Baldwin Helps Historic Channel Take First Step Toward Its Environmental Cleanup

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) arrived at the S. 11th St. bridge over the Burnham Canal at noon Tuesday to announce the end of federal authority to dredge the historic channel as the first step toward its environmental cleanup.

A sudden downpour cut short Baldwin's remarks, but not before she pledged to work on gaining federal tax money for a part of the cost for channel restoration, now estimated at $6.5 million. The proposal includes creating a wetland atop most of its 3,000-foot length.

Forgotten in the deluge was a sketch of what such a narrow wetland might look like, with plenty of trees and other green vegetation where dark brown water and its load of trash now stagnates between the canal's banks. The sketch was propped against a bridge wall.

Mayor Tom Barrett said the proposed cleanup would transform the canal into "an environmental showcase."

A Water Resources Reform and Development Act approved by the U.S. House and Senate this month removes federal authority to maintain the east end of the Burnham Canal as a navigable waterway, Baldwin said.

This change in the law was needed so that the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District could move forward with plans to restore the channel, MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer said.

The Burnham Canal was dredged out of wetlands in the 1870s to provide river access to industries on the south side of the Menomonee Valley. The canal linked those industries to the Milwaukee harbor and Great Lakes commerce.

The historic shipping channel parallels W. Bruce St. from S. 15th St. east to the I-94/43 corridor before turning northeast to meet the Menomonee Canal north of the rail yards. The Menomonee Canal, which extends south from the Menomonee River at the Harley-Davidson Museum near the S. 6th St. bridge, is used by barges carrying coal to We Energies' Valley Power Plant.

Navigation on the Burnham Canal west of S. 11th St. ended in the mid-1980s when construction of a vehicle bridge blocked ships from moving upstream. The canal east of the bridge has not been dredged since 1987, and navigation there has been blocked by a Canadian Pacific rail bridge that no longer opens, Shafer said.

More than 140 years after wild rice marshes of the Menomonee River Valley were drained and shipping channels dug, Shafer plans to re-create a 9-acre wetland on the west end of the canal. The 1,500-foot-long artificial wetland would extend from the S. 11th St. bridge west to the dead end near S. 15th St.

This section of the canal would be filled and covered with wetland plants as part of a $3.4 million project approved in September 2012 by the MMSD commission.

Miller Compressing would pay a minimum of $1.6 million but no more than $1.8 million of the total cost to comply with a partial canal cleanup plan approved in 2011 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The company's central metal scrap yard covers about 55 acres on the west end and north side of the canal.

Gaining EPA approval of beginning work on the wetland in tandem with Miller Compressing's activities might take up to eight months, Shafer said Tuesday.

The scrap processing company will place a layer of sand atop contaminated muck at the bottom of the west end of the canal, as part of its EPA-approved project. The sand will create a cap and prevent pollutants in the muck from continuing to be released to surface water.

Shafer wants to follow that up with concrete rubble and other clean material to fill the 22-foot-deep channel. Trees and wetland plants would grow atop the fill.

But Shafer does not want to stop at the S. 11th St. bridge. His goal is to fill in 2,700 feet of the canal, stopping short of rail bridge, and to restore this section as a wetland.

As part of the work, he has recommended that Milwaukee separate combined sanitary and storm sewers along the canal. There are now five combined sewer overflow pipes along the canal.

After separation, storm sewers would drain to the channel but wetland plants would trap soil and other contaminants in the flow. This wetland filter would help improve water quality downstream in the Menomonee River and Lake Michigan.