A LEGACY OF MISUSE

Troubled waters

Erosion, farm herbicides and untreated sewage threaten the St. Joseph river, the source of Fort Wayne's drinking water and home to endangered species.

By KEVIN KILBANE of The News@Sentinel

A line of blue-gray clouds sweeps over the rolling farm fields near Hillsdale, Mich. Thunder rumbles long and low. The clouds dump rain through branches of scraggly black willows and red-osier dogwoods, and into a 5-acre marsh southwest of Hillsdale. At a low corner of the marsh, clear water threads through cattails and over a bed of clean sand and gravel.

At its northernmost tributary, the St. Joseph River begins its journey toward Fort Wayne, where the stream is the source of drinking water for more than 200,000 people.

The St. Joseph travels more than 80 miles through three states before joining the St. Marys River in downtown Fort Wayne to create the Maumee River.

By the time the St. Joseph River reaches the city, its water is tinted a muddy brown by soil from farm fields and construction sites. Clinging to the soil are farm fertilizers and weedkillers. An environmental group's 1995 survey of tap water in Midwest cities found nine herbicides and pesticides or their byproducts in one sample of Fort Wayne's drinking water -- the most contaminants of the 27 cities tested.

E. coli bacteria seep into the St. Joseph from rural septic systems and livestock farms. Sewage treatment systems in 21 towns discharge into the river or its tributaries before it flows into Fort Wayne. Some towns, such as Auburn and Montpelier, Ohio, dump raw household and industrial sewage into the river system whenever heavy rains overwhelm their treatment plants' capacities. Bacteria levels in the St. Joseph are high enough that the river is not safe for swimming on many days.

Heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals such as PCBs are embedded in the sediment of the river bottom. Discharged by power plants and industry over the years, the pollutants make some fish unsafe to eat.

More than a century of river abuse has put increasing pressure on Fort Wayne's Three Rivers Filtration Plant, which is residents' last defense against unsafe tap water.

The good news is that the filtration plant usually removes nearly all the silt, pollutants and disease-causing microorganisms before pumping drinking water to homes, schools and businesses in the city. The bad news is that on some days, levels of the weedkiller atrazine -- an ingredient in farm herbicides such as Atrex, Bicep and Harness Extra -- spike higher in local drinking water than safety levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

To protect public health, officials at water, health and agricultural agencies agree it is time to clean up the St. Joseph River before its troubled waters become worse.

Some work already has begun.

The nonprofit St. Joseph River Watershed Initiative has brought together government and agricultural officials, educators, environmentalists and landowners from the tri-state area to work cooperatively on the river's problems. The independent group's goals include protecting Fort Wayne's drinking water and making the waters safe for swimming, fishing and other recreation.

Federal and state agencies have aided the fight. Their programs pay farmers to reduce erosion and pesticide runoff. The agencies work with communities to reduce bacterial contamination from sewage.

The Nature Conservancy environmental group has stepped in to help protect Fish Creek and the East Fork, two of the St. Joseph's most pristine tributaries.

Those working to clean up the St. Joseph hope for a day when the river runs clear and virtually free of pollutants and harmful bacteria. They see families swimming in the water, canoeists skimming across the stream's surface, and cyclists, bird-watchers and walkers pulled to its shores.

Achieving those goals will take decades, those involved say. But by acting now, they believe it is still possible to restore the St. Joseph River to a semblance of what it was before people chopped down the towering forests and drained the marshes that once kept its water clear.

"If we're going to be staying on this old Earth," Fish Creek-area farmer Scott Dick says, "we can't be destroying it."