Chicago is the only city in the nation that gets away with not chlorinating the discharge of its sewage treatment plants. As a result, the Little Cal and the Chicago River are two of the most polluted in the nation.
Obama's EPA, true to form, is now forcing them to disinfect the discharges.
This only solves one of two problems with these sewage treatment plants, and it is the easier problem to solve. The other problem is that, whenever it rains, these plants get overwhelmed by stormwater. They then discharge untreated sewage directly into rivers. These upgrades do nothing to solve that problem.
In Northwest Indiana, our sewage treatment plants have the same problem with stormwater. The solution is not cheap. Either build massive retention basins to hold stormwater until it can be properly treated (essentially what Chicago is doing with the "Deep Tunnel), or spend even more money to put storm sewers in all the old neighborhoods that now have combined sanitary/ storm sewer systems.
Munster has a couple of neighborhoods with combined sewers, and I read in the Town's monthly propaganda newsletter that they're spending millions this fall to put in new sewers in two of these neighborhoods.
Little by little, the problems get solved. One day, the Little Cal is going to be a huge recreational asset, instead of an open sewer.
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In Hammond they were using the casino money to redo the combined sewers, until a certain mayor decided that his kids needed new baseball fields all over the city. Now that he spent millions on ball fields and the casino money is starting to taper off where is he going to get the money to fix the sewers????
Hobart's working on separating the storm ans sewer systems, as ordered by the EPA or some alphabet agency. They're still doing their studies, but they will have to comply.
Munster's plan was to have this done for the whole town over 20 years ago. Ask the old timers living in Wicker Park area. Hluska won a campaign on promising and following through on this back in the 90s when he was on the Council. The project was for the streets west of Calumet and east of the old monon tracks.
The Feds will (or used to) give some matching money for seperation. But, Parks are more a priority for the Munster Town Council. I thought Munster was not trying to be like Hammond.
There is $1.5M missing out of the Hammond sanitation fund given to Munster for the project. Where did that go? Maybe Russ knows.
Keep drinking the kool-aid. :)
The Little Cal is going to become a huge recreational asset, are you on crack? Take a look around pal, small, shallow rivers crisscross the country and none of them are "huge recreational assets".
My buddy canoes the Little Cal. I see people on Hart Ditch with ladders and small docks for canoes. I think that it could be a recreational asset, yes, if it didn't have the stigma of being an open sewer.
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