River Hills

Upstream of River Hills, on the Illinois side near Sauget and Cahokia, Chemtrade Logistics has exceeded its permitted limit for suspended solids three times running at the same outfall: 140 percent over in December, then 1,793 percent over in March, then 873 percent over just a week before this writing. That is not a single bad reading but a facility trending the wrong way over eight months, and EPA has separately flagged the company for missing a required compliance deadline by more than 90 days.Suspended solids sounds like a dry metric, but it is the sediment and particulate load a discharge carries into the river. Heavy loads cloud the water, can smother fish spawning gravel, and often ride along with whatever else is in the effluent. This stretch of the Mississippi corridor around Sauget, Cahokia, and East St. Louis already carries a rough track record: roughly a quarter of nearby assessed waterbodies are listed as impaired, and several municipal treatment systems in the area, including the East St. Louis combined sewer system, the City of Centreville's system, and the Village of Sauget's system, have also been cited for significant non-compliance.There is no monitoring data tying Chemtrade's discharge directly to those broader impairments, and the river gage at St. Louis read a normal 156,000 cubic feet per second on the day of this writing. What is on the record is the exceedance pattern itself, and it is worth watching as it develops. Missouri Confluence Waterkeeper tracks discharge compliance along this stretch of the river and is a good point of contact for anyone following it further.