Illinois congressional delegation to partner to clean up Great Lakes

By Diane S.W. Lee   Illinois Statehouse News

SPRINGFIELD — Illinois’ two U.S. senators and a couple of congressmen are pledging to rid pollution in the Great Lakes, and promising hefty fines to municipalities that dump sewage in the source of drinking water for 30 million people. 

Editor’s note: This corrects the previous version to note that the paraphrase in the 8th graf is attributed to an environmentalist, not Durbin.

U.S. Sens. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., along with U.S. Reps. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., and Robert Dold, R-Ill., announced Friday a bipartisan effort to sponsor legislation to increase fines for dumping sewage into the Great Lakes. A similar measure was introduced in 2007, but lawmakers believe the bipartisan support will help get the legislation signed into law.

“By joining forces on this important piece of legislation, we believe we can keep our Great Lakes — the crown jewel of the Midwest’s ecosystem — from becoming a toxic waste dump,” Kirk said in a statement following a news conference in Chicago. “Not only does Lake Michigan provide our drinking water, it is a vital economic engine to the entire region.”

The Great Lakes Water Protection Act would set a deadline to ban sewage dumping in the lakes, increase fines for violators, and help fund wastewater treatment programs.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates more than 24-billion gallons of sewage are released into the lakes every year. Some sources of pollution to the lakes include storm water, agricultural runoffs and  industrial and city waste discharges, according to the EPA. The agency estimates at least 30 communities in the Lake Michigan basin are violators. Waukegan Harbor in Lake County in Illinois is listed as an area of concern.

Under the legislation, fines would increase from $37,500 a day to $100,000 a day by 2031. Communities would have 20 years to upgrade wastewater treatment systems, with assistance of money collected from fines.   

“Three and a half years ago, when we learned that BP was planning to discharge increased pollutants into Lake Michigan, the people of Illinois stood up and forcefully rejected further pollution of our Great Lake,” Durbin said in a statement. “Today, we’re here to take on another threat to the Great Lakes: municipal sewage. It’s the next chapter in our quest to aggressively protect our most precious of natural resources.”

The legislation may be part of the solution, but it isn’t enough. More funding is needed to update sewage treatment systems, an environmentalist said.

“The Great Lakes are 20 percent of the freshwater on the planet, so it is critical that we invest in keeping them clean and safe,” said Jack Darin, director of Sierra Club-Illinois chapter, a nonprofit environmental organization. “On most days we do not have any sewage going into Lake Michigan. We still have problems during big storms when our sewage systems become overloaded. We do have raw sewage flowing into Lake Michigan, and that really has to stop.”

Joel Brammeier, president and chief executive officer of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, echoes the same sentiment. Brammeier said the legislation is good for protecting the future of drinking water, but other problems need to addressed right now.

“We have combined sewage going into the Great Lakes today. We have invasive species threatening to enter. We have beaches closing in the thousands every summer — those are real problems that need to be combated with enforcement and investment right now,“ Brammeier said. “And waiting 20 years for that is waiting too long.”