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The Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS) is a complex of artificial waterways extending through much of the Chicago metropolitan area, including portions of Northwest Indiana, covering more than 100 miles altogether. It is the sole navigable inland link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. The CAWS includes various branches of the Chicago and Calumet Rivers, as well as other channels such as the I&M Canal and Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal. The Des Plaines River drains into the CAWS via the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal. The CAWS makes up the northern end of the Illinois Waterway, and coincides with the Lockport Navigational Pool, the highest of the eight pools of the Illinois Waterway. There are two major locks within the CAWS, operated by the Army Corps of Engineers: the Chicago Lock and the Thomas J. O'Brien Lock & Dam. The two locks together handled more than 50,000 vessels in 2008. Artificial waterways connecting the Mississippi and Great Lakes systems via the Chicago area, replacing the Chicago Portage, began with the I&M Canal in 1848. The CAWS as it exists today began to take shape in 1900, with the construction of the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal to reverse the flow of the Chicago and Calumet Rivers, which previously flowed into Lake Michigan, so as to instead flow toward the Mississippi River, thus carrying sewage away from the city of Chicago.〔 Thereafter additional artificial waterways were built that became part of the CAWS, such as the North Shore Channel, which runs inland from Wilmette to the Chicago River and was constructed in 1910, and the Cal Sag Channel, which provides a direct path from the Calumet River to the Illinois Waterway and was finished in 1922. In the 21st century, a focus of concern around the CAWS has been its potential role as a corridor for Asian carp to enter Lake Michigan. Suits in district court and before the United States Supreme Court have been unable to obtain an injunction requiring the connection between the CAWS and the Mississippi drainage to be closed. ==List of waterways== Waterways within the CAWS include: *Cal-Sag Channel *Calumet River *Chicago River *Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal *Grand Calumet River (partial) *Little Calumet River (partial) *Des Plaines River *North Shore Channel 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Chicago Area Waterway System」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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