Pollution hot spots including toxic dumping grounds that still feed into Lake Michigan are among the sites that stand to benefit from a $1 billion boost in funding for cleaning up the Great Lakes.
The additional funds for Great Lakes restoration from the bipartisan infrastructure plan will largely bankroll work at some of the most contaminated sites throughout the region, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.
“This investment will be a game-changer in the effort to clean up pollution that has poisoned local drinking water and threatened the health of communities,” Laura Rubin, director of the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition, said in a statement.
The funding will directly support 11 sites listed as “areas of concern,” including the Grand Calumet River in northwest Indiana. The Grand Calumet, which includes the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal, still hosts sediment containing likely carcinogens, heavy metals and various toxins that threaten humans and wildlife — and flows into Lake Michigan.
In 1987, the United States and Canada designated 43 sites as “areas of concern,” with 31 in the United States. Criticism of the slow cleanup pace dates back decades, as years went by after the designations without any of the hot spots officially making it off the list. Six sites have been delisted to date.
In the Grand Calumet, work could be complete between 2027 and 2030, according to Thursday’s announcement, making the site one of 22 out of the remaining 25 in the United States to reach that milestone by the end of the decade. The Grand Calumet could be officially delisted, at the earliest, in 2031.
Waukegan Harbor, Illinois’ only area of concern, is being monitored following a 30-year, $150 million cleanup effort. The site could be delisted between now and 2026.
The additional funds put toward the degraded sites “will allow for a major acceleration of progress,” according to Thursday’s news release.
With the midterm elections ahead, President Joe Biden highlighted the Great Lakes funding during a Thursday visit to Lorain, Ohio — a state with three areas still listed — with EPA Administrator Michael Regan.
“The Great Lakes are a vital economic engine and an irreplaceable environmental wonder, supplying drinking water for more than 40 million people, supporting more than 1.3 million jobs, and sustaining life for thousands of species,” Regan said in the news release.
As part of the bipartisan infrastructure plan, the additional $1 billion in funding across five years was included for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a program implemented in 2010 that has since supported more than 6,000 projects to address problems from industrial pollution and habitat loss to toxic algae blooms and invasive species.
More detailed information on project funding is expected in the coming months.
The billion-dollar investment can ideally free up funds to tackle more projects on the Great Lakes, said Don Jodrey, director of Federal Government Relations with the nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes. Areas of concern have received a share of annual funding, but, Jodrey said, “It’s expensive to clean up legacy pollution.”
“We’re at a point where we’re nearing the end of the major cleanup,” he said. “That’s my hope.”
State and local officials said the investment was an important step toward protecting the Great Lakes and communities affected by environmental injustice. The EPA said the $1 billion will be distributed in line with the Biden administration initiative to deliver at least 40% of benefits from major federal investments to underserved communities.
In a statement, Waukegan Mayor Ann Taylor said the city is “an environmental justice community of nearly 90,000 residents on the shores of Lake Michigan.” Delisting will support redevelopment and “ensure a future with clean water for the benefit of our community and, ultimately, the entire Great Lakes region,” Taylor said.
The three hot spots with work remaining past 2030 include the Kalamazoo River and the Saginaw River and Bay in Michigan, and the St. Lawrence River in New York.
At Waukegan Harbor, more than 100,000 cubic yards of PCB-laden sediment was dredged up at the site of the former Outboard Marine Corp. PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, are linked to cancer, among other serious health effects, and can stick around long after they’re released into the environment.
Candace May, Lake County outreach coordinator for Faith in Place, an environmental justice nonprofit that aims to bring together people of diverse faiths, said seeing Waukegan Harbor finally delisted will hopefully mitigate some harm that’s been done to neighboring communities of color.
And it might give a greater piece of mind when stepping into the water on hot summer days.
“I think it’s not going to fix everything but it’s a step in the right direction,” May said. “There has to be restoration. There can no longer be, oh, I’m sorry, here’s a Band-Aid.”
As for the overall effort, May said anti-racism efforts are becoming part of the national consciousness.
“It’s the right thing to do,” May said. “It should’ve been done long ago.”
Officials were expected to gather Friday in Waukegan to mark the investment.
“For so many years, corporations abused the lake in Waukegan to the detriment of the people who live in Waukegan and the general area,” said Illinois U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider. “It will be good for the people living there. It will be good for the local businesses.”
The Grand Calumet River will be a heavier lift. The industrial dumping ground was found to house toxic PCBs and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, along with heavy metals including mercury and lead, and oily muck. An Army Corps official deemed the mixture “sediments from hell” in a 1993 Tribune story on the pollution.
