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Saturday, January 26, 2008
Environment - "Grand Calumet River dredge job completed"
Gitte Laasby, environmental reporter for the Gary Post-Tribune, reported Friday in a story that began:
GARY -- U.S. Steel Gary Works has completed its dredging of the Grand Calumet River, removing an estimated 38,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment from a 6,300-foot stretch of the river.The Grand Cal dredging was on the table over 20 years ago, when I worked briefly at IDEM, Here are a number of ILB entries going back to 2004 mentioning the Grand Cal cleanup.Company representatives announced at a meeting Thursday night that a hydraulic dredging machine completed the job on Dec. 6. That date marked the end of the second part of a $30 million government-ordered dredging project of a 5-mile stretch of the river.
The company had already removed several hundred cubic yards of sediment containing PCBs, heavy metals, benzene, oil and grease, but the initial cleanup wasn't good enough.
The U.S. Department of Justice ordered the cleanup in 1998 because U.S. Steel Gary Works had violated the Clean Water Act and a court agreement by illegally discharging contaminated wastewater for years.
Although sampling reports have yet to be approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Steel is sure it's done this time.
"Most surely, this time all the material has, indeed, been removed," said Rick Menozzi, U.S. Steel director of environmental remediation.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 26, 2008 12:56 PM
Posted to Environment