Hi, you're listening to WBEZ's Curious City, and I'm reporter Chris Bentley.

As you're probably all too aware, we're coming out of a pretty snowy winter.

That means we've used a lot of salt to de-ice our roads, enough to get this official worried.

I'm a little stressed out.

Absolutely stressed out.

Why is he worried? That's up ahead.

But first, the story inspired by a question about what we put on our dinner plates.

Let me set the scene.

It's busy at market fisheries in Chicago's greater Grand Crossing neighborhood.

People pull numbers and step up to order catfish or perch while an employee behind the counter

hacks up and cleans fish. Curtis Alexander is the market's manager and he'll tell you where his

fish come from. We got a Lake Superior white fish here and we got a heron. You know, I think they're

both from Lake Superior. But Alexander also sees fish caught a lot closer to home.

A lot of times I clean fish that people go catch from Lake Michigan.

And, you know, you've got the Yellow Lake Perch over there.

You got the little blue gears, you know, wall that pike, you know,

big mouth bass.

There's a lot of fish that they catch from Lake Michigan.

Even if you've never seen Lake Michigan yourself, you should know that there's enough fishing

happening on the lake to keep Curtis Alexander busy, and there's enough that Curious City has gotten

several questions about it. Here's one of those questions from Steve Ettinger, who's seen people fish off

a pier in his neighborhood of Rogers Park.

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