It is great to hear about the improvements to the Mississippi River, and not just because it is about 12 miles east of me.

I now no recent facts about the cleanup efforts except what you reported, and but offer the following historical perspective:  about 16 years ago (give or take 2 or 3), Greenpeace came down the Mississippi protesting at company sites along the length of the river.  Part of their action was to sabotage an industrial water treatment facility that resulted significant pollution being released to the river (as opposed to being cleaned up, which is what water treatment facilities do).

No mention was made of civil works like sewage treatment.  That wouldn't have been good for fund raising.  

However, by that time, companies had long since cleaned up their acts, and the major polluters of the river were the towns that refused to install good waste treatment facilities (refused as in the citizens wouldn't vote for them).

This highly cynical and false blame of industry left me, as an environmentally conscious scientist, with a very bad taste in my mouth.

I don't know how this breaks down now, but it is nice to hear of success stories with towns deciding to protect the environment. So, well done Dubuque et al.  How many more towns do we need to see the light?  Does anybody know?  Are we there now?

Jim
http://greenchemistry.wordpress.com/

Jim Bashkin aka chemrat aka nearlynothingbutnovels http://greenchemistry.wordpress.com http://nearlynothingbutnovels.blogspot.com/