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Contamination is risk from dredged waste
Published on Saturday, Aug 18, 2007
TOLEDO: Environmental regulators will test water from Lake Erie to determine whether it was contaminated when a dike broke, dumping tons of water into the lake.
The head of an environmental group was upset that no one was told about the break until several days after it happened.
The dike broke sometime last weekend at the mouth of the Maumee River. The dike surrounds an island where tons of silt mixed with industrial waste and chemicals dredged from the river have been dumped over the years.
Boaters alerted the Coast Guard about the break Saturday, but officials from the Army Corps of Engineers could not view the area until Monday because of shallow water, the corps said.
The corps said it alerted others about the breach Thursday and has installed containment fencing.
The agency waited because it didn't think the pollution would jeopardize public health, said Kathy Griffin, chief of the corps' office that oversees western Lake Erie. ''If there had been any threat to health or public safety, we would have made an immediate announcement to the public,'' Griffin told The Blade, Toledo's daily newspaper.
''At this point in time, we don't see we're in a dire emergency,'' she said.
The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency said it will test water samples.
An environmentalist who lives near the lake said the break should have been disclosed earlier because so many people use the lake in the summer.
''It's troublesome, the lack of urgency,'' said Sandy Bihn, a member of Waterkeeper Alliance, a national group that promotes clean water.
The corps, she said, should have immediately set up fences around the area.
The break in the dike is about 30 feet wide and 10 feet high. The break dumped a small amount of dredged material along with water from the island into the lake, the corps said.
Material dredged from the river was dumped at the site this year for the first time since the early 1970s.
Griffin said the dumping probably caused the break.
TOLEDO: Environmental regulators will test water from Lake Erie to determine whether it was contaminated when a dike broke, dumping tons of water into the lake.
Get the full article here.
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