Al wrote:pleasure craft putting garbage into the lake...
Not true, there are not enough small boats to cause level needed to close the beaches.
Milwaukee certainly does dump raw sewage.
http://www.wisn.com/news/south-east-wis ... s/19702110
"The rain this week has forced the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District to dump raw sewage mixed with rainwater into local rivers and on to Lake Michigan."
So does Chicago
Storm forces officials to dump sewage into Lake Michigan
7/3 - Chicago, Ill. – The hard rain that pummeled Chicago earlier this week forced officials to open the locks and sluice gates that protect Lake Michigan, releasing a noxious mix of sewage and storm runoff into the water supply for 7 million people in Chicago and the suburbs.
After a surge of murky, debris-strewn water overloaded the city's underground labyrinth of sewers and stormwater tunnels, officials at the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District relieved the pressure by opening gates on the North Shore Channel in Wilmette at 11:23 p.m. Monday.
About an hour later, the locks at Navy Pier were flung open, allowing millions of gallons of runoff
as well as raw and partially treated wastewater into the lake. The Wilmette gate was closed again at 5:50 a.m., followed by the Chicago locks at 7:10 a.m., said Allison Fore, a district spokeswoman. Estimates of how much sewage-laden river water flowed into the lake won't be available for several days.
Chicago water officials typically start adding more bacteria-killing chlorine to the region’s drinking water in these situations. City officials couldn’t immediately be reached for comment this morning.
Despite construction of the $3 billion Deep Tunnel project, Lake Michigan has been hit harder by sewage overflows in recent years, mostly because of a handful of monsoon-like storms that quickly fill the giant stormwater tunnels winding below Chicago and the Cook County suburbs.
Climate change is projected to increase the frequency of rainfall greater than 2.5 inches a day, the amount that can force runoff into Lake Michigan, according to a study by scientists from the University of Illinois and Texas Tech University. By the end of the century, the number of big storms could jump by a whopping 160 percent.
Chicago Tribune