Grand Calumet River
Legacy Act Grand Calumet River Cleanup gets Underway
Open House Dec. 3
You are invited to an open house about the West Branch Grand Calumet River Great Lakes Legacy Act Project
Hammond, Indiana
3 – 7PM Thursday, Dec 3
Hammond Public Library
564 State St. /more/
(pdf, 1 p. 1Kb)
This stretch of the West Branch Grand Calumet River appears
picturesque, but the river sediment is highly contaminated.
A new Great Lakes Legacy Act project will remove 91,000
cubic yards of polluted sediment followed by capping of the
river bottom.
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its state of Indiana partner
agencies have begun work on a two- to three-year undertaking to dredge
sediment from a heavily polluted one-mile stretch of the West Branch Grand
Calumet River in Hammond. This is a very unique region as it is one of the
most industrialized areas in the country as well as home to some of the most
diverse native plant and animal communities in the Great Lakes Basin.
The $31.1 million project is being funded under the Great Lakes Legacy
Act (GLLA). The Act provides federal money that along with local matching
dollars are used to clean up polluted sediment (mud) along the U.S. shores
and waterways of the Great Lakes. EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Indiana Department of Environmental
Management (IDEM), Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) and
Hammond Sanitary District are cooperating in the project. The West Branch
Grand Cal work calls for the removal of about 82,000 cubic yards of polluted
sediment followed by the placement of a cap over the dredged area. The
sediment contains pollutants such as PCBs and PAHs (polychlorinated
biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), heavy metals, and
pesticides.
![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
