Category: Ten Threats to the Great Lakes

Dozens of rivers and lakes in the Great Lakes region contain contaminated sediment. In the first of a three part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports on the severity of this problem facing the region:

Transcript

Dozens of rivers and lakes in the Great Lakes region contain contaminated sediment.
In the first of a three part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports on the severity of this problem facing the region.

(ambient sound – digging for worms)

A woman who only gives her name as Marsha is digging for worms along the shore of Muskegon Lake in Western Michigan. She says worms at the bait store are too expensive, so she comes out here every week or so to look under rocks and dig up night crawlers from the damp and silty soil on the lakefront.

(more ambient sound – more digging)

The Norton Shores resident says she fishes in the lake, and eats what she catches. While
she will eat the animals that live in Muskegon Lake, she says she has to be very careful
around the water. Marsha says she is seeing a doctor because of rashes and burning skin
that cropped up after spending too much time in the lake:

“I don’t stand in it anymore. I used to stand in it, but it was burning me, I was getting big burns. And then I started getting them on my hands. Now I have to wear gloves on my hands when I fish and touch the water.”

One possible reason for her skin troubles could be the massive amount of contaminated sediment in the waters – pollutants that have entered the lake over the past one hundred
years. Many of those pollutants settled in the sediment and silt that rests at the bottom of the lake, but some are also spread throughout the water itself. Muskegon Lake is one of 43 places that have been designated by the federal government as areas of concern in the Great Lakes Region. These toxic hot spots are bodies of water where pollutant levels are considered dangerous. Tanya Cabala is an activist with the White Lake Public Advisory Council, a citizens activist group trying to clean up contaminated sediment. She says years of Great Lakes residents allowing large industrial plants to locate right next to lakes and rivers is taking its toll.

“Where we live, we made some deliberate choices in past decades to chose jobs and development and those kinds of things over protecting the environment. There was the attitude that you couldn’t have both.”

Cabala says a major focus for her group is to educate people on the dangers of toxic
sediment in the Great Lakes region. Amy Mucha is an analyst with the U.S. EPA. She
says levels of PCB’s, mercury and dioxins pose many long-term health risks to people
who eat the fish or drink the water from these areas, or even come in contact with the
water.

“Impairment of reproductive ability, we have seen some of that in monkey studies. There have actually been some studies of children in the Great Lakes area in Michigan showing that women who ate contaminated fish out of the Great Lakes – their children had reduced IQ, children had reading difficulties and other kinds of learning difficulties.”

Mucha says since many of the health problems caused by polluted sediment take years to
manifest themselves in people, it is difficult to convince the public that there is an immediate need to fix the problem. The federal government has known about toxic sediment problems for more than fifteen years. That’s how long ago Congress first designated the Areas of Concern. Scott Cieniawski is with the U.S. EPA’s Great Lakes Office. He says since then, only one million cubic yards of sediment have been dredged from the Great Lakes toxic hot spots. That’s less than two percent of the estimated total of sixty million cubic yards of polluted sediment. Cieniawski says there is still a lot of work to do and projects to fund.

“We have to find a way to start coordinating at all levels and get the funding and get the technical people involved and actually start cleaning up. Because I think we know where the contamination is for the most part, and now its time to go get it.”

But Cieniawski says now could be a turning point in the battle to remove toxic sediment.
He says the research is done and an opportunity exists for a major effort to begin taking
action. But dredging toxic sediment sites faces many problems. Companies that are often responsible for the contamination are fighting efforts to clean the sites in an attempt to avoid the blame and cost involved. And the numerous layers of government agencies are contributing to a very fragmented, and often under funded, effort to solve this problem that still plagues many bodies of water in the Great Lakes region. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

Contaminated sediment is a major problem in the Great Lakes region. Dozens of lakes and rivers are lined with sediment full of chemicals that are killing plants and animals and poisoning area residents. In the second part of our series on contaminated sediment, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports on some of the major obstacles facing those who want to clean up the toxic hot spots:

Transcript

Contaminated sediment is a major problem in the Great Lakes region. Dozens of lakes and rivers are lined with sediment full of chemicals that are killing plants and animals and poisoning area residents. In the second part of our series on contaminated sediment, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports on some of the major obstacles facing those that want to clean up the toxic hot spots.

(ambient sound – White Lake)

It is a clear and cool day on the shores of White Lake in Western Michigan. While
the crisp wind and blue waters may make this lake seem clean and clear, this is one of the
43 areas of concern in the Great Lakes region – places the federal government has designated as containing dangerously high levels of pollutants. Even with that government designation, there is not always a consensus that there is a problem at a particular location. Rick Rediske is with Grand Valley State University, and has studied dozens of contaminated sediment sites. He says while pollution standards have been set for water and soil, there are no standards for defining contaminated sediment. He says since there are no rules on how many parts per million of pollutants like mercury or lead are acceptable in sediment, there is not a definitive answer to basic questions about the safety of a body of water.

“You can put together reasons why you think there’s a concern about the
sediment contamination, and somebody else can look at it too and put together a totally
contrary position by looking at other factors and twisting them a bit. So there is a lot of
wiggle room when you are operating in a situation where there is no numerical criteria.”

That means a company that has been polluting a lake or other body of water for years can
mount a reasonable defense to avoid blame for contaminated sediment – and in turn avoid
paying for the clean ups that often total tens of millions of dollars. Rediske says he
doubts there will ever be standards on polluted sediment levels because the material’s
very makeup is so complex. Michael Palermo is a contaminated sediment expert with
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He says for years, researchers have focused on ways
to clean up polluted air, water, and soil.

“But sediments don’t really fall clearly into any of those categories. There are aspects related to all three of them, and so magnitude of the problem and the nature of the problem, I like to think of it almost as a fourth environmental medium.”

Coming to a consensus on what areas are contaminated is just the first of many hurdles
that must be overcome before a site can be cleaned. Then communities have to decide how to
treat the contaminated area. Options include putting down a cap over the polluted area,
dredging and removing the sediment, and removing the pollutants from the sediment while it is
at the bottom of the lake or river. Each method has advantages and disadvantages, and there
can often be a protracted fight over which method is best for a particular site. One of the
most recent examples is the Hudson River. General Electric, which legally dumped PCB’s into
the Hudson until the late 1970’s, has fought for several years the possibility of dredging
portions of the river. GE officials claim the PCBs are now locked up in the river sediment, and dredging will only serve to release those chemicals back into the water. The EPA however recently ordered limited dredging, saying methods that would contain the PCBs in place would not work. GE continues to fight that decision. Even when a community can agree that an area needs to be cleaned, and agrees on a method to do it, there is the issue of money. Those groups often look to the government for help, and are often disappointed. Cameron Wilson is a staff member for Michigan Congressman Vern Ehlers.

“There are federal resources for dealing with contaminated sediment. But the issue from a nationwide perspective is so vast and issue is controversial and complex that I don’t think we have begun to scratch the surface on what we need.”

Wilson says Ehlers, along with other members of Congress in the Great Lakes region plan to reintroduce legislation to specifically fund cleaning contaminated sediment sites in the Great Lakes. Meanwhile, many of the funding problems could perhaps be solved if there were a cheaper way to remove contaminated sediment from lakes and rivers. A new Illinois Company may be headed in that direction. Peoria Dredging LLC is a new company that is developing a non-hydraulic dredger and sediment transportation system.

But this new technology is in its infancy. The new company hopes to have a full sized
prototype ready for testing in two years. Company officials say the success of the project is also dependent on federal funds to help development. The same federal funds that many
Great Lakes communities would like to see used to clean toxic hot spots with technology that
already exists. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.

The Canadian government is releasing money to clean up some problem areas in the Great Lakes. Although Canada now spends millions of dollars a year on overall cleanup, this additional money would be targeted specifically toward the cleanup of highly polluted areas known as hot spots. It’s probably not a surprise that some environmentalists in Canada don’t think it’s enough money. But the U.S. government also wants Canada to come up with more money to clean up pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The Canadian government is releasing money to cleanup some
pollution hot spots in the Great Lakes. It’s probably not a surprise
that some environmentalists in Canada don’t think it’s enough
money. But the U.S. government also wants Canada to come up with
more money to clean up pollution. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham Reports.

Canada’s environment minister David Anderson recently announced
the equivalent of more than twenty million U.S. dollars would be
available to communities to clean up several badly polluted areas
in the Great Lakes over a five year period. The program is called the
Great Lakes sustainability fund. John Shaw is the manager of the
fund. He says this is extra money to be used to clean up 16 pollution
hot spots called “areas of concern.”

“So we fully expect to be allocating resources across all of the
‘Areas of Concern,’ working with the municipalities and the province to improve sewage
treatment plant effluent, control stormwater and combined sewer overflows, rehabilitate fish and
wildlife habitat, as well as work with the landowners in watersheds and that would include
agricultural operations to improve their environmental quality and how they manage things.”

While other money will be spent on the lakes. The Great Lakes
Sustainability Fund is the bulk of environment Canada’s efforts to
clean up the nation’s heavily polluted “areas of concern” in the
Great Lakes.

Environmentalists in Canada say the money is long overdue. They
point out this is not new money but replacement money. John
Bennett is with the Sierra Club Canada. He says the 20-million
dollars restores funds that were cut by parliament in the mid-1990’s.

“It’s a very good sign to see that Mr. Anderson and the federal
government is now getting back into funding this work. It’s really up to the
provincial government now to get in and match the fund.”

Bennett says 20-million dollars is nice but really it’s just a drop in
the Great Lakes.

“It’s still not enough to meet the problems. You know, the
Great Lakes is the most important body of water in North America and Canada is
willing to spend 20-million dollars U.S. to keep it clean? I don’t think it’s enough.”

But the Canadian government says its Great Lakes Sustainability
Fund is just the start. The fund’s manager, John Shaw, says matching
money from municipal and provincial governments can triple the
amount to be spent on pollution cleanup in the “areas of concern.”

“I guess there’s always a desire to have more, but I think the
important thing with the Fund is that we can fund approximately a third of
the project and look for two-thirds of the funding from the other partnerships.”

Across the border meanwhile…the US government would like to see
the Canadian government pay a lot more for cleanup of the “areas
of concern.” While the Canadian federal government is putting up 20-
million dollars over five years. The Environmental Protection
Agency is asking for two-and-a half times that much each year to
clean up the pollution hot spots on the U.S. side of the border. Carol
Browner is the EPA’s administrator.

“We would welcome any financial-enhanced commitment that
Canada would make in this arena. I think that it is clear that the
United States has been leading the way in terms of financial commitment,
seeking in just one budget year alone an additional 50-million dollars for cleanup
in the Great Lakes. We would like to see an equal partnership.”

However before Browner will boast too much about the US money
to clean up the “areas of concern”. She points out congress has not
approved it and, in fact, its future doesn’t look good.

Meanwhile an organization that represents the eight Great Lakes
states says the 20-million over five years from Canada and the
proposed 50-million a year from the US should only be viewed as a
first step to cleanup the Great Lakes’ problem spots. Michael
Donahue is the executive director of the
Great Lakes Commission.

“I think we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought that this was a
one-time fix. I think what it is a, uh— should be viewed, hopefully, as
the first of many commitments to work in partnership with the provinces and
with the U.S. state and federal governments to get the job done over a period of time.”

In fact just last month a commission that monitors whether the US
and Canadian governments are keeping their commitments to a
water quality agreement between the two nations reported the two
governments had to step up their efforts. It warned if they don’t
there can be little hope of fully restoring and protecting The
Lakes.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.