Now that condos and a Trump Tower line the banks of the Chicago River, the Windy City is finally thinking about making it less gross. It's one of America's most exploited waterways — in 1900, the city literally reversed the river’s flow to keep all the sewage it channeled from entering Lake Michigan — and the sewage of millions is dumped into it every day, untreated.

At a price of $250 million, Chicago is finally going to start treating all the waste that comes out of its pipes, which currently flows into the river and thence to the Mississippi.

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The eventual goal is a river so clean that people can swim in it. If that sounds nuts, it kind of is — just ask the people who swim Manhattan's East River, although actually don’t ask them because their definition of “nuts” is clearly off — but it could have economic benefits as well as aesthetic (and olfactory) ones. Namely, the city has massive plans to develop its river-front.

h/t to clean energy go-to Adam Aston for the headline.