By Gitte Laasby, Post-Tribune staff writer
A $1 million study intended to help figure out how to lower the level of mercury in the Grand Calumet River is still not complete, at least three years after the state's original deadline.
Because of staff turnover, nobody at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management was able to answer when work on the study started, what exactly has been done so far and how much taxpayer money has been spent -- in cash or staff time.
IDEM's study is supposed to determine the maximum amount of mercury the Grand Calumet River can receive while still meeting water quality standards. The results would then be used to determine how much industry and municipalities would need to reduce their mercury discharges.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sampled the water and put together a water quality model, industries and municipalities supplied lab results, and local environmental groups donated their time.
But the data were never processed into a final report. Instead, four boxes of material are collecting dust at IDEM headquarters.
IDEM spokesman Steve Polston said although the agency is required to do the study, it can prioritize when to do it.
"We don't feel the urgency to do this right now," Polston said. "We get to decide when to do it based on an understanding of our own resources with staff and abilities."
Meanwhile, the Indiana State Department of Health continues to advise people not to eat any fish from the Grand Calumet River.
Pollution study languishes
Five years after the federal government found mercury levels in some parts of the Grand Calumet River at up to 13 times higher than standards allowed, an Indiana Department of Environmental Management study of pollution there continues to languish.
IDEM was tasked to determine the maximum amount of mercury the river can receive while still meeting water quality standards. Yet years after it was ordered, little has come of the $1 million study.
State priorities
Until IDEM knows the biggest sources of mercury in the river, the agency is unable to prioritize which of the discharging facilities to target for reductions to get the most bang for the buck, said Kathy Luther, former coordinator of the mercury study for IDEM.
"If you don't know where the priority of a pollutant is, you can throw a lot of money at one source and still not solve the problem," said Luther, who now works as the director of environmental management for the Northwestern Indiana Regional Planning Commission.
Luther said she believes the original deadline was 2004, but IDEM also had to do studies for pollutants in the other water bodies. "They have like a 15-year schedule. It's up to the state how they prioritize that schedule. IDEM wanted to do the easier ones first."
A letter obtained by the Post-Tribune written by IDEM Commissioner John Hamilton on March 15, 1999, states the Clean Water Act requires the state to conduct the study over "the next 15 year period."
Data growing old
Lynne Whelan, public affairs officer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the Corps submitted a draft of its data and recommendations on how to meet water quality goals to IDEM in 2001.
"This, we think, is a closed-out project. We don't even work on it anymore," she said. "It was probably completed and turned back over, given to IDEM. What IDEM did with it, only they could tell you."
Save the Dunes Executive Director Tom Anderson questioned how IDEM can issue wastewater permits to plants discharging into the Grand Calumet River -- from U.S. Steel to municipalities -- without knowing what reductions are needed to comply with Indiana law.
He said that without the study, IDEM is unable to convince dischargers that mercury reduction measures would make a difference.
While IDEM couldn't answer when the study started or how much it cost so far, Anderson said the agency previously provided written estimates of $1,050,000 to a mercury work group he was a member of. Not completing the study "would waste a considerable amount of public and private money," he said.
"It's always a concern when you spend so much money and don't get anything done," Anderson said.
The data are a snapshot of discharges at a certain time and become obsolete, he said. "At what point will anyone say, 'The data's so old it's not active,'" he said. "We collect data. Now it's not timely. We spend our money and spin our wheels."
IDEM: Wait and see
Martha Clark Mettler, deputy assistant commissioner of IDEM's office of water quality, said the agency isn't planning to finish the study at the moment but that the data collection may not have been in vain.
"We decided to wait and see what the dredging would do before proceeding with the (study). It completely changes the dynamics there," Mettler said. "We're not planning to do a (study) at this time. It might be appropriate later."
A 2005 report on mercury in the Grand Calumet River by the U.S. Department of Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey pointed out that "data are needed to determine the proportional inputs of mercury to the Grand Calumet River/Indiana Harbor Canal from all the sources that contribute."
The report pointed out that IDEM's study "if developed" could be used to limit mercury discharges from permitted facilities and achieve the Indiana water-quality standard.
According to the report, water discharged from municipal facilities had higher mercury concentration than water from industries.
By lowering the mercury concentration from municipal plants, the total amount of mercury going into the river could be lowered, the study said. As much as one-fifth of the mercury in the river may have come from groundwater discharges and may not be controllable.