Chicago Tribune

November 21, 2004 Sunday

A WHIFF OF SUCCESS;
Million-dollar homes along a long-polluted stretch of the
Chicago River fuel new interest in cleaning up Bubbly Creek.

By Michael Hawthorne, Tribune staff reporter

The draw of living close to water is so strong that million-dollar homes are going up
along Bubbly Creek, an infamous stretch of the Chicago River lined with nearly a
century's worth of waste from the city's livestock slaughterhouses.

Hidden from most Chicagoans by factories, warehouses and scrap yards, the murky
tributary has festered for decades on the western edge of Bridgeport. Bubbles that gave
the creek its name still occasionally rise up from decaying offal and carcasses caked on
the bottom, releasing bursts of foul-smelling gases into the air.

It is a place where few things live, or stay for long. At least until now.

Expensive homes under construction along the once-industrial banks of Bubbly Creek--
officially known as the South Fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River--are
prompting a push from Mayor Richard Daley's office to clean it up.

Regional and state officials also are taking a closer look at the creek as they decide
whether the Chicago River's sewage-filled canals and channels should be disinfected to
remove disease-causing bacteria.

Improving Bubbly Creek, or at least ridding the surrounding neighborhood of its

summertime smells, can't come fast enough for Mark Putnam, who lives about a block away
in Bridgeport Village, a new subdivision that eventually will include 400 houses on
either bank of the waterway.

"It's great to say you live on the water, but nobody is going to brag that they live on
Bubbly Creek," Putnam said recently before walking his dog on a brick path along the
east bank. "They say it's a lot better than it used to be, but it still stinks on some
days."

The occasional stench hasn't dissuaded home buyers willing to plunk down at least $1.2
million to live at the edge of the creek. All but a handful of the 35 lots with water
views in Bridgeport Village have been sold.

"The people who have moved in seem to love being near the river," said Thomas Snitzer,
president of Arlington Heights-based Snitzer Homes, which turned an abandoned rail yard
into one of the largest developments of single-family homes being built in Chicago in
decades.
"While people aren't going to go swim in the river," Snitzer said, "they view it as an amenity."
An open sewer

During the heyday of the Union Stockyards, the creek was an open sewer for the killing
pens and packinghouses. The neighborhood was a slum where immigrant workers lived in
cheaply built wood-frame homes.

"Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of
lava," Upton Sinclair wrote in "The Jungle," his 1906 expose of the stockyards.
"Chickens walk about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to
stroll across, and vanished temporarily."

The worst sections of Bubbly Creek were filled in decades ago, long before the
stockyards closed in 1971. But the waterway still is considered one of the dirtiest
parts of the Chicago River.

Scientists from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently determined the benthic
gunk in Bubbly Creek is at least three feet thick in spots. "The core samples we pulled
up just reeked," said George Azevedo, an EPA water specialist.

Today the fetid bubbles popping on the creek's surface more likely are created by
untreated sewage from a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District pumping station off
Racine Avenue at 38th Street. Nearly all of the water on the South Side drains through
the plant.

Scum collects

Scum that collects on the banks after heavy rains has no place to go because the creek
has no current other than the occasional sewage overflow. Instead of being flushed
downstream, the waste settles on the bottom and slowly decomposes, continuing the
creek's malodorous legacy.

The Deep Tunnel project--a network of tunnels and reservoirs that capture storm
runoff--has reduced the amount of untreated sewage being dumped into the creek. But the
pumping station still is forced to open its gates about 17 times a year, according to
the water district.

There also are at least a half-dozen other pipes that pour sewage and storm runoff into
the creek.

People have been talking about cleaning up Bubbly Creek for years, only to see their
efforts fall short after it became clear that fixing the pollution problems could cost
millions of dollars.

Daley has suggested the sediment be sealed on the bottom. Others have proposed dredging.
Now a mayoral task force is trying to figure out if there are less expensive solutions
that could improve water quality enough to make living next to the creek more pleasant.

One option, flushing out the creek by sucking water back into the Racine Avenue pumping
station, helped increase the amount of oxygen in the creek during the last three
summers. The experiment improved water quality enough that a water district employee
caught a four-pound coho salmon in the creek a few months ago.

"We're seeing bass and other sport fish in the creek from time to time," said Richard
Lanyon, the district's director of research and development. But after a sewage
overflow, Lanyon said, "they're all gone."

Water district officials recently concluded the region's sewers ultimately couldn't
handle the backward flow of water from Bubbly Creek.

They're instead considering building a pipe that would draw water from the South Branch
of the Chicago River and pump it into the creek to create an artificial current.

Another solution is to use equipment that boosts oxygen levels by running the creek
through concrete waterfalls. Five of the structures on the Calumet Sag Channel--another
branch of the river system--have helped clean up the waterway by enhancing the natural
decomposition of sewage water.

Aerating may help

"Aerating the water and getting some flow through there could get Bubbly Creek to help
itself," said Rob Sulski, an Illinois EPA engineer who works on river issues.

Some people mocked Daley's father, the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, for suggesting
during the early 1970s that Chicagoans would someday flock to the Chicago River to fish
and relax. After all, critics said, the river isn't a meandering prairie stream but a
series of concrete-lined channels designed to reverse the flow of the city's sewage away
from Lake Michigan.

The river is the cleanest it has been in decades. But more than 60 percent of the
river's flow is treated human and industrial wastewater that isn't disinfected to remove
disease-causing bacteria.

Few think the river will ever be clean enough for swimming. Local, regional and state
officials are debating whether it should be clean enough to protect people who
occasionally ingest or come into contact with river water while boating or fishing.

Tom Krueger initially had reservations about moving from the South Loop to a new house
close to Bubbly Creek. He changed his mind after spotting blue herons catching fish in
shallow water near the lot he ended up buying.
Sign of hope

Seeing a rowing crew speed by one day sealed the deal.

"That gave me a sign the river has turned a corner," Krueger said. "I think we can see a
day when the legacy of Bubbly Creek is a thing of the past."

River advocates welcome the homeowners as allies in their efforts to change the
long-held assumption that there should be little human contact with the river.

"There is no reason why Bubbly Creek should continue to be overlooked," said Laurene von
Klan, executive director of Friends of the Chicago River. "Everything has its time, and
this is Bubbly Creek's time."