Each year, cargo ships traveling through the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal stir up more than 100,000 cubic yards of toxic sediment that flows into Lake Michigan, according to a report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"You can imagine two giant egg beaters mixing things up and having that flow down into the lake," said Dave Wethington, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project manager for the canal work.

And now - more than 35 years since the last dredging - workers are constructing a confined disposal facility in East Chicago and expect to start dredging at the end of 2011.

Dredging was expected to start this year, according to a 2006 EPA report, but debates over the disposal site location and a lack of funding postponed the project. The construction of the disposal site is estimated to cost $125 million. With dredging planned for 30 years -- and with it taking seven to 10 years just to eliminate the backlog -- Wethington expects the cost of the construction to reach $180 million.

At the beginning of this month, U.S. Rep. Pete Visclosky helped secure an extra $13.5 million for the dredging project in Congress.

"The work supported in this bill will have a profound impact on Northwest Indiana's economy, job market, environment and quality of life," Visclosky said. "I am proud to support these projects that will make Northwest Indiana a better, more prosperous place for all of us to live."

Dredging projects are paid for by a cargo tax, and the money in the current trust fund is not being used for dredging projects, said Glen Nekvasil, vice president of corporate communications for the Lake Carrier's Association, a U.S. trade association.

"Right now the fund has a surplus of more than $5 billion," Nekvasil said. "The money to do the dredging has always been there. ... They are hanging onto that surplus to balance the federal budget."

Cargo ships have to lighten their loads

Since the canal was dredged in 1972, more than 3.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment have passed into the lake. Before the Clean Water Act of 1972, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would dig up the sediment, drive a few miles off shore and dump the sediment into the lake or use it to create the lakefill for the Inland Steel plant.

Alternative plans to remove the soil contaminated with lead, oil, PCBs and other compounds were discussed in the mid-1970s after the Army Corps needed a new location to put the sediment. Dredging stopped during the more than three decades of discussion, causing the canal to collect deposits of the contaminated sediment -- in some places reaching up to 18 feet, Wethington said.

According to the federal navigation depths, canals are 22 feet and harbors are 22 feet to 29 feet.

That buildup has forced cargo ships to lighten their loads to not get stuck. Without the ability to function at maximum capacity, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates the region loses $15 million each year.

"The goal of projects like these is to continue to remediate and restore Northwest Indiana waterways, in order to provide many uses for wildlife and humans that are currently unavailable," said Amber Finkelstein, Indiana Department of Environmental Management spokeswoman.

The disposal site

All contaminated sediment from the dredging will be stored in East Chicago, just north of the Lake George Canal along Indianapolis Boulevard.

From first glance, the 160-acre construction site looks like a field. Tall grasses blow in the wind, and from the center of the site, trees' leaves are turning the burnt orange color of fall.

But underneath the topsoil lies hazardous waste -- thousands of barrels of sludge, gasoline and other toxic waste.

Sinclair Oil Corp., which was later acquired by Energy Cooperative Industries, owned the site until it filed for bankruptcy in 1981. The company stopped production and the hazardous waste storage sites, incinerators and pipelines were demolished. The debris was removed, but all sub-surface contamination remained untreated, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Wethington said the site was ideal because of its proximity to the canal, holding capacity of about 4.8 million cubic yards and history of pollution.

"It was already a contaminated site," Wethington said.

As part of the dredging project, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also is managing and safely containing the current pollution in accordance with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and EPA guidelines.

Community worries about airborne contamination

The location for the confined disposal facility caused concern in the community, as the site sits a little less than a mile from East Chicago Central High School and West Side Junior High School.

Rick Regalado, 56, said he's worried that the dredged sediment could dry up and become airborne.

"We have so much pollution from the industries around here, we don't need more," said Regalado, who has lived in East Chicago his whole life. "Anything that's going to get in the air is going to blow right over to the schools."

But Wethington explained that there are environmental safeguards.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - working in partnership with the East Chicago Water Management District - set up a groundwater gradient system made up of 88 wells that will feed into a central water management system to ensure no contaminated water leaves the site, Wethington said.

Sediment will be dredged mechanically, and once at the site, it will be mixed with water and hydraulically pumped into the containment area.

The water on top acts as a cap, which reduces volatile emissions and all but eliminates particulate emissions, he explained. Air monitoring devices also will be set up to regulate emissions. Once the project begins, the public will be able to view the data and see how it compares to EPA regulations online. And according to a 2006 EPA risk assessment report, the dredging project and containment site would not pose a high risk to the community.

Regalado said he knows safety measures have been put in place but hopes everything runs according to plan.

"You always listen to the engineers who say they have the technology to handle it and they have it under control, then down the line when something happens you realize how fallible the system is," Regalado said.

Economic impact

The need for dredging is not isolated to the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal, Nekvasil said.

"The dredging crisis on the Great Lakes is really a systemwide problem," he said. "Our steel mills are in competition with steel mills in India, Brazil, China ... the more efficient we are, that means the more secure these American jobs are."

The Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal has the most need for dredging in the Great Lakes region, Nekvasil said. In 2007, the harbor had at least 1,800 port calls and ships carried 15 million tons of cargo to the area.

For every inch of draft - how deep in the water a vessel sits - a ship has to lose 50 tons to 250 tons of cargo.

"In the Indiana Harbor it has not been a question of inches, it has been a question of feet," Nekvasil said. "We have been surrendering a tremendous amount of cargo from the ships going in there."

Steel mills were built along the shores of the Great Lakes to take advantage of the waterborne commerce, Nekvasil said, because it takes 1.5 tons of iron ore to make 1 ton of steel and that iron ore needs to be transported.

The Army Corps of Engineers is in talks with local steel companies to dredge sediment from canal areas that do not fall under the federal project's territory. The multimillion-dollar deal is still in process, Wethington said.

Dredging will go for three months out of the year, if the funding is available, he said.

"The dredging will have benefits both economically and environmentally," Wethington said. "We think that once you revitalize the canal itself, it will attract other industry to set up in East Chicago."