For as long as many area residents can remember, the St. Louis River has been a place to avoid for recreational purposes. Due to past industrial activity, the St. Louis River has been labeled as an Area of Concern since the 1980s.
Efforts to remove contaminated sediment from the waterway have been underway for decades, and that work is now coming to a successful conclusion. "There's one habitat project remaining," says Anne Vogel, Regional Administrator for the EPA (Region 5). "It'll be a little bit of dredging left to do, otherwise the contamination and the sediment has been addressed."
The process for removing contaminated sediment (1.9 million cubic yards of which have been removed) is not an easy one. "For every section of every contaminated river we have design phase, we know exactly what the contaminates are, we know exactly what needs to get done," says Vogel. The water is now in a much better state to support the health of fish and wildlife, and it's better for human recreational use as well.
More information about the St. Louis River clean-up and other Areas of Concern around the Great Lakes can be found online through the EPA website.
You can hear Green Visions at 8:20am every Wednesday on Northland Morning.
