A view of the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal near the confined disposal facility in East Chicago is shown. Staff photo by Sarah Reese
EAST CHICAGO — The ongoing effort to remove sediment from the Indiana Harbor Ship Canal is on pause for three years, an official said.
Approximately 1.7 million cubic yards of sediment has been dredged from the canal since the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began overseeing dredging operations in 2012.
Henry Rodriguez, the East Chicago City Council's appointee to the city's Waterway Management District, said the Army Corps completed its dredging for 2020 on Dec. 13.
"Approximately 126,000 cubic yards of sediment was removed," Rodriguez said.
But that will be the extent of dredging in the IHSC for some time due to a lack of room to hold the sediment in a confined disposal facility (CDF) located on land north of the canal at 3500 Indianapolis Blvd.
"The Corps is in the process of raising the dikes on the CDF," said Fernando Treviño, executive director for the East Chicago Waterway Management District. "So basically they're going to be building it higher."
Treviño said the current dike walls are about 21 feet high and that construction — forecast to begin this year and completed by 2023 — will add about another 11 feet to the CDF.
Treviño said the current CDF capacity is 2.4 million cubic yards of sediment, and it is expected to hold twice that amount once construction is finished.
"After the dikes are raised then the maintenance dredging will begin in 2024," Treviño said.
Before the dredging project that began in 2012, the IHSC had not been dredged since 1972.
That was due to the lack of a disposal facility to hold contaminated sediment, which the addition of the CDF addressed.
Treviño said the groundwater on the outside of the CDF is 2 feet higher than the inside of the CDF.
"So if there's any flowing through the walls it'll be inward," Treviño said.
He said sediment accumulates due to wave and boat action, and the idea behind the dredging is to create a deeper canal so those who use the waterway for transportation of goods can use barges with a higher capacity.
The ECWMD, created in 1994 to supervise the commercial, industrial and recreational development of East Chicago waterways, also oversees a project that seeks to clean up the Grand Calumet River and the Lake George Canal.
Contaminants such as arsenic, cyanide, E. coli, PCBS, lead, pesticides and oil have all been detected through past testing of East Chicago waterways.
In 2020, the Army Corps oversaw the removal of 23,804 cubic yards of sediment that was dredged from the east section of the Lake George Canal.
Work has not yet started on the Grand Calumet River.
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