Lake Michigan cleanup, restoration grant: EPA issued
MILWAUKEE - A big announcement from the White House Thursday – $1 billion dollars are being invested into the cleanup and restoration of the Great Lakes.
And of course, that benefits us in our great city along Lake Michigan.
Your daily stroll on the lakefront may be on hold for the season, but a few summers from now, you’ll notice the lake has received a huge makeover.
"This is a massive improvement we’re about to see on our waterways in the Milwaukee area and around the Great Lakes," said Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewer District’s Kevin Shafer.
Kevin Shafer
The Environmental Protection Agency announced that they are investing one billion dollars in cleaning up and restoring the Great Lakes.
With Milwaukee historically being an industrial city, our rivers have 100 years of toxic sediment at the bottom just waiting to be scooped up.
"Folks that are along the waterfront will just see a boat moving along and see a pipe coming out of it. But this will basically scrape those sediments off the bottom of the river, pump them hydraulically to a containment facility that the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewer District is building," he said.
One of the many areas of concern that will be addressed is the Milwaukee estuary.
Cleanup is hoped to be complete by 2030--creating a new era for not only Milwaukee's waterways and lakefront, but the entire great lakes' system.
"Even if folks don’t get out to see the lake and the rivers, you turn on a tap every day, you use water from Lake Michigan every day. So anything that we can do to protect the quality and quantity of water that we have is just a huge improvement and something we should be proud of and fight very hard for," said Shafer.
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