Bubbly Creek
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Bubbly Creek is the nickname given to the South Fork of the Chicago River's South (Main) Branch. Originally a wetland, channels were dredged to increase the rate of flow into the river and dry out the area. Meatpackers used fat (as lard), hides and flesh (as meat), but blood and entrails usually found their way into the nearest river.[1] The South Fork became an open sewer for the Chicago stockyards, especially the Union Stock Yards. It received so much blood and offal that it began to bubble methane and hydrogen sulfide gas from the products of decomposition.[2]. Two heavily polluted streams that joined to create the south fork were filled in, and their courses can still be seen today in the configuration of streets and rail lines in the area. By the 1990s the only living metazoans in the creek were huge numbers of bloodworms feeding on the estimated two meters of rotting blood in the bed of the hypoxic creek[3]. A program to oxygenate the water by continuously injecting compressed air into the creek has met with limited success, so that the creek's odor and bloodworm population is much reduced, and fish now venture there.
[edit] References
- ^ Grossman, James R., Ann Durkin Keating and Janice L. Ruff (eds.), Encyclopedia of Chicago, "Meatpacking", pp. 515-7, University of Chicago Press, 2004, ISBN 0-226-31015-9
- ^ Upton Sinclair (1906). The Jungle. "Bubbly Creek" is an arm of the Chicago River, and forms the southern boundary of the Union Stock Yards; all the drainage of the square mile of packing-houses empties into it, so that it is really a great open sewer a hundred or two feet wide. One long arm of it is blind, and the filth stays there forever and a day. The grease and chemicals that are poured into it undergo all sorts of strange transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is constantly in motion, as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great leviathans disporting themselves in its depths. Bubbles of carbonic gas will rise to the surface and burst, and make rings two or three feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk about on it, feeding, and many times an unwary stranger has started to stroll across, and vanished temporarily. The packers used to leave the creek that way, till every now and then the surface would catch on fire and burn furiously, and the fire department would have to come and put it out. Once, however, an ingenious stranger came and started to gather this filth in scows, to make lard out of; then the packers took the cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, and afterwards gathered it themselves. The banks of "Bubbly Creek" are plastered thick with hairs, and this also the packers gather and clean.
- ^ http://www.wetlands-initiative.org/BubblyCreek.html
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