For The First Time, Wastewater Being Disinfected Before It Enters Chicago River
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago on Friday celebrated the opening of the first of two disinfection plants designed to help clean up area rivers.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) called the opening of the disinfection facility at the Calumet Water Reclamation Plant along Lake Calumet an historic step. Chicago is the last major city in the nation to disinfect its treated waste water.
"This disinfection facility now brings Chicago into the civilized world, when it comes to the treatment of sewage, and the discharge," Durbin said.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 Administrator Susan Hedman told a story of kayaking on the city's rivers more than 20 years ago.
"What I didn't know is that I was kayaking in an effluent dominated waterway," she said. "I'm hoping maybe on Earth Day we can all go kayaking together on our newly disinfected river."
Friends of the Chicago River executive director Margaret Frisbie expressed even higher hopes for the rivers.
"It'll make the river safer for recreators, and brings us closer to our ultimate goal of swimming; and, yes, I am saying swimming," she said.
A second disinfection facility is under construction at the O'Brien Water Reclamation Plant in Skoie, using ultraviolet irradiation to disinfect water entering Chicago area rivers.
The MWRD already uses chlorine to disinfect wastewater at the Egan, Kirie, and Hanover park plants, which release sewage into the Des Plaines River. The capacity of those three also is far lower than O'Brien or Calumet. Combined, they treat less than a third of the sewage that either O'Brien or Calumet treat alone.
Calumet, O'Brien, and two other MWRD plants discharge into the Chicago River system, and until now, none had disinfected their wastewater. The Calumet plant serves more than 1 million people in a 300-square-mile area covering the South Side of Chicago and much of the southern suburbs. The O'Brien plant serves more than 1.3 million people in a 141-square-mile area covering most of the North Side, and the northern suburbs.
There are no plans yet for a disinfection facility at the Stickney treatment plant, the world's largest sewage treatment plant, which handles more wastewater than the rest of the MWRD system's treatment plants. The plant serves 2.4 million people in a 260-square-mile area, including the central part of Chicago, and 43 suburban communities.