A dead dog, a cat in a coffin and a body floating in a submerged car. Those were just a few of the items police fished out of the Chicago River on a single day last week.
Little surprise, then, that Chicagoans generally view the waterway much as New Yorkers see the East River: a toxic receptacle for human and industrial waste, unfit for the gleaming metropolis it slices through.
That may be changing. The city has cleaned up the river in recent years, and now the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the agency that controls rainwater and sewage disposal, is set to begin disinfecting effluent before it goes into the river – a move expected to significantly improve water quality and rid Chicago of its dubious distinction as the only major American city that does not disinfect its sewage.
“That vote seems a watershed moment, where people went, ‘Hey, wait a minute, that river belongs to me,’ ” said Margaret Frisbie, executive director of Friends of the Chicago River, referring to the June decision by the water district’s board of commissioners.
Officials and planners have floated numerous ideas to turn the river into an appealing aquatic complement to the city’s beloved lakefront. Some are already in the works, while others seem more pie-in-the-sky, such as a bold vision that involves undoing one of Chicago’s proudest feats: the reversal of the river’s flow, via the construction of a 28-mile canal, more than a century ago.
Chicago was born at the mouth of the river, when the trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable built a farm there in the 1780s. Yet for most of its modern history, this 156-mile network of canals has mainly been used for shipping and drainage and as a dump for stockyard offal and sewage.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency estimated last May that diluted effluent constitutes 70 percent of the river’s flow in certain areas. After arguing against it for years, the sanitary district voted the following month to disinfect the river. Now it must kill bacteria in the 600 million gallons of diluted sewage released daily from its North Side and Calumet reclamation plants.
The disinfection system, estimated to cost $240 million for construction and 20 years of operation, is scheduled for completion in late 2015. It will be funded by an increase in state property taxes, according to the Illinois Pollution Control Board.
By 2016, the Chicago River is expected to meet the state’s new water quality standards. “We’re doing everything we can to allow for the possibility of achieving full body contact-type goals for the waterway,” said David St. Pierre, the water district’s executive director.
Chicago waterways have become cleaner in recent years due to reduced industrial discharge, said Tracy Barkley of the Prairie Rivers Network, an advocacy group. She has already seen increased canoeing, fishing and even swimming in the river.
“With disinfection, the people using the waterways will not have the risk of illness or infection,” Barkley said. “We hope this spurs some additional business as folks realize they really have quite an asset in their backyard.”
A 2008 study commissioned by the Illinois attorney general’s office found that improved water quality in Chicago waterways would result in a $1.05 billion economic boost over 20 years.
The city already has expanded a restaurant-lined walkway along the south side of the river’s Main Stem. The cleanest and most popular part of the river, it flows from Lake Michigan beneath a gauntlet of iconic bridges and towering skyscrapers. The riverwalk is often filled with tourists and office workers in warmer months.
In October, international rowing teams will race a two-mile course on the river, from Chinatown’s Ping Tom Park to the Merchandise Mart. The event, organized by the nonprofit Chicago River Race, is meant to showcase the river and raise money for urban youth development programs.
Working with city officials, the local architectural firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill has designed an expanded riverwalk running from the lake to Lake Street that includes tiered green spaces near Wolf Point, where the Main Stem splits into the North and South branches.
One downtown kayaking outfit has seen a surge in business. Last August, on its first day of operation, Urban Kayaks sold 1,600 river tours, with help from an email discount offer, according to co-founder James Morro.
Since 1998, the Chicago Park District has spent more than $100 million adding riverfront parks and trails and improving access and recreation opportunities. This year, the park district plans to build four $4 million riverfront boathouses. Local architect and MacArthur “genius” grant winner Jeanne Gang has been hired to design two of them.
Gang also has a more ambitious vision. In her recent book, “Reverse Effect: Renewing Chicago’s Waterways,” she transforms Bubbly Creek – a little-used, post-industrial southern branch where the body was found inside a car last week – with vast, water-cleaning lagoons in an urban setting that could become a destination attraction.
Gang’s proposal takes as a starting point the possible re-reversal of the river to halt the advance of Asian carp and other invasive species into the Great Lakes and area waterways.
Yet with no cost estimates and few details, her designs “were never meant to become a built reality,” a Gang spokesperson said via email. “They are visions that were meant to inspire others to think critically about transforming the river.”