Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News
The Newsletter of the Great Lakes
Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund
Volume 11, Number 5 • Early Winter 2003
Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat NewsThe Newsletter of the Great Lakes
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By: Sandra L.Wilmore
On October 26, Save the Dunes Council honored U.S. Representative Peter J. Visclosky for outstanding service to the cause of preserving and protecting the Indiana Dunes. Visclosky was the Council's featured speaker at its annual dinner on October 28, and was surprised when presented with the Council's Paul H. Douglas Award. During his shoreline vision speech,Visclosky reminded the audience of their mission to keep Indiana's Lake Michigan shoreline open and called for renewed enthusiasm and determination to realize this goal.
Only two days later, Visclosky convened a press conference announcing that five Northwest Indiana mayors entered into a memorandum of understanding in which each of their cities will contribute $8,000 toward a $40,000 local match for a $160,000 Lake Michigan Coastal Grant. The $200,000 will be used to develop a feasibility study based on Visclosky’s vision for the shoreline that he originally proposed 18 years ago. Mayors from East Chicago, Whiting, Hammond, Gary, and Portage are supporting the plan, now called the Marquette Green Way.
The three goals of the plan are 1) to obtain free public access along 75 percent of the Lake Michigan shoreline between the Illinois state line and the east boundary of the city of Portage; 2) to require a minimum setback of 200 feet from the water for new buildings; and 3) to establish a continuous pedestrian and bicycle path along as much of the shoreline as possible.
Considered a wild-eyed idea by many when it was initially introduced, the plan is now considered favorably and quite timely. The steel industry has downsized and can now be productive without using all of its owned land. The unused land is a tax burden as well as a cleanup liability. Acquiring and cleaning up this land will be costly, but as Rep. Visclosky said,“if we do not seek this opportunity today, it will be lost forever.”
Save the Dunes, together with other environmental groups from the region, is anxious to help facilitate implementation of the Marquette Green Way. The goals will take time to achieve, but proponents are excited and motivated to build on the support that the proposal is generating to move the plan forward.
The Town of Pines is a small community located less than a mile inland from Lake Michigan and is adjacent to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Residents of the town and its surrounding area rely solely on individual groundwater wells for their drinking water. In April of 2000, results from random well testing conducted by the EPA and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management showed that several drinking water wells were contaminated with volatile organic compounds and metals. Residents' complaints that their water smelled like nail polish prompted the testing.With only 10% of the wells tested, residents insisted that accurate results could not be obtained until all the wells were tested.
The Town of Pines sits on an unconfined aquifer and the wells are located in a highly porous sand layer, down gradient from three landfills. One of the landfills, owned by Brown, Inc., accepted byproducts of coal combustion processes used by utility power plants. Other sources of contamination include fly ash, underground gasoline storage tanks, dredging spoils and unregulated junk and scrap yards. Northern Indiana Public Service Company’s (NIPSCO) Michigan City generating station has been identified as a source of fly ash. NIPSCO and Brown, Inc. have been named responsible parties.
The citizens of the Town of Pines founded the People in Need of Environmental Safety (PINES) in March 2002 in response to the discovery of the contaminated wells. Environmental groups Save the Dunes Council, Hoosier Environmental Council, and Clean Air Task Force, joined PINES to file a notice of intent to sue against the landfill owner. NIPSCO and Brown, Inc. have since entered into a consent order with the EPA to fund a $2 million water pipeline to provide about 30% of the homes with water.
The EPA has maintained that random testing provides a representation of the total contamination. After over a year of denied requests for further testing, PINES contracted for independent testing. The results show levels of boron in a previously untested well almost double what the EPA considers a long-term health risk. The EPA conducted their own additional tests, which preliminarily validated the independent tests, and PINES has renewed its call for comprehensive testing.
Sandra L. Wilmore |