Yet state officials were thrilled, because it was the first fish found in years in the northwest Indiana river that is widely considered the nation’s most toxic waterway.
A quarter century later, fish are more plentiful and look healthy. But state and federal agencies say they are still unsafe to eat, their flesh laced with toxins from sediment poisoned by decades of dumping from nearby steel mills, chemical plants, meatpacking operations and other industries.
The Grand Calumet carries this toxic brew into Lake Michigan about eight miles from Chicago, each year dumping about 200,000 cubic yards of sediment full of PCBs, heavy metals and “some of the nastiest, most toxic contaminants ever,” said Cameron Davis, the White House’s Great Lakes czar.
This summer the federal government will begin a new phase in an ongoing effort to bring the Grand Calumet back to health. The Environmental Protection Agency is beginning a project to clean up a section of the river, but even when that work and another imminent federal project is complete, about three-plus miles of the river and the canal that empties into Lake Michigan will still remain seriously contaminated.
This summer’s work is expected to cost $50 million, with 65 percent of it coming under the federal Great Lakes Legacy Act, designated to clean up contamination. The remaining 35 percent will be paid for with money collected as fines from steel mills and other polluters required to contribute to a trust fund under the Natural Resources Damages Assessment law.
Federal officials say they are encouraged by how much progress has been made even before this summer’s work. And Mr. Simon, who worked for the federal government for 20 years and is now an Indiana State University scientist, thinks a major study he began Thursday will most likely show marked improvements in fish health.
At a community meeting Thursday, officials from the E.P.A. described plans to begin dredging contaminated sediment from a mile-long stretch of the river in Hammond, Ind., and the nearby Roxana Marsh.
But many residents think the government should be doing more faster. They are especially concerned about the heavily contaminated canal by which the Grand Calumet empties into Lake Michigan. In the 1990s it was so toxic only sludge worms could live in it, Mr. Simon said. Now crayfish and some other small organisms have returned, but the canal is still full of chemicals dangerous to human health.
The Chicago River has been in the national spotlight recently because last month the conservation group American Rivers named it one of the nation’s most endangered rivers. But while the Chicago River’s chief problem is untreated sewage, the Grand Calumet deals with both sewage and much more serious ecological issues. For example, five Superfund sites border the Grand Calumet, including almost 500 underground chemical or oil storage tanks, many of them leaking. A toxic brew of chemicals and metals makes the Grand Calumet unsafe even for human contact.
The Grand Calumet, which at points emits an unpleasant odor, runs through largely low-income, black areas of East Chicago, Gary and Hammond, where residents say the river and the adjoining ship canal have not gotten the attention they deserve.
Next year the Army Corps of Engineers will start dredging sediment from the canal, which it has not done since 1972, because stirring up the poisonous muck can create serious health and environmental risks. The corps will remove only enough sediment to allow ships to pass through, and it will monitor air quality during the process, but will not insert clean material and plastic liners, as the E.P.A. is doing at the other dredging sites.
“We would have liked for it to be a full cleanup,” said Bessie Dent, program director of the Calumet Project citizens group. “But we’ve given up on it, because money was only allocated for the ships.”
On Memorial Day, a dead carp floated in the canal amid crumpled soda cans — past steel mills, scrap metal yards and massive white oil tanks. Other parts of the river also looked and smelled polluted. Where petroleum pipes enter the river next to Highway 12, brown oil with a suffocating smell coated rocks, and yards of sodden absorbent boom bobbed in the water and lay coiled on the banks like bloated brown worms.
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