Representatives from the U-S Environmental Protection Agency, U-S Fish and Wildlife Service, and state of Indiana were joined by Congressman Pete Visclosky Monday to discuss the recent completion of a 52-million dollar cleanup of East Chicago's Roxana Marsh, which is expected to speed the recovery of Indiana's Grand Calumet River... marking what the EPA calls a “step forward for one of the Great Lakes' most complex Area of Concern cleanups”. . Officials say more than half-a-million cubic yards of sediment contaminated with PCB's and PAH's (polychlorinated biphenyls and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), heavy metals and pesticides were removed or isolated from the marsh and river.

At Monday Restoration Event at Roxana Marsh, Cameron Davis Senior advisor to the EPA told our Tom Lounges that people a year from now are going to see a place that's totally different from what they see now...vegetation, native species, "all of the things that have been missing from the Grand Calumet River for a long, long time, for decades."

The Grand Calumet starts on the east side of Gary and flows through the heavily industrialized cities of Gary, Hammond and East Chicago. Most of the river's flow drains into Lake Michigan via the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal, sending about a billion gallons of water in the lake each day. The Area of Concern begins fifteen miles south of downtown Chicago and includes the east branch of the river, a small segment of the west branch, and the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal.

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