INDIANAPOLIS — Nearly every Indiana waterway from Lake Michigan to the Ohio River has pollution problems, according to a new survey.

        The problems are serious enough that a top environmental official says people should think twice before they swim in, drink from or eat fish caught in the waters.

        The Indiana Department of Environmental Management intends to add 277 Hoosier streams, rivers, creeks, ditches and lakes to its inventory of environmentally impaired bodies of water later this year as a result of the survey. The additions will bring the number of troubled waterways in the state to 485.

        “This does not mean that the waters in the state have gotten worse,” said Cyndi Wagner, head of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's impaired water systems program. “It means our ability is significantly better to find pollutants that have been out there all along.”

        The first survey in 1998 included 208 bodies of water.

        The list, which includes the pollutants found in the waters, will be forwarded to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Besides helping state and federal enforcement agencies identify potential polluters, the list will make Indiana eligible for federal cleanup grants.

        But cleanup is anything but fast, Ms. Wagner said. The list is so extensive that some sites with less pollution wouldn't be scheduled for cleanup until 2016.

        Of the sites identified four years ago, just two have begun or are ready to begin cleanups:

        • At Kokomo Creek in Howard County, a $50,000 project to restore water life in an urban ditch choked by industrial runoff is under way.

        • This month, the state environmental agency and the Army Corps of Engineers are expected to start a $1 million dredging project on the Grand Calumet river, a fetid 16-mile waterway that drains into Lake Michigan after coursing through the steel yards and oil refineries of Gary, Hammond and East Chicago.

        Ms. Wagner could not estimate the cost of a total statewide waterways cleanup or even predict when the major bodies of water would reach a sufficient quality to allow people to routinely eat fish or swim without concern.

        “It is overwhelming to look at this list,” she said. “You look at it one water body at a time.”

        That is the approach of Ed Kassig, a Broad Ripple High School biology teacher. Each month for the past two years, he has taken his students to the Broad Ripple boat ramp to collect vials of water for analysis. Their tests have led to the inclusion of that segment of White River on the state list.

        An avid fisherman and canoeist, Kassig said he won't eat the bass and perch he pulls from the river. He avoids any body contact beyond barefoot wading.

        Yet he says the waterway, a haven for heron, ducks and osprey, is improving.

        “I have lived here all my life,” he said. “The river is much cleaner now than it was 25 or 30 years ago.”

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