WBEZ | Northwest Indiana

Northwest Indiana judge to head state child welfare agency

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:55:00 -0600

A longtime juvenile court judge in Northwest Indiana will lead the state’s embattled child welfare agency.

Mary Beth Bonaventura has been the senior judge for the juvenile court system in Lake County, Indiana for the last 20 years.

She’s developed a reputation for being tough but fair, often presiding over cases involving teens facing charges for murder, drug offenses and sex crimes.

But soon, Bonaventura will step down to head Indiana’s Department of Child Services.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence announced the change yesterday.

“Judge Bonaventura is uniquely qualified to lead the state's Department of Child Services and help to protect Hoosier children from abuse and neglect," Pence stated in a written statement.

Indiana’s DCS been criticized for acting too slow to prevent child abuse or child deaths.

Indiana lawmakers have been trying to develop ways to improve the system. In Pence’s state of the state address last week, he says he will allocate an additional $35 million a year to the IDCS to help better investigate child abuse cases.

The department has been scrutinized over child-abuse deaths in recent years, including the case of Christian Choate of Northwest Indiana. The 13-year-old Choate had been abused and kept in a cage by his own parents which lead to his death but he wasn’t found until two years after his death.

His body was buried in a shallow grave in a mobile home park in Gary, Indiana in May 2011. His father, 40-year-old Riley Choate, was sentenced this month to 80 years in prison for his son’s death.

They boy’s step-mother, Kimberly Kubina, is scheduled to be sentenced in February for her connection to the case. Indiana State Rep. Linda Lawson, a Democrat from Hammond, lauds Bonaventura’s appointment.

“It is one of the best things that can happen to kids in the state of Indiana,” Lawson, a former Hammond police detective, said Wednesday. “She has got the right idea of what needs to happen. She is willing to take on parents. She’s willing to take on the system. She’s willing to take on attorneys, law enforcement. If it’s not right for kids. She really cares.”

In announcing the appointment, Pence said Lake County’s Juvenile Court system is one of the toughest ones in the state of Indiana.

In 2008, former Gov. Mitch Daniels appointed Bonaventura as a member of the Indiana Commission on Disproportionality in Youth Services.

In 2009, she was named Chair of the Civil Rights of Children Committee for the Indiana State Bar Association and the former Chief Justice of the Indiana Supreme Randall T. Shepard appointed Bonaventura as Chair of the Child Welfare Improvement Committee.

"She is a strong leader who has an impeccable reputation of integrity and compassion for children,” Pence added.

A native of East Chicago, Bonaventura is a life-long Lake County resident. She received her undergraduate degree from Marian University in Indianapolis and her law degree from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb.

In 2008, the Indiana Supreme Court allowed a documentary firm to video tape proceedings in Bonaventura’s courtroom. Previously, the Supreme Court had never allowed cameras in the courtroom. The result was a mini-reality series for MTV called “Juvies.”

MSNBC also airs a reality series featuring Bonaventura’s court called “Lake County Lockup.”

Grand Calumet River delivers toxic load to Lake Michigan

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 10:06:00 -0600

The Grand Calumet River system winds for 13 miles through a Northwest Indiana industrial landscape that could almost be described as post-apocalyptic.

Alongside the several branches of the slow-moving waterway, a steel mill, gypsum plant and other heavy industry spew plumes of steam into the air while vines and shrubs grow inside vacant crumbling brick buildings. A fragment of the partially demolished Cline Avenue bridge still stands, twisted rebar and chunks of concrete hanging from each end. A rusty abandoned motorboat bobs half-sunken next to a soiled brown floating absorbent boom.

The Grand Calumet has long been known as one of the nation’s most polluted rivers. It is one of 43 federal Areas of Concern targeted for remediation in the Great Lakes region. For many decades before the 1972 Clean Water Act, countless industries dumped contaminated waste into the river with abandon. Gary, East Chicago and Hammond discharge untreated sewage and storm water into it.

The Grand Calumet consists of two forks that join and empty into Lake Michigan via the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal and Indiana Harbor, in East Chicago. Though the land right around the river mouth is not open to the public, local residents fish, swim, boat and wade at nearby beaches, harbors and weedy access points.

The Grand Calumet’s impact on this near shore area is hard to quantify given the way contaminants disperse quickly in Lake Michigan. But experts with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management say the river surely harms near shore lake water quality and habitat as it empties one billion gallons of water into Lake Michigan each day.

That flow includes material from overflowing sewers during heavy rains, contaminated sediment pulled from the river bottom, industrial run-off and contaminated groundwater.

Daunting as this toxic brew may sound, the Grand Calumet is getting cleaned up. Hence the near shore area of Lake Michigan should reap significant environmental and ecological benefits as well.

State and federal environmental officials are about halfway through a massive project to remove contaminated sediment and restore wetlands. And the state environmental agency is working with municipalities to reduce sewage overflow during rains.

A legacy of contamination

The Grand Calumet was “originally mostly a slowly meandering wetland complex,” said Jim Smith, an Indiana state natural resource damage coordinator. But with widespread dredging, channelizing, damming and the building of the Indiana Harbor and Ship Canal which makes up the final stretch into the lake, “the flow regime of the river has changed.”

Today, in fact, municipal and industrial effluent makes up 90 percent of the river’s flow.

“There were industries from meatpacking to lumber to brickmaking and metal shops on the west branch to the big steel mills and the petroleum industry,” Smith noted. “Pipelines and everything came through this area. Also the municipalities developed their sewers going directly into the river. There was domestic contamination from human origin to organic stuff from the petroleum industry and steelmaking.

“The river was the disposal point for years.”

The river’s sediment contains harmful metals and carcinogenic compounds including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals like mercury, cadmium, chromium and lead from the decades of industrial dumping. A 2000 study prepared for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found serious concerns and impacts from contaminated sediment in the Grand Calumet.

The river is also contaminated by leaching and run-off from nearby waste disposal sites and contaminated groundwater, according to the Areas of Concern website. It is even harmed by atmospheric deposition of contaminants from fossil fuel burning and waste incineration.

There are more than 460 underground storage tanks containing chemical and petroleum waste products in the area, the website says, and at least 150 leaking tank reports have been filed with the county.

“The contaminants we’re talking about affect organisms and can directly or indirectly affect the food chain,” said Scott Ireland, U.S. EPA special assistant for the senior adviser to the administrator on the Great Lakes. “They could wipe out the benthic community, so fish are not able to eat, or fish eat (benthic organisms) and are contaminated; then the contamination will enter the food chain. If humans eat the fish, they are taking up those contaminants as well.”

Great Lakes Echo is a project of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

The Grand Calumet River’s road to recovery

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 09:52:00 -0600

The sediment on the bottom of the Grand Calumet River in Northwest Indiana provides a toxic record of the region’s history going back more than a century.

It is full of chemicals, heavy metals and other contaminants from steel-making, oil refining, waste incineration, smelting and other heavy industry that laid the economic and social foundation of the area.

But federal and state officials are now in the midst of a multi-million dollar project to clean up the sediment and the river as a whole.

Since the 1972 Clean Water Act drastically reduced industrial discharges into waterways, once the legacy sediment is removed there will be relatively little industrial pollution in the future, said Scott Ireland, special assistant for the senior adviser to the administrator on the Great Lake for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Dredging started in 2009. About 750,000 cubic yards of sediment two to three feet deep have been removed along a 2.5 mile stretch of river. The dredged area was then covered with a reactive barrier, composed of either organoclay mixed with sand or an activated carbon mat. These specialized materials help filter and contain toxic substances from the underlying sediments.

“Our capping and dredging will sequester or isolate contaminated sediments that have been there for almost 100 years, reducing the total amount of contaminants going into the Great Lakes,” said Jim Smith, a coordinator of the natural resources damages department for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. “How much it will reduce it we really don’t know – there will be some interesting monitoring done over the next few years.”

Addressing combined sewer overflows

Overflowing sewers that pour into the river and then Lake Michigan contain E. coli bacteria and other germs as well as oil, grease and detritus picked up by storm water running off industrial and municipal areas. In 2011, Hammond, Gary and East Chicago released 1.2 billion gallons, 126 million gallons and 304 million gallons, respectively, of stormwater contaminated with sewage into the Grand Calumet waterway, according to Indiana officials.
But the state is working with those cities to curb these combined sewer overflows, including by separating the sewers that carry storm water from sanitary sewers (for human waste.)

East Chicago already is implementing an approved plan. Hammond and Gary are developing their plans – two of the last four municipalities in a statewide sewer improvement program involving 108 cities and towns and 10 separate consent decrees.

East Chicago’s $20.8 million plan promises that only rains heavier than a relatively rare “10-year, one-hour” storm will cause sewer overflows into the Grand Calumet.

There are different techniques cities use to address the problem.

“You might increase the size of wastewater treatment capacity, to accept and treat more of the flow,” said Paul Higginbotham, branch chief over Indiana’s office of water quality permits. “You can also take out bottlenecks within the collection system – so you can get flow to the treatment plant versus overflow into the outfall…

“Also, bigger communities can add wet weather treatment systems, like basins for the overflow where it’s treated before it’s discharged.”

Restoring wetlands

State and federal officials have restored about 37 acres of wetlands that had been seriously degraded by contaminated floodwaters from the river over the years and choked with invasive phragmites. They removed the sediment in the wetlands and replaced it with clean sand. And they replaced phragmites with native vegetation.

In all, about 100 acres of wetland will be restored. It provides habitat for migratory birds and fish, improving the overall ecological health of the surrounding area. The wetlands also help prevent nutrient pollution and other contaminated runoff into Lake Michigan, as storm water filters through the wetlands before seeping into the lake.

The sediment clean up and wetland restoration are funded by the Great Lakes Legacy Act, a law meant to deal with contaminated sediment from years past. The Grand Calumet project so far has cost $72 million, about 65 percent of it federal money under the Legacy Act, which is part of the larger Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Another $75 million is needed to complete the project. Securing the full funding in the near future could be difficult given the federal budget crisis which is likely to mean moderate or even severe cuts to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

State officials will closely monitoring the project for the next 40 years, repairing the cap on the river bottom if needed and continuing to remove invasive species and plant native species as necessary.

Under a consent decree with U.S. Steel, Higginbotham said, starting next year there will also be monitoring done on five miles of the east branch of the Grand Calumet, including a site in the middle portion of the Indiana Harbor which is at the river’s mouth into Lake Michigan.

“We’ll be looking at fish populations, fish tissue contaminant concentrations, sediment contaminant concentrations, water quality, general parameters, chemical parameters, macro-benthic populations, sediment toxicity,” said Smith.

Once the sewer, sediment removal and wetland work is done, the officials said, the river should be safer and more attractive for boaters. The beaches of Lake Michigan will become healthier for people and wildlife.

The Areas of Concern website notes that the Grand Calumet once supported “highly diverse, globally unique fish and wildlife communities,” and despite all the abuse “remnants of this diversity” still remain.

Theoretically it could be revived. Then ideally a paddling trip down the Grand Calumet into Lake Michigan will provide a view of both the area’s proud industrial history and the way a battered ecosystem can be nursed back to health.

Great Lakes Echo is a project of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

'Afternoon Shift' #177: Live from Crown Point, Indiana

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:26:00 -0500

Feds raid Northwest Indiana office

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:42:00 -0500

Federal authorities are sorting through files and computers confiscated from the Surveyor’s office in Lake County, Indiana. No one is saying what’s behind the investigation.

About a dozen FBI agents arrived to the office in Crown Point late Tuesday morning. Office employees were told to leave and not come back for two hours as documents and computer hard drives were taken under subpoena.

The elected surveyor, George Van Til, would only issue a written statement.

“This is a total surprise to me and I’m not really aware of exactly what’s going on and what the authorities are looking for or at. I can’t answer any questions at this time. We will assess this situation later,” Van Til said. “It’s important for everyone not to jump to any conclusions. This is not the first time the FBI has been in a government office here nor will it be the last time I’m sure.”

The FBI office in Indianapolis declined comment.

An elected county official, who asked not to be identified, believes the investigation centers around Van Til’s possible use of county equipment for his re-election campaign.

A longtime Northwest Indiana politician, Van Til’s been the county surveyor for the last 20 years. The office’s primary responsibility is flood control, along with collecting and storing county geographic information. In early May, Van Til won the Democratic primary. He faces a little known Republican challenger in the fall.

John Dull, who serves as the attorney for the Lake County Commissioners, the executive branch of county government whose office is just down the hall from Van Til, said he does not know what the FBI is investigating.

“I don’t have any indication of what the subject may be. I don’t know. They did not give me a subpoena,” Dull said. “I learned about it when two people came in and that they were passed up by the people as they went up to the surveyor’s office and that’s when I learned it.”

Lake County government and some of the cities that are within the county, Gary, Hammond and East Chicago, have seen their share of public corruption scandals over the years.

Gary's Katie Hall, Indiana's first African-American member of Congress, dies

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:24:00 -0600

Former Indiana Congresswoman Katie Hall died on Monday at the age of 73. For many, she’ll be remembered for marking a significant milestone in American history, but for others, she’ll be remembered for leaving political office in a cloud of shame.

Hall’s long political career in Northwest Indiana dated back to the 1970s. She served a single term in the Indiana House of Representatives from 1974 to 1976 and later held a state senate seat from 1976 to 1982.

In 1982, she won a special election for a local congressional seat, becoming Indiana’s first African-American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. That election followed the sudden death of U.S. Rep. Adam Benjamin, a much-revered congressman from Gary. Hall was appointed the Democratic nominee for the seat by Gary’s mayor, Richard Hatcher.

In Congress, Hall had a spotty record. She gained notoriety for sponsoring the law that made Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday but, despite that, she did not win re-election in 1984. Instead, she narrowly lost the Democratic primary to Peter Visclosky, who is the son of a former mayor of Gary and remains the congressman from Northwest Indiana. Former Lake County Prosecutor Jack Crawford finished third in that race.

Hall wasn’t finished politically, though.

Following her congressional defeat, she won election as Gary City Clerk, serving from 1985 to 1993. She twice challenged Visclosky for Congress, but failed both times. Later, she returned to office as Gary City Clerk.

During her last term in 2002, she and her daughter, Junifer Hall, who served as Deputy Clerk, were indicted by a federal grand jury on racketeering, extortion and mail fraud charges. A series of newspaper articles in the Post-Tribune of Northwest Indiana alleged Hall extorted campaign cash from her employees. In 2003, Hall was spared prison following her guilty plea on mail fraud charges, but her daughter served 16 months. In 2009 Hall asked President Barack Obama for a pardon, which was denied.

Hall, who earned political science and social studies degrees, taught for more than 30 years in the Gary Public School system.

Katie Hall died Monday morning at a Gary hospital of an undisclosed illness.

Northwest Indiana professor under fire for alleged anti-Muslim comments

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:29:00 -0600

Some students at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond, Indiana were outraged by one of their professors, Maurice Eisenstein, who teaches political science at the Northwest Indiana university.

He came under fire for comments made in lectures and online which many considered anti-Muslim.

Eisenstein was also alleged to have made questionable comments about other groups, including blacks and Hispanics.

Some students claimed Professor Eisenstein’s comments have intimidated Muslim students. The professor denied he was anti-Muslim or intimidating.

But WBEZ’s Northwest Indiana reporter, Michael Puente, said the professor was known for his provocative views on local politics.

Puente has been following the controversy and joined Eight Forty-Eight to share the latest on the controversy.

And to learn more about academic freedom and its limits, Eight Foryy-Eight was joined by joined by Robert Kreiser, an adjunct professor at George Mason University and the associate secretary of the American Association of University Professors.

Northwest Indiana elections yield shake-ups

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 06:28:00 -0600

Puente with Karen Freeman-Wilson 2-way.mp3 Democratic candidates for mayor in the Northwest Indiana cities of Hammond and Gary were expected to win big in Tuesday’s general election. And did they ever.

In Hammond, an expected strong showing by Republican candidate George Janiec did not materialize, and the Democratic incumbent Thomas McDermott prevailed with a gaping lead by night’s end. In a similar contest four years ago, Janiec had come within 500 votes of upsetting McDermott.

On Tuesday, he had no such luck.

McDermott trounced Janiec by collecting 80 percent of the vote in Northwest Indiana’s largest city. McDermott’s victory earns him his third four-year term as mayor.

“We’re just going to continue doing what we’ve been doing. Hammond residents are happy,” a jubilant McDermott told WBEZ during victory celebration at his campaign headquarters in the city’s Woodmar shopping district.

Throughout this year’s campaign, McDermott said Janiec’s near upset in 2007 was a fluke, one stoked by McDermott’s decision to close the city’s health department earlier that year. McDermott also did very little campaigning in the 2007 contest because he’d spent a good deal of energy during the Democratic primary. That’s a common occurrence in Northwest Indiana, given its status as a Democratic bastion.

This time around, McDermott didn’t take a victory for granted and campaigned hard throughout the season. He also received a boost from economic development announcements, including the opening of the city’s second Walmart near its border with Chicago. The city also announced that a fertilizer company plans to open a multi-million dollar distribution center.

McDermott says he’s going to press the economic development issue during his upcoming term. One concern will be the future of the city’s sizable gaming industry. Hammond’s Horseshoe Casino has drawn the ire of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who wants a casino in his city, primarily to keep Chicago gaming dollars closer to home.

McDermott says he’d like to discuss the situation with Emanuel to see how the two cities can work with each other.

“I think Mayor Emanuel and I have a lot in common and hopefully we can work through that issue,” McDermott said.

History made in Gary

In neighboring Gary, Karen Freeman-Wilson won big over three challengers, including Republican candidate Charles Smith Jr.

Freeman-Wilson, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor twice before, becomes the first African-American woman to serve as mayor of any Indiana city in the state’s history.

And, even though her victory was expected when she won the Democratic primary over 10 other contenders, it didn’t stop the Freeman-Wilson campaign from throwing a big celebration at Gary’s Genesis Conviction Center Tuesday night.

Music, dancing, balloons and chants greeted a jubilant Freeman-Wilson.

“We are here to celebrate a new day in Gary, Indiana. A new day for Gary and a new day for all of Northwest Indiana,” Freeman-Wilson said.

Freeman-Wilson said her priorities will be economic development, fighting crime and trying to change the city’s negative image.

She said, shortly after her term begins Jan. 1, she’ll conduct a nation-wide search for a new police chief.

Among those congratulating Freeman-Wilson Tuesday night was current mayor Rudy Clay, who dropped out of the primary last spring after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.

New Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson discusses her plans for Gary public safety and economic development:

puente-karen-freeman-wilson-2-way.mp3

Copeland keeps East Chicago, Velazquez out in Portage

Perhaps the biggest shock of the night was the re-election loss by Portage’s incumbent Democratic mayor, Olga Velazquez.

As in Hammond, the contest was a rematch.

Velazquez had faced Republican Jim Snyder four years ago and won that race, becoming the city’s first female mayor. This time around, Snyder focused on a platform of reducing crime, increasing economic development and stabilizing the city’s budget. He won by just more than three percentage points.

Other mayoral races in Northwest Indiana were not so close. East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland clinched his contest against two opponents, including independent candidate John Aguilera.

In late 2011, Copeland was selected by the city’s Democratic caucus to finish the term left by former Mayor George Pabey, who resigned after being convicted on federal corruption charges.

In Crown Point, incumbent Demoratic Mayor David Uran easily won re-election against Republican Eldon Strong.

Urban earned his second four-year term in a Lake County city that has a long history of choosing Republican mayors.

In neighboring Porter County, Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas, a Republican, handily won his third term as mayor by a 2-to-1 margin.

Northwest Indiana residents prepare for municipal elections

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:00:00 -0600

Illinois was still several months away from its primaries but across the state line in Indiana it was a different story. On Tuesday, Hoosiers will go to the polls to pick local candidates and vote on referenda. There were several intriguing mayoral races in Northwest Indiana, so WBEZ reporter Michael Puente joined Eight Forty-Eight to sort everything out.

Music Button: Chris Joss, "Spectators", from the album No Play No Work, (ESL)

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is 'Keeping the Republic' and pushing for a change in the national direction

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:59:00 -0500

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was in Chicago on Monday, promoting his new book Keeping the Republic: Saving America by Trusting Americans. Gov. Daniels writes about the nation’s growing debt problem, especially as it relates to Social Security and Medicare, and explained how his own policies helped Indiana turn debts into surpluses. He also included some less than flattering comments about nearby Northwest Indiana. Daniels recently spoke with Michael Puente, Eight Forty-Eight's Northwest Indiana reporter.