Waste Management Resource Agency’s “Mud to Parks” Project

The Illinois Department of Natural Resource’s Waste Management and Research Center (WMRC) is one of the leading agencies in the effort to revive the Illinois River. The WMRC is spearheading a plan to remove mud that has been clogging the Illinois River and to take it to places where it can help revitalize brownfields (Figure 79).

Figure 79: Sediment from Illinois River is used at a Brownfield

In April 2004, the first barges are filled with this sediment and sent on their way to Chicago. Through the “Mud to Parks” project, 105,000 tons of sediment is dredged from Peoria Lake - a wide stretch of the Illinois River at Peoria. It is then loaded into 70 barges and shipped 163 miles up the Illinois River to a former steel mill site in Chicago, a slag-covered site devoid of life. Upon arrival, it is unloaded and spread atop the slag, covering 17 acres to a depth of 2-3 feet. Grasses and flowers are planted and the rich, fertile sediment is now in the process of becoming a green park on the shore of Lake Michigan (WMRC 2004). While transporting sediment from the river bottom to brownfields elsewhere in the state cannot solve all the problems facing the Illinois River, it is one more tool to be used to address the sedimentation problem. Removing at least some of the sediments for beneficial uses elsewhere is a win-win solution to an enormous problem.