Quote:
Originally Posted by rcooled
"Scientists also don’t know the exact number of barrels, though a previous estimate suggests there are more than 25,000." 
Back in the 19th century, the Chicago River was an open sewer due to becoming a repository for industrial waste and raw sewage that contaminated the city's drinking water and resulted in numerous outbreaks of cholera and typhoid. The river's flow was actually reversed at one point to keep pollution from flowing into Lake Michigan and entering the city's water supply.
The Chicago River is now much cleaner than in the past, but it's still not safe for drinking.
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Reversing the flow of the river was one of the two great engineering projects of the 19th century in Chicago:
https://www.wttw.com/chicago-river-tour/how-chicago-reversed-river-animated
The other one was raising the city - over about a decade, more or less the entire city was raised up between about 5 and 15 feet.
The river today is good enough to swim and paddle in. Except for Bubbly Creek in ca. Bridgeport, which has many feet of nasty industrial waste from the 19th century at the bottom of it.