The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District stands up for the river, at Kinzie Street this morning.

"That little stream, whose crystal waters had never been parted by anything heavier than a canoe, now buoyed the massive barks of traffic, and became polluted with the sewage of a growing city. And thus the great transition came, and we were wont to curse the sinless streamlet for it. To think that poor, innocent, abused, baby stream should for so many years have had anathemas heaped upon it by every one, without a friend to stand up for it, is too bad, too bad."

Edwin O. Gale, 1902, Reminiscences of Early Chicago and Vicinity

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