Two countries have called the Grand Calumet and Fox rivers corrupt.

The United States and Canada -- under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement -- have deemed the Lake Michigan waterways Areas of Concern, meaning the rivers are polluted to the point of being potentially dangerous to humans and wildlife.

Though separated by roughly 230 miles -- with the Grand Calumet running through our region and the Fox flowing through Wisconsin -- both are tributaries flowing into the same Great Lake.

And both continue to undergo massive cleanup projects in an effort to remove hazardous toxins -- the byproducts of years of industrial pollution.

Restoration projects to remove polychlorinated byphenyls, or PCBs, and other hazardous chemicals have had varying degrees of success on the waterways.

Grand Calumet River

In December 2007, U.S. Steel Gary Works finished dredging 826,433 cubic yards of putrid mud from the eastern five miles of the Grand Calumet as part of a 1998 Clean Water Act consent decree.

The five-year project removed PCBs, oil, grease, heavy metals, benzene and cyanide at a cost of $60 million to the steel maker, said Tamara Ohl, EPA manager for the U.S. Steel project.

The majority of dredging occurred in 2003, but a review of the work showed more contaminated sediments that required further dredging in 2007. U.S. Steel also pledged $1 million to monitor the project, as well as to buy habitat and dune land to donate to the state.

A second remediation project, a partnership of federal and nonfederal groups, is hoped to restore an estimated 125,000 cubic yards of the river's west branch.

Still in the design phase, the $20 million cleanup is an agreement among the EPA, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

The project likely will include a combination of dredging and capping, or covering contaminated sediment with layers of sand and stone. The EPA expects to complete remedial design of the project this year, said Scott Ireland, manager with the Great Lakes National Program Office.

Fox River

Between 1957 and 1971, mills producing carbonless copy paper released about 250,000 pounds of PCBs into the northeast-flowing Lower Fox River, contaminating 11 million tons of sediment.

An estimated 64 percent of that has flowed into Green Bay and Lake Michigan, where the PCBs are nearly impossible to recover, the EPA reports.

Two companies already have dredged 335,000 cubic yards of contaminated mud from the southwestern part of the river since 2004, said Jim Hahnenberg, EPA manager for the Fox project.

Six paper companies, including Georgia-Pacific, ranked second in terms of the most industrial chemical discharges into the lake basin, are responsible for removing or containing seven million cubic yards of polluted mud from 12 northern miles of the Fox.

The companies submitted a design-work plan at the end of 2007, which the EPA rejected because it did not ensure dredging would begin in 2009, Hahnenberg said.

The companies are responsible for determining what businesses will pay what portion of the nearly $400 million project, an agreement they have not yet reached.

Georgia-Pacific spokeswoman Mary Jo Malach said the company believes "all of the six companies who added PCBs to the Fox River need to contribute their fair share to the cleanup. Georgia-Pacific has been, and continues to be, committed to doing its share to keep the cleanup moving forward."

Among environmentalists' critiques of the project is the proposed use of capping, a cheaper form of treating the polluted sediment. Groups including the Clean Water Action Council, based in Green Bay, Wisc., have questioned the permanency and durability of caps.

Rebecca Katers, executive director of the council, said capping is not a long-term solution, calling it messy and too susceptible to disturbances that can reintroduce toxins into the water.

Her concerns should be shared outside of Wisconsin, Katers said.

Given that the Fox is Lake Michigan's largest source of PCBs, "Indiana has a stake in what happens here," she said.

Regulators chose capping not just for frugality but also because it is more effective as a combination with dredging, Hahnenberg said.

Katers balked that reversing the legacy of contamination is taking too long. An advocate for the clean-up since the 1980s, she criticized the companies and regulators, saying, "For 35 years they've been sitting on this."