Reversal of the Chicago River (continued)

At the same time the new canal is being planned, efforts are underway to examine water quality issues in the Illinois River from Chicago south, as well as its tributaries. The State Board of Health adopts a resolution on June 20, 1899 directing the secretary to initiate an investigation of the current conditions of the waters of the Illinois River, in order to evaluate the changes that may occur when the canal is completed. This report includes an examination of the river from the January 17,1900 opening of the Chicago Drainage and Ship Canal, as well as the prior six months of 1899.

Beginning at the mouth of the Chicago River, there is a slight “appearance of sewage” that increases rapidly. At Bridgeport,

the river was a seething, festering mass of decomposing sewage from house and factory, giving up great quantities of noisome gases; the surface of the river in many places having the appearance of a boiling cauldron. From Bridgeport down the canal to Joliet, it was as a stream of ink with a steady current and musty sewage odor. At Joliet the canal water so much exceeded the low flow of the Des Plaines river that dilution was inappreciable.

At Morris, 10 miles below the junction of the Des Plaines and Kankakee rivers, the river is “much clearer, but still shows some of the inky coloring from the canal”. No fish are found in the river here, even though before Chicago sewage reaches these waters (via the I & M Canal), the river reportedly “teemed with fish” (Harmon 1901).

At Ottawa, “there was some clearing of the water, but no fishing”. When sampling at La Salle, “the river was much better looking, having a yellow tinge, but only slightly turbid, and fish were occasionally caught.” From Henry to Peoria, fishing is good in the summer, but in the winter, the mayor of Henry reports,

the stench at openings in the ice was very suggestive of the Chicago river and that fish taken in the winter were unfit for food on account of the gases of putrefaction in the river water which seemed to permeate the flesh of the fish (Harmon 1901).

The water at Peoria is very different upstream than it is downstream. Above the city, the “water had a slight yellow tinge and fishy odor,” but below the city, the water “is dark, almost as the Chicago river, due to the washings of the cattle barns, and the banks were strewn with dead fish.” At Pekin, Harmon (1901) finds conditions to be largely the same because of similar discharges from shore. It is only about 10 miles south of Pekin that the water clears and fish become abundant.

No reference is made to non-point source pollution or sedimentation. Harmon notes, however, that south from Peoria to Grafton, the Illinois River “seemed to become clearer, except where affected by tributaries made turbid by recent rains.”

The proposed opening of this canal is a cause of concern by residents downstream. They are told that this “dumping of sewage” will be a “constant menace to the lives and health of the inhabitants of the borders of the rivers in question.” Others remind residents that until the canal is constructed, they receive three-fourths of Chicago’s sewage with little dilution.

This leads to a debate among experts as to whether a river can cleanse itself naturally. A sanitarian speaks before the American Medical Association and reports that “biologists have about come to the conclusion that no river is long enough to purify itself.” Mr. Thresh, in his work on Water and Water Supplies, takes an opposing view:

That river water grossly befouled by sewage in the its higher reaches becomes a few miles lower down so pure, from a chemical point of view, as to be certified by the most eminent analysts to be fitted for all domestic purposes...

There is also debate as to whether this cleansing process is due to “sedimentation and dilution,” or is assisted by oxidation (Illinois State Board of Health 1901).

W. J. Dibdin, quotes in his work “The Purification of Sewage and Water,”

A few years ago it was stoutly denied that rivers had the power of purifying themselves. Then we knew practically nothing of nature’s methods. Now, that this has been so far revealed to us, it is declared with equal force that not only are effete matters rendered innocuous, but even disease-producing microbes are themselves voraciously devoured by others of like kind, and the formerly much-dreaded bacteria are - and properly so - considered amongst the best friends of man (Illinois State Board of Health 1901).

The sewage begins to enter the Chicago River in January 1900. It enters in a raw state, not available as a food source for fish or plants. This sewage rapidly decomposes in the upper reaches of the river in midsummer, but in the process, removes oxygen and produces nitrates and nitrites, which eventually become food sources for plants and indirectly for fish. Alvord and Burdick (1915) compare the central section of the river

;as a huge stomach in which the organic matter contained in the Chicago sewage is digested, assimilated, and worked up in considerable measure, into the flesh of fishes for our consumption.

The State of Missouri fights the construction of the canal and the subsequent diversion of water from Lake Michigan downstream. They fight this to the Supreme Court where, in 1905, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writes in a decision supporting the canal:

It is proved that the great volume of pure water from Lake Michigan which is mixed with the sewage at the start has improved the Illinois River in these respects to a noticeable event. Formerly it was sluggish and ill smelling. Now it is a comparatively clear stream to which edible fish have returned. Its water is drunk by fishermen, it said without evil results (Cruikshank 1998).

Not everyone concurs with this the opinion of the Supreme Court, citing conditions that persist throughout the Illinois River:

Masses of sludge floated by so dense that dogs could run across the river; [it] had a mingled fish and privy odor, and the color of the was an unnatural gray. (McCarthy 1991).