A Toxic River Improves, but Still Has Far to Go

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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U.S. Still Waits for Access to Bin Laden Widows

Pakistan has not yet allowed American investigators access to the widows, nor shared their own interrogation report, a Pakistani security official said Tuesday. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with the rules of his organization.

The Obama administration demanded access to the women, who appear to have been in hiding with Bin Laden for years, and an American official said that Pakistan had promised to comply.

Yet the women may not prove to be the mine of information that some suppose because they led such cloistered lives, officials and analysts say. In line with the strict code of Islam followed by Bin Laden, they never met men outside their immediate family and were not informed by Bin Laden of any of his business or operational dealings.

The widows, along with the Pakistani wife of Bin Laden’s trusted courier, and a number of children detained at the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad remain in the hands of the Pakistani security forces, who have controlled the flow of information about them.

There are conflicting reports as to how many there are and who they are. Initial reports indicated that 12 women and children were in the compound; it now appears that there were as many as 17.

Some information given by intelligence officials appears intended to cast doubt on the account of the raid as presented by American officials; none has been independently verified.

Pakistani security officials, asking to remain anonymous, say that along with the widows — two from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen — there were 13 children, 8 of them related to Bin Laden.

The fourth woman, a Pakistani who was wounded in the raid, indicated to officials who first arrived at the compound that her husband had been killed, said Asad Munir, a retired brigadier and former intelligence service official. Her husband appears to have been Arshad Khan, Bin Laden’s trusted courier, who owned the compound and protected him for more than five years.

Bin Laden’s widows have been identified as Um Hamza, or Mother of Hamza, whose real name is Khairiah Sabar, and is from Jidda in Saudi Arabia; Um Khalid, or Mother of Khalid, whose name is Siham, and is from Medina in Saudi Arabia; and the youngest, a Yemeni, Amal al-Saddah, 29. Her passport names her as Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah.

Bin Laden’s daughter with Ms. Saddah, Safia, who is 12 or 13 years old, is also reported to have been present and even to have witnessed the shooting of her father. Officials have also said that there is a 5-year-old son of Bin Laden and that four of the children are his grandchildren by a daughter killed in an airstrike in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

One of his sons was killed in the raid, but reports have named him variously as Hamza or Khalid, both of whom were born in the same year from different wives and would be 22 years old.

Bin Laden has been married five times, according to a book, “Growing Up bin Laden,” written by his fourth son, Omar bin Laden, in collaboration with the American author Jean Sasson and his mother, Najwa bin Laden, Bin Laden’s first wife and cousin.

In answers to e-mailed questions forwarded by Ms. Sasson, Omar bin Laden said his father kept his wives, and often his children, sequestered in the house.

His mother, Najwa, would sneak into the garden when Osama bin Laden was away, warning the children not to tell their father she had dared step outside the house. The children, too, rarely were permitted to go outside. Omar bin Laden said his saddest memories were of being locked in their home in Jidda and staring out at all the other children who were allowed to play.

Najwa and Omar had long wondered whether Osama bin Laden’s two Saudi wives were with him in hiding, and only from reports of the American assault undertaken by a Navy Seals team did they learn that they were. Omar said he was sad that his half-brother Khalid was killed in the raid, though he said he had little in common with Khalid and had seen him rarely.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Scott Shane from Washington.

U.S. Still Waits for Access to Bin Laden Widows

Pakistan has not yet allowed American investigators access to the widows, nor shared their own interrogation report, a Pakistani security official said Tuesday. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with the rules of his organization.

The Obama administration demanded access to the women, who appear to have been in hiding with Bin Laden for years, and an American official said that Pakistan had promised to comply.

Yet the women may not prove to be the mine of information that some suppose because they led such cloistered lives, officials and analysts say. In line with the strict code of Islam followed by Bin Laden, they never met men outside their immediate family and were not informed by Bin Laden of any of his business or operational dealings.

The widows, along with the Pakistani wife of Bin Laden’s trusted courier, and a number of children detained at the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad remain in the hands of the Pakistani security forces, who have controlled the flow of information about them.

There are conflicting reports as to how many there are and who they are. Initial reports indicated that 12 women and children were in the compound; it now appears that there were as many as 17.

Some information given by intelligence officials appears intended to cast doubt on the account of the raid as presented by American officials; none has been independently verified.

Pakistani security officials, asking to remain anonymous, say that along with the widows — two from Saudi Arabia and one from Yemen — there were 13 children, 8 of them related to Bin Laden.

The fourth woman, a Pakistani who was wounded in the raid, indicated to officials who first arrived at the compound that her husband had been killed, said Asad Munir, a retired brigadier and former intelligence service official. Her husband appears to have been Arshad Khan, Bin Laden’s trusted courier, who owned the compound and protected him for more than five years.

Bin Laden’s widows have been identified as Um Hamza, or Mother of Hamza, whose real name is Khairiah Sabar, and is from Jidda in Saudi Arabia; Um Khalid, or Mother of Khalid, whose name is Siham, and is from Medina in Saudi Arabia; and the youngest, a Yemeni, Amal al-Saddah, 29. Her passport names her as Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah.

Bin Laden’s daughter with Ms. Saddah, Safia, who is 12 or 13 years old, is also reported to have been present and even to have witnessed the shooting of her father. Officials have also said that there is a 5-year-old son of Bin Laden and that four of the children are his grandchildren by a daughter killed in an airstrike in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

One of his sons was killed in the raid, but reports have named him variously as Hamza or Khalid, both of whom were born in the same year from different wives and would be 22 years old.

Bin Laden has been married five times, according to a book, “Growing Up bin Laden,” written by his fourth son, Omar bin Laden, in collaboration with the American author Jean Sasson and his mother, Najwa bin Laden, Bin Laden’s first wife and cousin.

In answers to e-mailed questions forwarded by Ms. Sasson, Omar bin Laden said his father kept his wives, and often his children, sequestered in the house.

His mother, Najwa, would sneak into the garden when Osama bin Laden was away, warning the children not to tell their father she had dared step outside the house. The children, too, rarely were permitted to go outside. Omar bin Laden said his saddest memories were of being locked in their home in Jidda and staring out at all the other children who were allowed to play.

Najwa and Omar had long wondered whether Osama bin Laden’s two Saudi wives were with him in hiding, and only from reports of the American assault undertaken by a Navy Seals team did they learn that they were. Omar said he was sad that his half-brother Khalid was killed in the raid, though he said he had little in common with Khalid and had seen him rarely.

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Scott Shane from Washington.