Posted on March 16, 2017
By Jane Morice, cleveland.com
Sen. Rob Portman says he met with a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers representative Tuesday to discuss continued efforts to dredge the Port of Cleveland and to press for answers.
The senator said he expects the Corps to cooperate with a Senate “investigation into reports that the Corps cut its own budget as an excuse to dump contaminated sediment from the Port of Cleveland into Lake Erie.”
Portman – the co-chair of the Senate Great Lakes Task Force – met with Lt. Col. Adam Czekanski, according to a news release from the senator’s office.
“I told Lieutenant Colonel Czekanski that while I’m pleased they began the dredging last fall, they must continue to ensure that the harbor is dredged as necessary for safe and efficient ship passage,” Portman said in the release.
The senator also said in the release that it’s key the Corps “disposes of the dredged material in a responsible way,” instead of dumping it into Lake Erie.
The U.S. Senate passed a bill in May 2016 preventing the Army Corps of Engineers from directly dumping sediment into the lake. Portman and fellow Ohioan Sen. Sherrod Brown collaborated on the bill, which laid out a solution to dump sediment into a “confined disposal facility.”
“I also made clear that the Corps must continue to cooperate with the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations regarding the current investigation, including a review of the Corps’ responses to my requests for documents and information,” Portman’s news release said.
Source: cleveland.com
