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TROUBLED WATERS:
THE DISAPPEARING ILLINOIS RIVER
SEDIMENT IS KILLING THE STATE'S
MOST IMPORTANT RIVER SYSTEM. BUT WE'VE KNOWN
THAT FOR YEARS. CAN WE QUIT STUDYING THE
PROBLEM AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?
by Christopher Wills
When Robert Williams looks across Rice Lake, he doesn't see the clear blue waves. He doesn't care about the migrating ducks stopping at the central Illinois lake, or the fish swimming its waters. All he can see is Miserable Island, a spit of land that deserves its name. Amid the color of the lake, it's a gray-brown blotch of dead trees. Floodwaters from the nearby Illinois River killed the trees and the saplings that might have taken their place. The dead trunks and skeleton branches make the island more cemetery than forest.
"That is a sick sight," Williams says. It's also a common sight along the ailing Illinois River.
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One hundred years ago, Chicago's sewage choked the river. Thirty years ago, chemicals and industrial waste poisoned it. Today, the state's own soil clogs it. Sediment is pouring out of the creeks that feed the river, filling its shallows, wetlands and backwaters. At Peoria, where the river widens to form two broad lakes, sediment has cut the average depth by a foot just since 1988. The Heartland Water Resources Council predicts the lakes will be gone in 20 years, replaced by mud flats, willow thickets and a navigation channel kept open only by constant dredging. |
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That sediment is also clogging the network of backwater lakes, like Rice Lake in Fulton County, that are linked to the river. Those lakes cannot absorb the floodwaters they once did, so the water stands for weeks and sometimes months, suffocating the silver maples, cottonwoods and willows, State conservationists manipulate lake levels as best they can to support the sport-fish population and attract migrating ducks. But the trade-off is that the Rice Lake Robert Williams knew as a boy — a marshy place of wild rice, duckweed and muskrats — is gone.
Now he, and other members of his Save Rice Lake Association, fear the area will grow even more sterile as the trees die. Those stands of timber support woodpeckers, bald eagles, flying squirrels, herons and more. "Once it's gone, it's gone. You're just going to have a big nothing," Williams says.
A big nothing, indeed. The Illinois River and its tributaries form the most important river system in the state. Streams across 40 percent of Illinois, and parts of Indiana and Wisconsin, feed into the river. It links Chicago to the Mississippi, environmentally and commercially.
In many ways, water quality on the Illinois is better than ever. Chemical pollution has been cut. Bass, walleye and other fish are returning. But aquatic plants are not; they cannot take root in the river's soft bed of churning sediment or absorb light through the cloudy waters. Without the plants, the river cannot support clams, mussels, bottom-feeding fish and, most visibly, geese and ducks. One scientist has called the Peoria Lakes "turbid, barren deserts."
The Illinois is not some young mountain river, hurrying along its course without a backward glance. The sluggish Illinois meanders from Chicago almost to Alton, taking side trips through a vast network of wetlands and backwaters. Like the Nile
22 / January 1997 Illinois Issues
and the Amazon, the Illinois ecosystem depends on a cycle of flooding to renew the land and purify the water. But over the past 150 years, that cycle has been twisted and nearly broken.
"It's a combination of many of man's activities in the watershed," says Steve Havera, director of the Illinois Natural History Survey's Forbes Biological Station at Havana, the oldest such research station in North America. "Some of the best soil in the world is filling some of the best bottomland lakes."
Farming loosens soil and taints it with fertilizer and pesticides. Development replaces grasses with pavement and directs run-off to the nearest stream. Drainage programs turn meandering streams into channels that rush soil straight to the river — whose barren banks collapse and dump even more dirt. Dams slow the Illinois itself so that sediment settles to the bottom rather than being carried along. Erosion carries 13.8 million tons of sediment into the Illinois River system every year, and 8.2 million tons of it stay behind to fill the river and lakes.
When the Waters Recede, by Dan Guillory, is a collection of essays about the 1993 flooding of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. Guillory places the flood and its victims in the historical and ecological context of the Mississippi River Valley. The collection assesses some of the causes and consequences of flooding. It was published in 1996 by Stormline Press in Urbana. |
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A century ago, the Illinois was one of the nation's richest sources of fish. Commercial fishermen once could use 8-foot drift nets in the Woodford County Conservation Area. The fish are gone now and the river is going: It had dropped to 2.3 feet in 1988 and was below 2 feet this year, according to Heartland Water Resources. So the question is: How do we keep the sediment from pouring into the river? One set of answers will come in January from Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra and his Illinois River Valley Partnership. Based on the work of teams of experts, the project is an attempt to produce a plan that will address all the river's woes, not just bits and pieces. The first step in this direction was taken some 20 years ago, when farm organizations began recognizing the importance of controlling erosion. They encouraged farmers to protect their valuable soil by using no-till methods that minimize soil disturbances. In 1980, Illinois adopted the T by 2000 program, which sets standards of "tolerable" soil loss — thus, the T in the program's name — and aims to bring each county's soil loss down to that level. The efforts are helping. Only 5 percent of Illinois' corn acreage was grown with no-till methods in 1984; that had climbed to 19 percent by 1994. One study found that cropland erosion on the lower Illinois had dropped from 6.1 tons per acre in 1982 to just 4.1 tons per acre in 1992. |
Still, that effort aims more at preserving valuable farm soil than at protecting rivers. And farmland erosion is only one part of the problem. A big-picture approach is needed.
But we've known that for decades. A University of Illinois professor back in 1911 proposed that the state assist the declining fish population by preserving swamps and wetlands. In 1921, the proposal was to turn 100 miles of riverbank — from Peoria to the Sangamon River — into a state park or forest preserve.
More recently, a state task force took three years to conclude, in 1984, that sediment control is the top water- resources problem in Illinois. That led to the first Illinois River Conference in 1987 and then another task force appointed by Gov. James R. Thompson. Six years later, yet another task force took up the problem and made recommendations for change. And now comes Kustra's group.
Despite task force after study after task force, organized effort has been rare. Thompson's massive Build Illinois public-works project of the 1980s channeled some money to conservation efforts, and the Illinois River got a portion. Federal set-aside programs encouraged farmers to take sensitive land out of production. Environmen-
Illinois Issues January 1997 / 23
tal groups worked on isolated erosion- control projects. Meanwhile, the sediment kept pouring in, and the Army Corps of Engineers kept dredging it so the barges could run.
Gradually, though, a change has been taking place. The river's troubles, and its importance, are getting more public attention. More people understand that sewage and chemicals are not the only threats to a river's health.
"I think a positive sign has been the increased awareness of the importance of the Illinois River system, a little more appreciation of its biological significance," Havera says. "I think we definitely have ideas on what needs to be done."
The state Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency both support large-scale efforts to reduce sedimentation, and an initiative called the Mackinaw River Project serves as a model.
The Mackinaw, a major tributary to the Illinois River, runs westward through McLean and Tazewell counties and faces smaller-scale versions of many of the Illinois' problems. Local volunteers, working with The Nature Conservancy, gathered farmers, homeowners, local governments and businesses to mount a system-wide attack on the Mackinaw's problems. For the first time, all the interest groups could demand and argue and finally agree on some ways to improve the river, offering a possible roadmap for efforts on the Illinois.
The EPA sees sedimentation as a pollution problem — "nonpoint source pollution" is their phrase. Basically, it means any pollutant, such as sediment or farm chemicals, that comes from no particular source. The agency now spends about $2 million a year on everything from billboards ("We all live downstream. Protect your watershed.") to retrofitting urban stormwater basins. "The objective is to get the people that actually live within the basin, the stakeholders, to decide what their problems are and decide how they're going to address them, and finally to make sure those actions are carried out," says Bill Ettinger, an EPA manager.
The natural resources department is involved through its huge Conservation 2000 program. The agency supports 15 "ecosystem partnerships"— such as the volunteers joining forces on the Mackinaw River — by offering grants, providing scientific information and technical know-how. The department will spend $4.2 million on such programs this fiscal year, says coordinator Brian Anderson.
The department first offered its help in the Rock River Valley. "We got creamed. We just got clobbered," Anderson says. "The local people were very suspicious. It was us showing up and saying, 'We're from the government and we're here to help.' From that point on, we have taken a you-come-to-us attitude." The projects that are funded by the department include helping farmers measure the nitrogen fertilizer they use so they don't waste it and add to pollution problems, building barriers in streams to slow the flow of water and reduce streambank erosion, and distributing educational material on managing livestock.
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Plenty of groups are trying to improve the Illinois River and its tributaries. Hoping to encourage more work, the lieutenant governor's Illinois River Valley Partnership compiled a list of the 15 most promising programs. They range from the Mackinaw River Project to a Chain 0' Lakes plan to turn dredged-up sediment into wetlands. But even steps in the right direction are just baby steps when compared to the problem's immensity. Mike Platt, head of the Peoria-based Heartland Water Resources Council, thinks radical change requires radical approaches. Draining wetlands has produced untold wealth in the form of crops and real estate. It's only fair that some of that money — say, $200 million — come back now that the river is ailing, Pratt says. Why not use part of that money to build a new, river-friendly industry in the valley? |
A Bloomington company is trying to turn sediment into compost, which would create an economic incentive for the costly job of dredging the river. And some companies are experimenting with making cardboard from prairie grasses, or burning the grasses for energy. In theory, planting ecologically sensitive land in prairie grass would both protect the land and provide income to its owners.
"Imagine if we could put all these marginal lands into prairie grass, control the erosion, get the wildlife benefits and develop an industry that uses those plants," Pratt says. "Solve a research problem while you diversify agriculture and build the tax base."
Meanwhile, the water keeps flowing, and the river keeps shrinking. And Robert Williams could end up staring at an entire river that deserves the name Miserable.
Chris Wills, the Peoria bureau chief for The Associated Press, covers northwestern Illinois.
24 / January 1997 Illinois Issues
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