Echo

Cleaner river = global warming?

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – Chicago is the only major U.S. city that doesn’t disinfect its sewage, and the agency that treats its wastewater has a new reason for opposing the idea: It’s bad for the environment. Engineers with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago recently completed an in-house study of its carbon footprint at the request of the elected board of commissioners. Going beyond the assignment, they also decided to look at how the footprint would change if it had to kill bacteria in sewage before pouring it into the Chicago River. More

Water

Lake Erie and Ohio River are designated waterways

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(OH) Cleveland Plain Dealer – The Ohio River and Lake Erie have been designated Marine Highway Corridors to promote the use of waterways to move people and freight and ease congestion on roads and rail lines. “Ohio has 716 navigable miles of waterways, and they are utilized at 30 percent of the capacity,” ODOT spokesman Scott Varner said. “There is so much room for growth. Ohio is really a maritime state despite what people think.” More

Echo

Freighters making progress

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(MI) Port Huron Herald – Freighters are continuing their way down the St. Clair River and into Lake St. Clair, said “Freighter” Frank Frisk, a maritime consultant at the Great Lakes Maritime Center. Nine freighters were at a standstill in Lake Huron until this morning due to an ice jam in the river near Algonac and Harsens Island. More

Echo

Down river pollutants hurt chances for harbor dredging funds

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(MI) Grand Rapids Press – Hopes to get $1 million or more for dredging have been washed away because Kalamazoo Harbor is at the wrong end of the river, a Superfund cleanup site. Mark Bekken, a member of the harbor’s master plan committee, told Saugatuck’s City Council that that a consulting firm has advised that it probably won’t get any funding because the harbor is downstream from pollutants at Kalamazoo. More

Echo

A hole in the St. Clair River

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(MI) Detroit Free Press – The so-called hole in the St. Clair River, which carries water from Lake Huron down into Lake St. Clair, is definitely big enough to merit filling, although the fix would surely be more technologically sophisticated than that. Nonetheless, the recommendation of a study group — that their findings be incorporated into a much larger study of the lakes — is probably sound. The St.

Water

Dam removal ready — on paper

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(MI) Traverse City Record-Eagle – Local officials approved plans to remove three former hydroelectric dams on the river — Brown Bridge Dam owned by Traverse City, and Sabin and Boardman dams owned by Grand Traverse County. The decisions came early this year after a multi-year public study by the Boardman River Dams Committee wrapped at the end of 2008. The committee offered two primary and opposing recommendations that paralleled community opinions: Some wanted the dams removed and touted a free-flowing river with improved fishery and recreational opportunities, while others wanted the structures left intact to preserve water impoundments and perhaps return the dams to use as power generators. More

Echo

Paper companies’ case to pay for Fox River PCB cleanup thrown out

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(WI) Green Bay Press Gazette – A federal judge on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit filed by papermakers Appleton Papers Inc. and NCR Corp. to diffuse the $1 billion to $1.5 billion cost of cleaning up PCB contamination in the Fox River. The sweeping action by U.S. District Judge William Griesbach canceled a Jan. 4 trial on the issue and raised questions about whether the two companies will bear the entire burden of the massive cleanup. More

Echo

Blueprint for maintaining a healthy Huron River accepted

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(MI) AnnArbor.com – The Ann Arbor City Council unanimously agreed tonight to accept the Huron River and Impoundment Management Plan, a new blueprint for taking care of the Huron River – the primary source of drinking water for city residents. By its action, the City Council formally accepted 30 consensus recommendations from the HRIMP report that were endorsed by both the Environmental Commission and Parks Advisory Commission. More

Echo

Ottawa River cleanup nears

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(OH) Toledo Blade – Crews are days away from mobilizing for the Ottawa River’s historic $43 million restoration effort. First up will be dredging of Sibley Creek, an Ottawa River tributary.  

That will take about a month and will involve removal of 15,000 cubic yards of sediment, according to Scott Cieniawski, an environmental engineer in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest regional office in Chicago. More