John Craddock can remember 30 years ago, when walking down the White River in his hip boots meant muscling through more than a foot of sewage collected on the river bottom.
"Some places it would be up to your knees," Craddock said. "Your boots almost got pulled off. It was bad."
But it was the knee-deep black stuff that lured Craddock to the river on snowy days in the first place.
As founder of the Muncie Bureau of Water Quality in 1972, Craddock had resolved to flush the river clean. To do so meant locating all the illegal raw sewage discharge sites in Muncie.
Craddock followed telltale trails of stained snow to locate 200 illegal dumping pipes in the city of Muncie alone. The Bureau and Muncie Sanitary District were able to eliminate all of the discharges during the next 10 years to help return the White River to its natural state of sand, bedrock and gravel.
While the White River is far from perfect, it has come a long way in the past three decades due to innovative thinking and hard work by the city of Muncie, Craddock said.
"As far as water quality, we are cleaner than most other regions of the White River," said Richard Huyck, current director of the BWQ. "Compared to the rest of Indiana, Muncie has to be at the top of reducing what is going into the river."
Thirty years ago, however, the river was no better than any other river in the country.
"Our river was like many other rivers across the United States," Huyck said. "It was highly polluted. It was red, orange and green from industrial discharge. It looked like a rainbow."
Much of the pollution came from industries bypassing sewer systems and city treatment plants and dumping wastewater directly into the White River.
"Before the '70s, people just thought the river was a place to get rid of waste," Huyck said.
In order to limit the toxic industrial discharge, the BWQ created what is called a "pretreatment program." Huyck said the pretreatment program required the Muncie industrial community to remove contaminants from wastewater before it reaches the river. The contaminants are then hauled off to a self-contained dumpsite.
Muncie was the first municipality in the United States to create a pretreatment program, Huyck said. Pretreatment programs were not federally mandated until 1982, 10 years later.
The Clean Water Act was passed in 1972, giving the program the legislative backing it needed to enforce regulations.
"The Clean Water Act gave us some guidelines and teeth for working with industry in limiting what is being discharged into the river," Huyck said.
According to Fred Siewert, professor of water resources and wastewater management at Ball State, the program was successful because the BWQ held Muncie companies accountable through the threat of hefty violation fines.
"(The BWQ) has a lot of power," Siewert said. "The companies know the water quality is being checked all the time, so they know not to dump everything illegally."
Craddock said he credited the success of the pretreatment program to a good working relationship with the Muncie industrial community. He said he only had to issue one fine in his 30 years as director.
Before the pretreatment program was enacted, 101 pounds of heavy metals (cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, chromium and zinc) were entering the river in Muncie each day.
Now heavy metals are below the detection level of six pounds a day. This is at least a 93 percent decrease, but Craddock said it could be closer to 96 or 97 percent because most metals are now below traceable amounts.
The BWQ has also prevented 9,600 pounds of industrial cyanide from infiltrating the river during the past 30 years, Huyck said.
Along with cleaning up industrial discharge, the Bureau, along with the sanitation and engineering departments of the sanitation district, made it a priority to clean up Muncie's sewage problem as soon as possible.
In the mid-'80s, Muncie began working to separate the outdated, combined sewer systems. Combined sewers carry sewage and storm water through the same pipes. Therefore, a heavy rain can overload the system. The wastewater went directly into the river through relief valves before the it could reach a treatment facility.
Huyck said the city's sewer systems are about 70 percent separated right now. He said Muncie should be able to meet Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for sewage separation projects in the next 20 years.
Craddock said Muncie is still ahead of many major cities like Indianapolis, which maintains 123 combined sewers.
The process is lengthy because it is so expensive, Huyck said. A total overhaul would force utility rates so high they would be unpayable.
Nonetheless, the bureau and sanitation district have eliminated more than 700 million gallons of raw sewage from flowing into the White River, Craddock said.
The departure of sewage and industrial chemicals has brought about the return of wildlife. Craddock said wood ducks, red-tailed hawks, osprey, mallards, mink, muskrats, beaver and various aquatic wildlife have made a comeback during the last 30 years.
"The wildlife along the river now compared to 1972 is a night and day difference," Craddock said.
Craddock said the number of fish species found in the White River around Muncie has increased from 30 to 70.
BWQ Aquatic Biologist Rick Conrad said many of the species that have returned are intolerant fish, like darters, that are particularly sensitive to pollution. These fish are a good indication of a healthier river.
"We've got a lot more than carp and suckers," Huyck said.
But that's not to say the river does not have its flaws.
Three Delaware County sections of the White River have been listed as an impaired waterway, according to a 2002 study of Indiana's water quality by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Tim Kroeker of IDEM said a river becomes impaired when it becomes dangerous for human recreation, when the fish become inedible and when organisms are unable to live and thrive in the river.
The IDEM declared a fish consumption advisory on the White River because of the presence of mercury and PCB, an industrial chemical used in the manufacturing of electrical capacitors.
The river also does not meet EPA restrictions for e.coli bacteria and is therefore not swimmable.
Siewert said e.coli, in itself, is not dangerous, but it is an indicator of fecal matter and disease-causing coliform bacteria.
"If we know we have e.coli bacteria in the water, we are assuming the worst," Siewert said. "We are saying there is a potential that disease-producing bacteria are in the water."
Huyck said much of the current pollution in the river is the result of agricultural and urban run-off. This is when rain washes sediment and road contaminants into the water.
"Anytime you have sediment, everything attaches to it, like chemicals," Huyck said. "When you reduce sediment, you reduce pollution."
Thomas Lauer, assistant professor of Biology at Ball State University, said reducing sediment is easier said than done in a region dependent on agriculture.
"How we manage the land directly impacts what goes into the water," Lauer said. "As long as we have row crops, it is not going to change dramatically."
Huyck said the Delaware County Soil and Water Conservation District recently received a three-year, $300,000 grant to address problems with e.coli and run-off and propose a plan to solve them. He plans to focus more on wildlife as an indicator of river health in the future.
"We have the industrial problem under control," Huyck said. "In the future we are going to be looking at a total watershed management program with more emphasis placed on biological indicators of water quality.
"Animals give a more long term picture. If we see increased diversity, we know the river is continuing to clean up. If we see a setback, we know there is a new source of pollution we must identify."
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