American Rivers, a national river conservation organization, named both the Chicago and Mississippi Rivers in its 2011 “America’s Most Endangered Rivers” report issued earlier this week. The list “…is a call to action for rivers at a crossroads, whose fates will be determined in the coming year.” For the Chicago River, the report highlights the 1.2 […]
Articles
Keep Mercury Pollution Out of Our Water: Public Hearing in Chicago on May 24th
Voice your support for stronger rules on air pollution from power plants After years of delays and court orders the EPA is making a strong stand for public health and wildlife, proposing new rules that would require large polluters to stop emitting mercury, arsenic, dioxins, and other air toxics from their smokestacks. Many of these pollutants, […]
USEPA Backs Cleaner Chicago River
New pollution standards will mean Chicago sewage gets disinfected On May 11th, the USEPA told Illinois EPA that if they don’t insist on tougher pollution standards for the Chicago River, the Cal-Sag Channel and the Little Calumet River “promptly,” then USEPA will do it for them. This news was greeted with agreement from various environmental […]
Flooding Problems Best Solved with Nature Protection
Here is a guest commentary by Dr. Stacy James, Water Resources Scientist with Prairie Rivers Network. The article was originally published on May 1, 2011, and is reproduced here by permission of The News-Gazette, Inc. _______________________________________ Tales of eroding streambanks and increased flooding have become all too familiar across Illinois. People are literally losing their land […]
In the News: Our Lawsuit Against Chicago’s Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Covered in Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune and many other news outlets covered our recent lawsuit against the Chicago Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) to stop the routine dumping of raw sewage and under-treated wastewater into the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. During heavy rains (anything more than 2/3 of an inch), the pipes that would normally send a […]
