This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
Illinois officials took possession last week of a 50-acre stretch of riverbed in the Des Plaines River near Joliet in a last-ditch effort to prevent an ecological disaster from reaching Lake Michigan.
The state plans to build a $1.15 billion barricade there, called the Brandon Road Interbasin Project, to keep the particularly voracious and invasive Asian carp from muscling past the channel that connects the Mississippi River Basin with the Great Lakes. The project is a joint effort between the U.S. Corp of Army Engineers, the state of Illinois and the state of Michigan.
But the state still needs to acquire more land along the riverbank to be able to build the barricade. It’s got its eye on a piece of land nearby where a coal-fired power plant once stood, but there’s a problem: The ground is contaminated by coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal to generate electricity that is known to cause cancer.
The extent of the pollution or its implication for public health is unknown. Midwest Generation, which ran the power plant and is donating the land, has refused to let anyone on the site before a deal is signed. But Illinois must remediate whatever land it acquires before turning it over to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to break ground on the project. The cost of that remediation is unknown.
This leaves Illinois stuck between two crises: The carp are perilously close to Lake Michigan, and the best chance of stopping them requires dealing with toxic pollution. But a key question remains: Who will be on the hook for that cleanup?
The longer the state waits to secure and clean up the site, the longer the carp have to infiltrate Lake Michigan and the waterways beyond, potentially wreaking havoc on the health of the Great Lakes and its multibillion dollar recreation economy. Just 40 miles separate the fish from the largest freshwater ecosystem on the planet. The planned underwater fortress will exploit a narrow stretch of the river where engineers want to install a suite of four barricades aimed at repelling the carp via electric shocks, acoustic blasts, bubble curtains, and a lock that can flush out the fish.
But this plan means coming to terms with a legacy of toxic pollution that almost certainly leaves taxpayers, not Midwest Generation, to reel in the mess it left behind.
Erik Lindon, a spokesperson for Midwest Generation, declined to comment on discussions regarding the property, citing an agreement with the state of Illinois.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker praised the company, which declared bankruptcy in 2012, for its “generous donation” of the 50-acre parcel, a deal that closed last week and is critical for the first phase of the Brandon Road project. The governor put the barrier project on hold in February, worried that the Trump administration would kill federal funding for it.
But the White House expressed wholehearted support for the effort this month. A letter obtained by WBEZ disclosed that on May 8, the Army Corps assured Illinois officials it had secured $100 million for the first phase of construction.
Pritzker’s office did not respond to a request for comment, but told WBEZ last year, “We are concerned that Illinois taxpayers are being asked to foot the bill for environmental remediation associated with construction of the Brandon Road project. There are many unanswered questions regarding the ultimate scope and cost of this work, and we would like to finalize a remediation plan before committing to pay for it.”
The term “invasive carp” is shorthand for four species native to China: bighead, black, grass, and silver carp. They were introduced to fish farms in the Southern United States in the 1970s to control algae. They escaped confinement about a decade after arriving and have since infiltrated the Mississippi River Basin. Research has shown that there are now more silver and bighead carp in stretches of the Illinois River than anywhere else in the world.
“It’s a carp factory,” said Cory Suski, a biologist and environmental scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign who has studied the carp for more than 10 years. “It’s hard to really put into words until you’ve seen thousands of carp in the air, jumping out of the water.”
Silver carp, known for their 10-foot leaps when disturbed, have made stretches of the river dangerous for boaters and fishermen. Below the surface, the fish — silver and bighead carp in particular — are disrupting the river ecosystem too. The hardy critters are voracious and grow quickly, leaving little food or habitat for native species like gizzard shad and bigmouth buffalo, both of which are in decline in areas where the fish are abundant.
Yet scientists say the carp’s once inexorable northward progress has stalled, at least for now, about 40 miles from Lake Michigan. Scientists suspect pollutants in Chicago’s treated wastewater that is released back into the waterways — though safe for humans within legal limits — may be repelling the fish.
“There’s something in the water,” said Austin Happel, a research biologist with the Shedd Aquarium. “There’s likely something unaccounted for that is keeping this specific group of fish from migrating further.”
Illinois officials have gotten creative as they’ve tried to curb the carp since they arrived in Illinois back in the 1990s. They have rebranded the swimmers as “copi” to spur demand among anglers and cooks. And have even funded all-out harvests, one of which removed as much as 750,000 pounds of the piscine pests on the riverfront of Starved Rock State Park. But these haven’t solved the problem.
Last year, the Corps worked out the agreement to build the barrier with financial support from Illinois and Michigan. The federal government agreed to cover 90% of the project’s long-term costs. Michigan pledged $30 million toward remediating the project site, but it could cost more. The state has no way to know the price of cleanup until it acquires the land along the riverbank.
Illinois has been aware of the contamination since 2010, when regulators started requiring groundwater monitoring of coal ash deposits. That led to the discovery of groundwater contamination at all four of Midwest Generation’s coal plants, including the Joliet site slated for the Brandon Road project.
The Sierra Club and several other organizations have waged a 13-year fight with the Illinois Pollution Control Board to compel Midwest Generation to clean up the sites. A year ago, “the Illinois Pollution Control Board indicated that Midwest Generation is indeed violating Illinois law at these four sites with its ash management and ash disposal practices,” said Faith Bugel, an attorney with Sierra Club. “Now we are in the remedy phase, where the board is deciding what remedy to put in place in response to the violations.”
Bugel and others remain concerned about who will be left to clean up the toxic pollution — and what it will ultimately cost.
