Mc Henry County Conservation District's Ed Collins and Brad Woodson look over their work. The Nippersink creek near Chicago has been transformed from an agricultural ditch to its original meandering course.
After a half century of being confined to a narrow, straight channel, asmall Midwestern stream is being restored to its original meanderingpath. Not only has the newest incarnation of the creek become a home tomore wildlife, but it’s protecting other areas from floods and becominga model for restoring other channelized creeks. The Great Lakes RadioConsortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
After a half century of being confined to a narrow, straight channel, a
small Midwestern stream is being restored to its original meandering path.
Not only has the newest incarnation of the creek become a home to more
Wildlife, but it’s protecting other areas from floods and, becoming a
model for restoring other channelized creeks. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.
(Sound of creek bubbling)
For 50 years this part of Nippersink Creek near Chicago was not much more
than a ditch, a narrow agricultural channel used to drain the
surrounding farm fields. Now the Nippersink wanders its way through a meadow of grasses and blossoms. The creek winds back and forth as it makes a
leisurely trek northward. It took nearly a decade of planning and a couple of years of excavating to restore the Nippersink to its old creek bed.
Ed Collins is one of the people who worked to transform the Nippersink
from ditch to stream.
“The folks who benefited economically from it being a channel
over the years —and rightfully so— they’re retired now. And, we’re kinda
letting the stream retire. It’s career won’t so much be corn and beans now,
but it’ll be open space and rapids and an opportunity for families to have a
canoe trip and to go fishing. So, it’s still serving the community, just in
a different way.”
Collins works for the McHenry County Conservation District. The district
bought this creek and the surrounding land from the farm family. The
district wanted the property not only because of the creek, but also
because of some interesting glacial formations called kames. Kames are hills of
rock and gravel that were deposited as a glacier melted here some 18-thousand
years ago.
Collins says parts of those kames were dug away to cover up the
Nippersink.
“The stream was actually filled with sand and that sand was a
different color than the original channel. So, it was similar to just having
somebody draw a chalk line along what used to be the old channel. And when
that was excavated out, when you got through that sand, you were right back
to where that channel was in 1951.”
And the excavated material was put back to restore the kames.
With those hills towering behind them Collins and his colleague Brad
Woodson are standing at the edge of one of the streams restored banks.
They’re watching a blue heron hunt. Shore-birds weren’t drawn to the old
ditch. Woodson says not only has the habitat along the Nippersink
improved.
There’s a lot more of it. Since the shortest distance between two points is
a straight line, like a channel, woodson says the meandering nippersink
is now a lot longer than it used to be.
“Yeah, we’ve actually added miles to this stream, if you can imagine
that. And there’s more habitat diversity there also.”
Because it helped wildlife, the McHenry County Conservation District got
some financial help from the federal government and some more from
environmental groups. And, when the work of digging out the old stream
bed began lots of local volunteers offered their labor.
“Working with the land brings you back to your roots.”
Martha Carver says she volunteered some weekend time, and now that
the Nippersink is beginning to take shape, she’s glad she did.
“It’s like genesis again. So, volunteers don’t mind being knee deep
in mud day after day, that sort of thing, because they know it’s going for a
marvelous project and they’re going to see the results fast.”
McHenry County needs to see results fast. It’s in the path of Chicago
sprawl. Already the county is feeling the pressure of intense development.
Natural areas and green space of all kinds are becoming more valuable to
the county, making restoration projects such as the Nippersink creek worth
the trouble and the cost.
(Sound of equipment)
Digging out the old channel has kept bulldozers and dump trucks busy for
the past couple of years. Now, a backhoe is putting back boulders the size of
beach balls along an outer bank of one of the creek bends. The
Conservation District’s Ed Collins says the big rocks will help reduce erosion and slow the flow of the creek. Collins says while the Nippersink will be beautiful when its fully restored, it’ll also have a practical side, one that helps justify the 700-thousand dollars spent on it.
“In terms of the amount of flood damage streams do across the
Midwest that have been straightened, I don’t think there’s any cost
comparison between what it cost to make this a wild river again and the
damage, accumulated damage its done from flooding over the past 50 years.”
Still, the cost of restoring the creek has not been insignificant. Since
land is being gobbled up by subdivisions in McHenry county, you might
expect local environmentalists to push the Conservation District to buy
more land to preserve, rather than spend it on restoring the ramblings of a
creek. But one of the more active environmental groups, the McHenry
County Defenders, applauds the Nippersink project. Lenore Beyer-Clow is the
defenders’ director.
“Part of their mission is also to protect sensitive ecological
areas and promote those areas for habitat as well as open space protection.
I think this project is a model for the country. It hasn’t been done very
much before. And it has great value that can then be replicated throughout
the country.”
Now the Conservation District workers and volunteers are busy planting
prairie grasses and flowers along the Nippersink’s banks to complete the
restoration of land and water, in hopes that the entire area will serve as
a model to other communities in the great lakes region.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.