Chicago Tribune: June 21, 2013
by Jennifer Delgado
Superstorm Sandy dumped 60,000 cubic yards of sand into the mouth of Waukegan Harbor last fall, clogging the entrance.
Nearby, beaches have grown thin, in part because all the sand is getting trapped in Waukegan.
The solution to both problems seemed simple: Take the sand from the harbor and put it on the beaches.
That, however, is proving to be more difficult than anyone expected.
Despite efforts by at least two towns to acquire the excess sand, the cost of state-mandated environmental testing is preventing the move, Waukegan officials said. So the sand remains, keeping the harbor shallow and disrupting commercial boat traffic.
“There’s nothing much we can do about it right now,” said Jon Shabica, vice president of Shabica & Associates, a consulting firm working with Waukegan. “The problem with those sets of tests is those municipalities don’t have the money.”
Shabica said that before sand could be taken out of Lake Michigan and moved to nearby beaches, he was told by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency that it would need to be tested for asbestos fibers, a hazard that has plagued the harbor in the past. The estimated cost of the testing is $17,000, Shabica said.
The state EPA would not comment on whether it is requiring testing of the sand. Officials in sand-starved Lake Bluff think the testing is unnecessary — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has conducted annual testing on Waukegan Harbor and has found no asbestos in at least 10 years.
The Corps of Engineers dredges the harbor’s entrance annually, but is permitted to move the sand only to nearby Zion or to a disposal site in the lake. Adding other towns to the permit could take up to a year, said Tim Knoll, operations project manager for the corps’ Chicago district.
“We thought it was going to be a fairly simple process,” said Ron Salski, executive director of the Lake Bluff Park District, which had hoped to get some of the sand for its beaches. “And then when we heard back, it was going to be more complicated and less cost-effective. It wasn’t worth doing.”
Typically, sand along western Lake Michigan migrates from north to south, a littoral pattern that begins along the beaches of Wisconsin and ends at the Indiana Dunes. But much of the sand gets trapped by the walls and structures of Waukegan Harbor, where the nearby beach has grown over the years, according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
The harbor and the nearby Naval Station Great Lakes often block sand from reaching beaches south of the barriers. Public beaches immediately south of Waukegan in North Chicago and Lake Bluff are eroding as a result, local park district officials said.
The Corps of Engineers dredges the approach channel to the harbor annually, moving about 75,000 cubic yards of sand. When superstorm Sandy hit the Chicago area in October, the tempest created 25-foot waves in Lake Michigan that carried nearly a year’s worth of sand accumulation into the approach channel of Waukegan Harbor. The sand pileup halted commercial shipping, already affected by low lake levels.
Waukegan hired Shabica’s firm to monitor the issue and figure out a solution, and it suggested giving away the sand. Waukegan officials liked the idea because it would solve sand problems in the region, said Noelle Kischer-Lepper, the city’s director of policy and projects.
“It seems silly for us to take our excess sand and put it in a landfill somewhere when there’s another beach on the same lake that needs exactly what we have,” she said. “If it comes out of the same body of water, why not move it a few miles down the road?”
Asbestos can scar the lungs and lead to diseases such as cancer, and nearby Illinois Beach State Park in Zion has had problems with asbestos in the past. Spreading sand with asbestos to other communities would be problematic. A state EPA spokesman said the agency met with Waukegan officials about the sand, but he didn’t have enough information to comment on the specifics of those discussions or any asbestos testing.
“It doesn’t financially make sense to pay for what might be a $17,000 test to move what might be $10,000 worth of sand,” said Shabica, whose firm is also working with other lakefront communities on shore protection and coastal restoration.
The harbor is known for its pollution, but Waukegan officials are trying to remove the stigma and the chemicals in the water.
According to the federal EPA, employees at a now-shuttered insulation manufacturing plant began dumping asbestos and other residue into a disposal area that led to Lake Michigan in 1922. Polychlorinated biphenyls were found in Waukegan’s inner harbor in 1976, though the area is being cleaned and is scheduled to be free of contamination by 2014.
Lake Bluff officials said they waited as long as possible in hopes of using Waukegan’s sand. With no resolution in sight, the Lake Bluff Park District last month ordered 528 tons of sand from a quarry, costing $8,000.
The last-minute move delayed opening day on the beaches this month as crews packed the sand onto the ground. An end-of-the-school-year beach party — a 15-year tradition — had to be canceled, Salski said.
In North Chicago, park officials are still hoping the sand comes through. Beachgoers have steered clear of the underdeveloped, eroded beach and its rocky shoreline for 20 years, a problem that Kevin Holley wants to fix.
Holley, executive director of the Foss Park District in North Chicago, said he and others are still hammering out the final plans to rebuild North Chicago’s beach, a project that could begin by the end of this year. The area needs about 4,000 tons of sand to extend the shoreline, he said.
“If we get the sand for free, it’s a huge cost savings for us,” Holley said. “If we have to pay for that much sand, that’s dollars you have to add back into the project.”
The Corps of Engineers’ next dredging in the mouth of Waukegan Harbor is set for mid-July, when the sand will be taken to a disposal area in the lake south of the harbor or north to Illinois Beach State Park, Knoll said.
Knoll said the agency can’t take the sand to Lake Bluff or North Chicago because those towns are not listed in the dredging permit. But the beach in Zion was included at the state’s request, he said.
“We have agreements with the state on where we can” put the sand, he said. “To go anywhere else we would need a brand-new permit with the state, and these permits take about a year.”
On a recent day, Lars Adams spent the afternoon with his three children in the Waukegan Harbor Dunes.
The 26-year-old Waukegan resident said he visits the beach with his kids about once a month during the summer and is eager to see development in the harbor. To him, it starts with cleaning out the sand.
“It’s a really nice place to go and hang out, but the area around is old, empty factories,” he said. “If Waukegan can fix the sand problem and develop (the harbor) the way they want to, I think it can definitely be better.”