The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced the completion of all cleanup work required to remove the Ashtabula River on Lake Erie from the binational list of Great Lakes Areas of Concern.
The Ashtabula River is one of 43 contaminated sites on the Great Lakes designated as a Great Lakes Area of Concern by the United States and Canada under the 1987 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement.
Since the early 1990s, the federal government, the State of Ohio and several private companies have spent approximately $85 million to remove contaminated sediment and to restore habitat in the Ashtabula River Area of Concern. Since 2010, almost $14 million from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative has been used to complete the final actions to remediate and restore this Area of Concern.