The Chicago River: Its Beauty and its Challenges

The Chicago River was an exciting and significant part of the Midwest’s early history, and one of the most interesting events associated with the river was the day that the course of the river changed. Before the river was reversed in the late 19 th century, Chicago was in the midst of a great period of expansion, drawing significant quantities of water from Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, this lake water brought diseases such as cholera and typhus into the city, and spurred the Chicago River Reversal Project, permanently changing the direction of the waterway flow. Continued industrialization of Chicago before the Clean Water Act of 1972 (CWA), caused the River to be dirty, polluted, and demonstrating overall poor water quality. Dr. Austin Happel, a researcher who in 2019 joined Shedd Aquarium in the city, was very interested in the effects of urbanization on the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS), where habitat reduction, degradation and pollution had been highly detrimental to diverse assemblages of plants and animals. One way to determine if remediation efforts in the CAWS—largely based on enactment of the Clean Water Act (1972)—were effective, was to identify and monitor fish populations found in the waterways. What would Dr. Happel discover about the success of remediation efforts in the Chicago River over the last century of change? This description-based critical incident could be used in an introductory business, business law or management course at the undergraduate level. This case was also written to be used with introductory science courses at the secondary and undergraduate levels.