Once again, I'm proud to be a paddler in this community which includes some of the most intelligent and thoughtful paddlers on the water or in a meeting room anywhere.
While I arrived at the Illinois Pollution Control Board (IPCB) public hearing last night a few minutes late and missed the first witnesses’ testimony, I counted 40 people who testified. Most of them urged the IPCB to adopt the IEPA proposed new rules for use designation and water quality standards for the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS) and the lower Des Plaines River. Many of the witnesses were canoers, kayakers and rowers. Many of the witnesses were the members, staff and canoe guides of Friends of the Chicago River.
A couple paddling club leaders were present and testified. Randy Hetfield, representing Chicago Whitewater Assoc., was an important witness in that whitewater kayakers are not commonly associated with the Chicago River, CAWS or the lower DP. But we all know ww kayakers do paddle locally and usually get wetter than sea kayakers or canoers.
Tom Bamonte really stood out among the dozens of paddlers and tens of witnesses by offering some of the most pointed and original testimony. He basically summarized the comments that he wrote for CASKA and were co-signed by 19 paddling clubs (including the IPC) and local paddlesport business owners. But his spoken testimony was calm, measured and powerful. He was the only witness to point out for the IPCB and those in the room the errors made by the IEPA in the UAA and proposed rules. Tom educated the board members about the relative safety of the river compared to paddling on the lake. He urged the IPCB members to go beyond the IEPA's recommendations and include a deadline of 2016 for the accomplishment of the new water quality standards.
I noticed a number of CASKA members and other paddlers who may not have testified but helped make it a standing room only public hearing which, for the IPCB which rarely holds such public hearings, must have made a strong impression on them. The crowd must have conveyed the reality to them that, unlike most of their deliberations and rule-making, this issue is important to a large number and a wide sector of citizens, taxpayers and voters who have deep and strong feelings about water quality and the enhanced quality of life that clean water brings to a community.
Many of the other witnesses were riverside condo owners, fishermen and others who live near the river and enjoy its nature, fish, birds and beauty.
David Solzman, author of one of the two recent books about the Chicago River, offered another original perspective. For the last 35 years he has conducted the most fascinating tour of the river system. His boat tour goes from the Michigan Ave. Bridge out through the locks, down the lakeshore to the Calumet River, up the Calumet to its confluence with the Sanitary & Ship Canal, up the San & Ship to the South Branch, mainstem and back to the Michigan Ave. Bridge. When I did the tour as his guest a few years ago, I learned more about the river, its life and its impact on Chicago's economy in eight hours than I had in years of paddling on it and reading books about it. He described how the improved water quality in the river has resulted in more and more marinas and how his tour now takes longer due to the resulting increase in no-wake zones.
Solzman also put the CAWS in a national perspective and educated everyone present about the relationship between the decreasing water quality as one travels downstream from Chicago to the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and the increasing incidence of many types of cancer along that route.
I saw only one witness testify in support of the MWRDGC's request to the IPCB that it delay its rule-making until the CHEERS study is competed and the results of the study show whether or not the proposed rules will be worth the expense to the MWRD & taxpayers. He represented the IL Assoc. of Wastewater Treatment Agencies and joked at the beginning of his testimony that he'd been assured of his safety and the security measures of the hearing.
Paddlesport business owners and at least one marina owner also testified. Ryan Chew, principal owner of Chicago River Canoe & Kayak, testified that he has sent out 55,000 trips on the Chicago River since he opened his business. Charlie Portis who owns and operates Waterriders, testified how people from all over the world are impressed by the river and the world class buildings along the river downtown on his kayak architecture tours.
Grant Crowley, who owns Crowley's Yacht Yard, related how much local boating activity pumps a variety of taxes, sales and fees into Chicago's economy and how that boating economy has grown over the last 30 years. He also described the increasing elimination of floating, disgusting debris such as the condoms and tampons that he used to see every 5 feet on the South Branch before the Deep Tunnel came on-line!
Pete Leki, a long time North Branch neighborhood activist and grade school ecology teacher, described how his Waters Grade School students have measured the water quality of the North Branch for the last 14 years and how disappointed they are to have always found e-coli present. They give the river a grade and it has always been a “C+”. He urged the IPCB members to help improve the river and expect a better grade from their “charge” just as any parent would encourage their own child to get a better grade than a “C”.
Finally I got my turn and my testimony is copied below. I'd like to give due credit to my favorite lawyer, Albert Ettinger of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, who wrote and submitted comments to the IPCB, part of which I repeated and/or based some of the more legalistic part of my testimony. After reading most of the comments submitted to the IPCB on their website, I felt that some of Albert's comments needed repeating in order to refute some of the arguments made to delay the IPCB's rule-making or encouraging them to not adopt the proposed rules.
One thing I didn’t say in my testimony that I’ve been saying for many years is that: “Paddlers see the good and bad results of the decisions made upstream, up close”. Paddlers acquire an intimate perspective of some of the last remaining nature in the largely man-made world we inhabit. In that perspective, and the wisdom it engenders, is the much needed hope for the future of that nature and the many species that depend on it.
My thanks and respect goes out to all who attended the public hearing, testified and/or submitted comments to the IPCB in the hope that we will live to enjoy and leave behind us cleaner and safer rivers to our children and future generations.
Gary Mechanic
President, IL Paddling Council
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Testimony to the Illinois Pollution Control Board
Public Hearing on Monday, June 16, 2008
By Gary Mechanic, President of the Illinois Paddling Council
RE: Rule Making R08-009
Good evening and thank you for this opportunity to express the concerns of the members of the Illinois Paddling Council on the IEPA proposed rules for water quality standards and effluent limitations on the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS) and Lower Des Plaines River.
The Illinois Paddling Council (IPC) is composed of individual members, paddlesport clubs and businesses. Since the IPC’s creation in 1966 it has been the only statewide organization that represents the interests of paddlers and paddlesport clubs and businesses to local and state governments and to the general public. The IPC is one of the signatories of the comments submitted to this board by the Chicago Area Sea Kayakers Assoc. (CASKA) written by Tom Bamonte. I’m here to add to those comments.
I am the inventor, and for the last eight years, the Race Director of the Chicago River Flatwater Classic, the first major canoe & kayak race on the Chicago River sponsored by Friends of the Chicago River. I was also one of the members of the Civic & Recreation Committee that helped develop the Chicago River Corridor Development Plan for the City of Chicago, one of the major goals of which is to promote the increased recreational use of the Chicago River.
We live in one of the most intensely man-made and densely populated places on this planet. The opportunity to re-create ourselves on the Chicago River, Lower Des Plaines and other local waterways, is what make life here livable for me and many of the members of the IPC and local paddling clubs.
I’d like to make three points that I believe are relevant to your deliberations.
First, the Clean Water Act’s Declaration of Goals and Policy Section 101 states:
(1) it is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985;
(2) it is the national goal that wherever attainable, an interim goal of water quality which provides for the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish, and wildlife and provides for recreation in and on the water be achieved by July 1, 1983
For these waterways affected by the proposed rules that run through the center of nearly two thirds of the population of Illinois, the achievement of these goals is long overdue.
Second, this board has received statements asking you to delay decision making in this matter until the completion of the public health study currently being conducted by the University of Illinois’s School of Public Health known as the Chicago Health, Environmental Exposure and Recreation Study, “CHEERS” for short, which is funded by the MWRDGC. Much has been made of this study among the paddling community. I and many members of the paddling community have participated in it. But in fact the results of the study are peripheral to the question of use designation should be irrelevant to your decision in this matter.
While the IPC supports good science and we are interested in knowing the reality of the relationship between contact with polluted waters and the resulting impacts on our health, I suggest that paddlers and some interested parties such as the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC), are incorrectly focused on what recreation and aquatic life the CAWS and Des Plaines River now have.
This confuses the purpose of this proceeding and the UAA that is actually about what uses of the water are attainable rather than what the water body is being used for now. I’d like to point out that according to the Clean Water Act, and the purpose of the Use Attainability Analysis, the proposed rules should not be decided on the basis whether or not the current water quality in the CAWS make people sick through direct or indirect contact. Rather, Federal law 40 CFR 131.11 requires that States must adopt those water quality criteria that protect the designated use and “For waters with multiple use designations, the criteria shall support the most sensitive use.”
For this reason, studies that focus on the risks of using of the water body as it is used now are of very limited relevance to the use designation question. And studies of the level of recreational use now are of limited relevance because they do not tell us what the level of paddling, fishing, wading or other recreational activity would be if the general public believed that the water was safe. The relevant question is not how many people are becoming ill from current levels of use of the CAWS, but how many would become sick if it were used to the same extent if the existing pollution were eliminated.
Finally, this board has received comments from interested parties concerned about the cost to the affected governments, businesses and taxpayers of the proposed rules. The U.S. EPA’s “Interim Economic Guidance for Water Quality Standards” states that: “Demonstration of substantial financial impacts is not sufficient reason to modify a use or grant a variance from water quality standards. Rather, the applicant must also demonstrate that compliance would create widespread socioeconomic impacts on the affected community.”
I respectfully suggest to you that the job of this board is to control pollution and protect humans and aquatic species from that pollution. It is not the job of this board to protect the polluters, or taxpayers, from the costs of eliminating that pollution.
Thank you for your time and the opportunity to express our support for the adoption of the proposed rules and the concerns of Illinois’ paddlers.