Dec 1, 2008 12:33 pm US/Central
Chinook Salmon Running Again In East Chicago
EAST CHICAGO, Ind. (Post-Tribune) ―
The salmon are running in East Chicago.
This month marks the 20th annual return of a prized and ecologically sensitive game fish to a stream that is fed, essentially, by the toilets and drains of this city of 30,000 residents.
Shortly after the city's new wastewater treatment plant went online in the late 1980s, plant operations manager Peter Baranyai spotted chinook salmon, some of them 2 feet or longer, leaping over a break wall at the filtration plant, as if they were shooting over a mountain stream in their native Pacific Northwest.
The journey from Lake Michigan would have meant swimming through a shipping channel that bisects the ArcelorMittal steel mill and the BP oil refinery, then heading up the Grand Calumet River, through a shallow 700-foot stream that starts at the outflow pipe, then shooting 200 feet up a drain pipe that churns out more than 15 million gallons of water a day.
Once inside the plant, they laid eggs, which hatched into fingerlings that feed on microscopic daphnia -- another creature known for dying off quickly when exposed to toxics common to wastewater -- then grow and swim back out into the lake. Years later, mature fish return to the spot where they were laid to spawn again.
Baranyai, who started out shoveling sludge as a laborer more than 30 years ago, said watching the annual circle of life unfold in the unlikely environment has made him into a naturalist.
"At first, no one believed us," said Baranyai, who sought experts to identify the species. "They said they must be carp, then they saw the pictures. Then they said we had salmon, but there was no way they were spawning here, but we had genetic testing that showed they were from the same breeding stock.
"There's no other way for them to get into the plant, except for up that pipe."
Nature Comes Back Baranyai wouldn't have believed it himself in the decades before the city built the "new" plant in the late 1980s, a project all but ordered by the federal government after the original plant crumbled and the city was regularly cited for releasing pollutants into Lake Michigan.
The open channel behind the plant that runs into the Grand?Cal was a murky brown stream with a faint chemical smell from the chlorine used to purify the wastewater.?The new plant switched to using banks of ultraviolet light bulbs to purify the water, instead of using chlorine.
"Chlorine is not selective; it doesn't just kill the microbes. It comes out of the plant and disinfects the stream and the fish," Baranyai said.
It was intended to be a cost-saving measure. The UV system was more expensive initially, but required less equipment and had fewer safety hazards than storing massive tanks of toxic chemicals. Baranyai was as surprised as anyone when the water pouring out of the new plant almost magically turned the swampy dead zone behind the plant into a natural area. When the fish returned, so did herons, kingfishers, then foxes and a colony of beavers,
Naturalists from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago and environmental groups have identified dozens of fish species outside the plant in numbers common only to the cleanest freshwater streams: rainbow trout, crayfish and largemouth and smallmouth bass.
"The first time I drove out there, I said, 'What kind of place can this be' Because it's really surrounded by industry for miles," said Roger Klocek, an aquatic naturalist who first visited the plant at Baranyai's invitation in the early 1990s. "It really doesn't seem like it's possible, but it really is a haven for aquatic wildlife."
Klocek also helped identify the unusual, mold-like growths that lined the plant's interior walls, which turned out to be freshwater sponges that are thriving in massive colonies as they feed off the corpses of millions of dead bacteria zapped in the UV banks.
"In streams, the biggest sponge I've seen is maybe a half-dollar size in diameter," said Klocek. "The ones in East Chicago are basketball sized. It's really quite amazing, but they're eating pretty well."
Plant Can Be A Model Klocek figures the salmon and other fish smelled the cool, fresh water flowing into the Grand Calumet and followed the scent to its source. In nature, they would seek out pools in mountain streams. Salmon eggs are sensitive to minute changes in temperature and water quality, so much so that environmental scientists sometimes use them in lab experiments.
Water entering the plant looks and smells like some 15 million gallons poured from a fetid mop bucket; each day, the plant pulls nearly 35 tons of solid material out of the water. By the time it leaves, it's crystal clear, and probably cleaner than some tap water, Baranyai said.
At 20 years old, the East Chicago plant is one of the younger ones in the state, and Baranyai thinks it can be a model for cities everywhere. Baranyai may chase off fishermen who try to sink a line in his stream, and he carries a grudge against the beaver clans that have gnawed down several hundred trees along the stream. But schoolchildren, scientists and peers in the waste treatment business are always welcome.
"I grew up here in East Chicago," he said. "When I was a kid, you might not have seen any kind of wildlife in the city. That's just the way it was.
"This is something I want them to see, so they can start to think of things like factories and wastewater plants in new ways. I think this is the kind of thing we should expect from cities and industry (to do), because we can."
By Andy Grimm / Post-Tribune
(CBS 2 and the Post-Tribune are news partners covering stories in the communities of northwest Indiana. Send story tips to tips@cbs2chicago.com. (© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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