White River Pollution Spill

On Monday, July 9 several people, including myself, spotted a large oil slick moving down White River just South-West of the Bridge on Wheeling Ave. and White River Blvd. Several of the other passengers on the MITS bus expressed concern over the oily film, but I didn't give it a great deal of thought until I returned to the area with my wife on Wednesday evening.

While taking several photos of the landscape, I discovered a couple of dead fish along the south bank as well as a dead turtle that I found laying in a pool of debris at the lip of the falls (Pictured left); much of which appeared to have come from a sewage line upstream.

After waking this morning and looking through the photos I had taken yesterday evening, I decided that I had better report the issue to IDEM in case of any relation between the oil slick I spotted on Monday and the carcasses that I discovered along the bank on Wednesday.

After contacting the IDEM Hotline for Enviornment Concerns, I left my contact information and was told that a field investigator would be in touch with me should they have any further questions. I expected that to be the end of it and that I probably wouldn't hear anything else about it, but 15 minutes later I was contact by a Mr. Sewell from IDEM.

After providing Mr. Sewell with the same information that I gave to the Hotline dispatcher and answering a few of his questions, he assured me that he'd look into the matter. A Short while later Mr. Sewell called again to let me know that he had spoken with the City department responsible for such issues and that they were not only aware of the situation, but they had also placed booms downstream as a precautionary measure to catch and remove any oil or residue that may have still been in the water. He further stated that city officials suspected the cause of the spill was a result of someone illegally dumping motor oil into one of the nearby storm drains and that they were doing their best to locate the drain where the oil had been dumped.

During my conversation with Mr. Sewell, I also learned that Muncie has one of the best wastewater management systems in the US and that it serves as a benchmark standard to other cities across the country, thanks to Muncie's very own John M. Craddock. It seems that Mr. Craddock's hard work and dilligence has taken Muncie's water quality from being one of the worst in the nation to one of the best:

The outcome of John's work: dramatically improved water quality, much of which is documented throughout this website. Due to Bureau enforcement, toxic metals discharged annually into the river have been reduced as much as 98 percent. Removal of illegal raw sewage discharges and several combined sewer overflows, along with the construction of separate sewer lines, have stopped 700 million gallons of raw sewage annually from entering the White River. The fish population has increased from 30 to 71 species, while the insect population has increased to over 100 species. Wildlife, including blue herons, great egrets, osprey, red-tailed hawks, deer, beaver, muskrat, mink and other species, has returned to the river.

Mr. Craddock's dedication and hard work has not only been of great service to the residents of Muncie and our environment, his work has also been beneficial to communities all across the United States as well as the international community. Even in retirement Mr. Craddock continues to dedicate himself to the improvement of our environment and the quality of our waterways. Unfortunately, his dedication and hard work alone are not enough without more education on our part and a change in our behavior as is clearly demonstrated when you have people dumping chemicals and other pollutants into our sewers and public drainage systems.

I'm not a tree-hugger; I'm not even an environmental activist. But I do care about about our environment and after living overseas in a country where I've experienced first-hand the consequences that come with the pollution and eventual destruction of the environment, I can tell you that it's not something you want to see and it's certainly not an environment in which you or your children would want to live.

Mr. Craddock believes that the condition of our river [and environment] reflects how we feel about our natural resources and how we view ourselves as well as how others view our community and I couldn't agree with him more. As stated on the Muncie Sanitary District's website, "it is because of his [Mr. Craddock] life-long work, Muncie residents can truly appreciate what a valuable resource they have."

Please, do your part to help take care of it. Otherwise, you'll miss it when it's gone.

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