Mussel Control Projects Costly

From April 30, 1991 (update #7)

GREEN BAY - The Green Bay Water Utility has initiated the first zebra mussel control project at a Wisconsin water utility. Specifications and designs for a chemical feedline into their intake structure are currently being prepared, with an estimated project cost of $470,000, according to General Manager William Nabak. Green Bay depends on a 25-mile-long buried pipeline to deliver drinking water from the utility's intake in Lake Michigan near Kewaunee.

CHICAGO - The City of Wilmette has attached a $250,000 price tag to zebra mussel control at its water utility, according to the Chicago Tribune. That's the amount the northern Chicago suburb included in its proposed operating budget even though no zebra mussels have been sighted yet in the intakes for the utility, which pumps about 11 million gallons of Lake Michigan water per day.

GARY, Ind. - Gary-Hobart Water Corporation, a privately owned utility here, is facing zebra mussel control project costs of $750,000 to $1.25 million. Small populations of mussels (several per square yard) were found last fall in both of the corporation's Lake Michigan intakes.

ID: 19910430-9.

The Zebra Mussel Update was a 4- to 8-page quarterly national newsletter published by the University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute from May 1990 through May 1997. The ZMU documented the spread of the zebra mussel -- an exotic nuisance mussel -- through North America's freshwater environments, especially the Great Lakes, and on efforts to control it.