EPA grant to help clean up Kinnickinnic River
A cleanup of the Kinnickinnic River — the site of several big commercial developments — will be the first project under an Environmental Protection Agency program designed to remove trash from the Great Lakes.
The $492,300 award will be given under the Trash-Free Great Lakes Grant, which is part of the EPA’s broader Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The proposed trash collector will sit one mile south of the confluence of the Kinnickinnic and Milwaukee rivers, just south of West Becher Street.
Harbor District Inc. — the nonprofit “dedicated to a world-class revitalization of Milwaukee’s working waterfront” — will coordinate the effort to provide a cleaner environment and drinking water.
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, Milwaukee Department of Public Works and the Fund for Lake Michigan have made financial commitments to the project. More partners are being sought.
“Having those great local partners certainly helped us” to get the grant, said Lilith Fowler, Harbor District Inc. executive director.
Harbor District Inc. also had the advantage of being more than two years into research when the EPA announced its grant last December.
Harbor District’s plans include the use of floating booms (or barriers) to direct floating trash to a collection device. A conveyor belt will send the collected trash for disposal. The project is designed to collect 75 tons of garbage a year from the 16,000-acre watershed.
“After years of neglect and decline, the Kinnickinnic River is experiencing a rebirth as local and federal partners remove concrete channel, restore its banks and clean its waters. Our community is anxious to get to work on one of its most visible problems — trash,” Fowler said.
Clear Water Mills and Aquarius Systems, companies that build waterway cleaning technology, will bid to construct the project. The target end date for the project is spring of 2022.
In 2018, the Kinnickinnic River was deemed one of the most endangered rivers in the country in part due to its degraded dams. The river is just one of the waterways found in the Milwaukee
Estuary Area of Concern, one of 43 such areas identified by the U.S. and Canada in the Great Lakes Basin to have a “legacy of contamination.”
Once the project is completed, the staff at Harbor District Inc. will see the effects of the cleanup effort, as will Beacon Marine and the forthcoming River 1 development, all of which sit on the Kinnickinnic River.
“After every rainstorm, we see all the trash that goes floating by our office and out to Lake Michigan,” said Fowler.
Other businesses “were all telling us what a problem the trash was for them. So we knew it was something that we wanted to try to tackle.”