In The Jungle, Upton Sinclair described this arm of the Chicago River as a “great open sewer … where the filth lasts forever and a day.”  Serving as a grim backdrop for the lives of a lower-class Russian immigrant family in the early 1900s, Bubbly Creek, as it is known, served as a catchall for waste and dead livestock discarded from the infamous stockyards of Chicago.

But today, this murky stretch of river is home to a different breed of urbanite. Muck and weathered cobblestone have given way to paved roads and cul-de-sacs. Warehouses once filled with animal carcasses have been replaced with million-dollar homes. An improbable idea has turned into a blossoming community.

Recently the creek has been the focus of a $200,000 grant from the Grand Victoria Foundation to continue remediation efforts led by several public entities—including the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the Wetlands Initiative and the University of Illinois at Chicago—which are exploring different capping techniques to contain the contaminated sediment lying at its bottom.

Private design and construction firm Patrick Engineering joined the project in April, outbidding a host of other top companies for the chance to take on the creek.

“Lots of people have been involved for years, and a lot of them have been doing it independently,” says Project Manager Richard Frendt. “There’s a huge interest in making sure it’s dealt with. This pilot study is a big step.”

Investigative work in the creek basin will be done in June, and design plans will be finalized by the end of the year. “There will be a lot of shareholder meetings,” chuckles Frendt, who adds that they’ll be looking to the community for additional input. “The public outreach is going to be very important.”

Even more important may be the funding. Expenses for the study total over $300,000, with projected construction costs slipping into the low seven figures, which is relatively cheap, says University of Illinois Associate Professor Karl Rockne, who adds that they’ve received additional funding from the National Science Foundation. “We’ve submitted so many grant proposals, but the good thing is that we have the design funds.”

Rockne and his team of researchers studied the creek for two years before the project officially kicked off in the spring. He recalls pulling out hair and other animal parts during the sampling process. Still, he says, he’s seen worse.

“Puget Sound, New York, New Jersey … there are some sites in Chicago that are even worse than this one. I’ve actually seen people canoe and swim in Bubbly Creek. I’m not sure if they realize what they’re doing, though.”

The creek serves as host to a variety of pollutants, and the bubbling methane gas acts as a conveyor to bring the contamination to the surface. Rockne’s team has been working on active capping, hoping to devise a way to destroy, degrade or immobilize it. Different areas may need different caps, he says, and that makes for a very challenging project.

“We’ll be working with the Wetlands Initiative to clean the surface water and entomb the pollutants,” says Rockne, adding that the organization will construct wetlands near the shore. “There has never been collaboration like this. If we can do it here, we can do it anywhere.”