.S Sen. Dick Durbin called for disinfection after a boat tour of the river with U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on May 22.
“There’s been a huge amount of transformation in the last several months that added up to an overwhelming need for the commission to embrace reality and adopt the prevailing standard of the civilized world,” said Henry Henderson, Midwest program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental advocacy group.
Board president Terrence J. O’Brien, a staunch opponent of disinfection, cast the lone vote against the motion. The disinfection motion also calls for the agency to create more access points to the river. “They’re not only taking out the bugs that were making people sick, they’re also helping more people get to the river,” said Stacy Meyers-Glen, policy coordinator for the Illinois conservation group Openlands.
The commissioners also discussed disinfecting wastewater from the Stickney treatment plant on the Southwest Side along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, but decided to table the issue until a later date. Since Stickney does not affect water quality in the Chicago River, it is not subject to the federal and state demands.
Before being dumped into the river, the sewage would be disinfected using 1600 UV lights apiece at the Calumet and North Side plants, which would cost $240 million initially and $10 million a year, according to a study by the MWRD. A study commissioned by the EPA indicated disinfection would cost only $74 million up front. About 70 percent of the river’s water comes from sewage treatment plants.
The motion says the disinfection will be paid for in part through a 12-to-15 percent hike in the MWRD portion of the property tax, which for a $100,000 property would add up to roughly a $5 annual increase. The agency will also seek state and federal funds.
“None of the federal or state agencies even bothered to show up this morning, so that doesn’t say anything as to how we’ll get the money,” O‘Brien said in explaining his no vote. “The way the economy is today, people are hurting, every day we’re picking up a newspaper and finding out there’s no money the state has, no money the feds have, no money the city has and pretty soon no money that the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District has.”
O’Brien also said it wouldn’t be fair for people who live along the Sanitary and Ship Canal to pay for disinfection at the two plants that would, he said, mainly benefit people who use the river on the North Side. He also cited the amount of air pollution caused by coal-fired power plants to generate the electricity for disinfection, comparing the amount of carbon dioxide released by generating power to run the UV lights to “15.2 million trees.”
Disinfecting wastewater still will not deal with the problem of untreated sewage being released into the river and Lake Michigan during heavy rainfalls that overwhelm the sewer system.
The federal government is negotiating a consent decree with the MWRD that would likely set deadlines for the agency to complete the Deep Tunnel project to hold flood water during storms. Untreated sewage releases would have to be greatly reduced in order to meet the water quality mandate that the Pollution Control Board is expected to issue.
MWRD administrative services manager Eileen McElligott told commissioners that if those mandates aren’t met, the agency could face fines of $37,500 per day plus criminal penalties.
An MWRD study said it will take about nine years to get the disinfection technology up and running at the two plants. Assistant director of engineering Tom Kunetz said they will be among the largest UV disinfection operations in the world, equivalent to the world’s largest existing facility in Alabama and almost double the size of the second-largest disinfection plant in Ireland.
Speaking at a public meeting before the vote, North Side resident John Friedman said several of his neighbors have complained of bacterial infections after swimming or boating in the river. He mentioned a young woman who quit the Loyola University crew team, which practices in river’s north branch, because of frequent skin lesions she attributed to the river.
“That’s toilet water they’re training in,” Friedman said. The vote to disinfect it, he said, was “historic.”