Welcome to North Toledo, you R/V Mudpuppy.

Weather permitting, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 32-foot research vessel is to be lowered by crane into the Ottawa River this morning to help scientists spend up to a month grabbing samples of some of Ohio's most filthy, smelly, and oily muck.

Ordinarily, that might not sound like something worthy of fanfare. But a news conference is planned Friday for U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo), Mayor Jack Ford, and other dignitaries to trumpet the R/V Mudpuppy's arrival.

There are about 6.5 million reasons why officials think this is a big deal. All have George Washington's image on them.

Officials believe that work aboard the R/V Mudpuppy could cinch hopes for a major restoration project along the Ottawa at a cost of about $6.5 million.

Under the Great Lakes Legacy Act that Congress passed in 2002, the U.S. EPA is being given up to $50 million annually over five years to reduce a backlog of Great Lakes sediment projects.

To date, the most money that Congress has allocated was last year's $25 million.

But President Bush this year recommended the full $50 million.

The money will be divided up by the EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office in Chicago. Officials have said it's not only a matter of where the priorities lie - there are many - but also which lakefronts, harbors, and

streams are ready to go. Such grants usually require nonfederal matching funds.

The fact that the R/V Mudpuppy is here could mean the Ottawa is in the hunt for a major grant.

"We've got our fingers crossed, but we're hoping that 2006 is when the U.S. EPA would start moving mud," said Kurt Erichsen, senior environmental planner for the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments.

Long viewed by the Ohio EPA as the state's most polluted river, there is little dispute that the Ottawa River degrades the Great Lakes region's ecology.

It has been so polluted that the state Department of Health posted advisories against fishing or making body contact for years.

The worst contamination is along a mile-long industrial zone between Stickney Avenue and Lagrange Street, where cancer-causing PCBs and other pollutants are at levels hundreds of times higher than what's considered safe.

The question isn't whether the Ottawa is polluted. It's where the worst of the pollution begins and ends, Mr. Erichsen said.

Millions have been spent sealing off several waterfront landfills that have leaked industrial chemicals. Millions more are being spent to curb raw sewage overflows.

Officials have said that excavating the Ottawa's worst sediment isn't the answer to the river's woes, but it is another step in the right direction.

Samples will be drawn every 50 feet. That's 10 times closer than existing data, in which samples were drawn years ago about every 500 feet.

The fresher data and better delineation could help sell the project, Mr. Erichsen said.

The R/V Mudpuppy is small as research vessels go, so that it can be versatile. Its deck is only eight feet wide. Its bottom is flat. But the combination of low water levels and high silt are such that officials are hauling the vessel to the area on trailer and lowering it into the river from the Stickney Avenue bridge.

"The boat's too high to get under the bridge," Capt. Joe Bonem said.

He and another crew member will be on board. With gear that leaves room for no more than four well-fed researchers, he said.

Ohio EPA officials are expected to set up a trailer for analysis. Typically, the muck is retrieved by submerging tubes into the riverbed. Once the tubes are retrieved, they are opened and the sediment is sliced like cookie dough.

The Ottawa is the most impaired of several Toledo area waterways that city, state, and federal officials have been trying to restore under the Maumee Remedial Action Plan.

The Maumee plan is one of many Great Lakes partnerships in which citizens, industry, and government leaders have set goals for cleaning up waterways and harbors identified by the U.S.-Canada International Joint Commission as the Great Lakes region's biggest areas of concern. "We very much want to see remediation of this river at a very early date," Mr. Erichsen said.

Contact Tom Henry at:

thenry@theblade.com

or 419-724-6079.

First Published May 2, 2005, 7:32 a.m.