Innovations

Tending to the rivers The River has no beginning or end. In its beginning, it is not yet the River; in its end it is no longer the River. T.S. Eliot Illinois has 35,000 miles of rivers and streams, and nearly six out of 10 of them are rated by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency as "substandard or threatened." That's not news to the people living alongside or visiting those waterways. Alarmed by the deteriorating quality of water and water wildlife, several groups have banded together to try to reverse the process. People acquainted with the "personality" of their particular piece of a river or stream, from the Rock to the Cache, the Mississippi to the Wabash, will report changes to state scientists who will compile and share it with policy-makers. The Illinois RiverWatch Network is filling part of the manpower gap by using volunteers as "citizen scientists." Meanwhile, The Nature of Illinois Foundation, a private group that supports the state's scientific surveys, is helping to coordinate those volunteer efforts. The foundation has added a staff member, Ben Barber, for that purpose. Barber is developing a stream monitoring manual for the volunteers and training programs for RiverWatch participants. The network is sponsored by the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources. It is part of President Bill Clinton's national service program, from which it will get funding for 10 full-time and 20 part-time people to serve as regional organizers. Those people will be responsible for recruiting, training and overseeing the efforts of volunteers at the local level. The information gathered by network volunteers will be used in part by the Illinois River Strategy Team, a long-range planning group formed to protect the Illinois River ecosystem. The team is made up of professionals from government, business, education, conservation and agriculture who have different reasons for wanting to maintain the health of the Illinois River basin and restore the areas in decline. Robert O. Viets, president and CEO-of Peoria-based CILCORP Inc., the utility that services much of the Illinois River basin, says he wants to emphasize that it is appropriate to be concerned about the Illinois River and to make long-term plans. But he says calls for drastic changes, such as extensive dredging to reverse sedimentation, are "ludicrous." He thinks the strategy team can educate the public on the nature of the river. "We are not talking about the Illinois River in the past tense. The river is a vibrant natural resource, and it is constantly changing on its own," he says. "We need to recognize that." David Pfeifer, president of Principia College in Elsah, says his particular bias is to pursue an approach that balances commercial and environmental concerns. He says his area — at the confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi and Missouri rivers — is a natural history treasure and that scenic beauty and history should not be lost to economic development. Beverley Scobell Zebra mussels: small clam causing big problems in rivers One of the forms of wildlife river watchers will be monitoring is the zebra mussel that has invaded the nation's and the state's waters. These exotic, or non-native, mollusks are very prolific, and because they attach themselves to any hard surface, they are clogging municipal and industry intake water pipes and smothering native river species. Doug Blodgett of the Illinois Natural History Survey says the problem is both economic and environmental. Research shows that the mussels not only smother native clams (Illinois has 23 species), but dense zebra concentrations also lower the oxygen level in the water, endangering all other river life. According to a report by the U.S. Department of Commerce, within one year of discovering the zebra mussels in Lake St. Clair near Detroit in the late 1980s, the animals had "colonized the surfaces of nearly every firm object in western Lake Erie." By the fall of 1993. helped along by the Great Flood, scientists found a bed at the southern end of the Illinois River at Grafton containing small (5/16 inch) zebra mussels numbering 61,000 per square meter (about one square yard), meaning the infestation had covered the length of the river. The clamming industry on the Illinois River was closed to protect the numbers of native mussels struggling to compete with the zebras. The decision to do the same on the Mississippi is pending. Where all Illinoisans pay for the zebra mussels is in their utility bills. Jeff Smith of Commonwealth Edison in Chicago says his company has spent nearly $11 million retrofitting intake valves to heat the water to a temperature inhospitable to the animals. Blodgett says biologists are experimenting with ways to interrupt the reproductive cycle of the zebra mussels in an attempt to control them, but the mussels may be their own worst enemy. He says some of the latest data collected show numbers are down where the mussels overpopulated. River watchers will tell us whether the tiny shelled creature is in check or whether it will continue to cost Illinoisans in ways proportional to its growing numbers.     Illustrations by Olin Harris Environmental bulletin board You can take part in an electronic environmental discussion by logging on to EcoForum via your computer modem. Dial 1-800-528-5486 and type "new" (for new user) after the initial prompt. Though not available now, the service will soon be accessible on Internet.

4/January 1995/Illinois Issues