The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Steel Corp. announced an agreement yesterday to undertake a $75 million cleanup and restoration project at the former Duluth Works site on the St. Louis River at Spirit Lake in Duluth. This is part of a larger effort to restore the St. Louis River Area of Concern through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
The project includes dredging 700,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment and building three on-site confined disposal facilities. The plan also calls for constructing an engineered cap over 100 acres of estuary sediment and creating a new 30-acre sheltered bay. Design work is expected to be finished in December.
The Spirit Lake project is being completed under the authority of the EPA’s Great Lakes Legacy Act, with U.S. Steel providing 55 percent of the total project cost and the EPA providing the remaining 45 percent. Construction is expected to begin in 2019.
For more information visit the Spirit Lake Legacy Act Cleanup page on epa.gov.
