Some 70 barges of sediment from the Fondulac Park District's Spindler Marina were floated north, helping turn an old steel mill site into a verdant lakefront park. Our topsoil-turned-silt-turned-topsoil already appears to be working wonders in Chicago through the "mud to parks" initiative. Hopefully, the topsoil will yield attractive vegetation on 10 acres of the waste site. He followed truckloads of the stuff dredged from around EastPort Marina to another stop in Tazewell County, where it will top an old landfill. Marlin, who's been studying river sediment for years to determine its safety and chemical content, watched his labors bear fruit - soggy fruit - on Wednesday. For the spiritually inclined, consider it kismet that the silt ends up back on the land where it belongs, though it sure is a long and expensive trip to get it back to where it started. If central Illinois could dredge up more demand for its sediment, then some progress could be made on the dredging ultimately paying for itself.įrom a business perspective, everybody wins: Property owners get to spread nutrient-rich soil on their land, and area communities that rely on the river for recreation and commerce get reassurance that their most precious natural resource won't turn into a mud flat. But when it gets dredged, the river silt dries into some of the highest-quality topsoil in the world, says John Marlin, a senior scientist at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources' Waste Management and Research Center. The Illinois River is in perpetual need of costly dredging.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |