Grand Calumet River cleanup

Legacy Act links

Contacts

Great Lakes Legacy Act
Marc Tuchman (tuchman.marc@epa.gov)
312-353-1369

Grand Calumet River Cleanup
Scott Ireland (ireland.scott@epa.gov)
312-886-8121

Fact Sheets

Legacy Act Grand Calumet River Cleanup gets Underway (PDF) (2pp, 591K About PDF) December 2009

Legacy Act project targets Grand Calumet River (PDF) (2pp, 574K About PDF) October 2008

Grand Calumet River - Indiana

(updated November 2011)

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Indiana Departments of Environmental Management and Natural Resources have recently completed the sediment remediation of 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. This project (phase I) resulted in the removal of just under 55,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment followed by the placement of a cap, or isolation barrier, covering approximately 94,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment. The result is the effective remediation of just under 150,000 cubic yards of sediment contaminated with pollutants such as PCBs and PAHs (polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), heavy metals, and pesticides.

This $31.1 million phase of the project was funded under the Great Lakes Legacy Act (GLLA). The U.S EPA provided 65% of the funds for this project under the Act with The State of Indiana contributing 35 percent of the project cost using Natural Resources Damage Assessment funds. EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) were cooperating partners in this effort.