MILWAUKEE COUNTY

Burnham Canal cleanup in Milwaukee will transform channel to wetland

Don Behm

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A historic navigation channel in Milwaukee's Menomonee Valley unused since the 1980s will be returned to a wetland as part of a two-leg remediation relay to begin this year.

Miller Compressing Co. will run the first leg: a $2.3 million environmental cleanup of the west end of the Burnham Canal, officials said.

Miller Compressing this year will begin an EPA-approved cleanup of the west end of the Burnham Canal (pictured from the west end looking east toward I-94/43) in June of 2011. Muck on the bottom of the canal west of the S. 11th St. bridge and soil on the west shoreline are contaminated with copper and lead, as well as chemicals known as PAHs. The canal is a former shipping channel off the Menomonee River.

The metal processing company owns property on the west and north shores of the canal, and it is seeking access easements from the City of Milwaukee and five private property owners along the former channel west of S. 11th St.

The Milwaukee Common Council's public works committee will act on the easement request Wednesday at its regularly scheduled meeting.

Alter Trading Corp., the St. Louis-based owner of Miller Compressing, will award a contract for the work after easements are approved, Alter Trading Environmental and Community Affairs Director Sarah Schlichtholz said.

Miller Compressing was established in 1903, and its central metal scrap yard covers around 55 acres on the west end and north side of the canal. Offices are located at 1640 W. Bruce St. The company was purchased in 2012 by Alter Trading Corp. of St. Louis, one of the nation's largest metal recyclers and brokers.

In 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved a cleanup plan for the canal west of the S. 11th St. bridge.

Miller Compressing voluntarily agreed to pay costs of the final plan: dredging around 200 cubic yards of contaminated muck from the west dead end of the canal; excavating 2 feet of contaminated soil from the adjacent shoreline; and placing a foot-deep layer of sand and gravel on the canal bottom west of S. 11th St. as a cap on pollutants.

Tests of canal bottom muck found high levels of copper and a group of toxic chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, that are formed by incomplete combustion of fuels.

Copper and PAHs came from a furnace Miller used from the early 1970s to 1986 or 1987 to reclaim copper from coated wire, according to company officials.

One change in the remediation plan is to build a thicker cap — a minimum of 3 feet — on the bottom of the canal, according to Schlichtholz. The additional aggregate will increase stability of the cap "in order to support a future constructed wetland," she said.

A minimum of three feet of aggregate will be placed on the bottom of the canal to support the weight of a proposed artificial wetland in the second leg of the remediation relay.

In 2012, Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District officials proposed constructing a wetland in the west end of the canal.

MMSD Executive Director Kevin Shafer said he is continuing to look for federal grants or other funding for the proposal. The wetland would be built in 2018 after Miller Compressing is done with its work, he said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers already is working on preliminary engineering and design of the wetland, according to Shafer.

The wetland could fill most of the 3,000-foot-length of the canal since the channel east of the bridge has not been dredged for navigation since 1987 and is no longer used for shipping. No cost estimates for constructing the wetland are available at this time.

Shafer said the district would use concrete rubble and other clean material to fill the 22-foot-deep channel. Trees and wetland plants would grow atop the fill.

The Burnham Canal was dug out of wetlands in the 1870s to provide river access to industries on the south side of the Menomonee Valley.

The 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 extends south from the Menomonee River between the Harley-Davidson Museum off S. 6th St. and MMSD headquarters off Seeboth St.

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.

Don Behm can be reached at don.behm@jrn.com and twitter.com/conserve.