HazMaTON Webinar: Potentially Polluting Shipwrecks in the Great Lakes

On behalf of the Hazardous Material Transport Outreach Network (HazMaTON), Minnesota Sea Grant invites you to the second installment of the 2026 HazMaTON Summer Webinar Series with Jim Elliott, Chief Operating Officer of T&T Group of Companies. 

 

In 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published its comprehensive “Risk Assessment for Potentially Polluting Wrecks in U.S. Waters,” which identified five potentially polluting shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. One of these five shipwrecks, the tank barge Argo that sank in 1937 in Lake Erie, loaded with a toxic high-benzene cargo, was found to be leaking soon after its discovery in 2015. 

 

This webinar will discuss the multi-agency response to the leaking tank barge Argo and the challenges responders faced in successfully removing the pollution threat and protecting public safety. The four remaining potentially polluting wrecks identified in NOAA’s report will also be discussed, including the freighter Prins Willem V at a depth of about 75-feet off the coast of Milwaukee and the freighter Material Service at a depth of about 35-feet off Calumet Harbor in Lake Michigan; the freighter Monrovia at a depth of about 140-feet off Thunder Bay in Lake Huron; and the Edmund Fitzgerald at a depth of about 530-feet off Whitefish Bay in Lake Superior. Advances in technology and the techniques of recovering oil and pollutants at depth will also be presented.