Down Chicago’s Drain

Last week's Memorial Day bike trip along the Mississippi from St. Louis to Quincy inspired me to pick up Chad Pregracke's book From the Bottom Up: One Man's Crusade to Clean America's Rivers(2007) off my bookshelf.

The author was in Chicago several years ago to promote the book, published by National Geographic, and talk about his lifelong project to clean trash from the great rivers of the Midwest.

The book tells the long adventure of how Pregracke formed the organization Living Lands and Waters to collect refuse, plant trees and educate the public about rivers. From his early experiences growing up swimming and boating on the Mississippi, the teenage Pregracke is inspired to spend a day cleaning up unsightly debris on the shoreline. Local businesses and neighbors take an interest and lend support to his DIY efforts, setting him off on a quest to build an organization and a fleet of garbage collection barges roaming rivers near and far to gather industrial flotsam and jetsam marring the shoreline.

Pegracke's enthusiasm for his mission comes across well in the book. The ups and downs of working on the muddy river and navigating fundraising meetings are buoyed by his single-minded desire to improve the great river. Perhaps the prose of the tale rarely strays from the main channel to explore tiny tributary tales, or steps back to examine the bigger picture, but instead the story drives steadily on as the organization faces challenges and successes each year. Indeed in the last chapters the team of river cleaners often find it difficult to find the garbage along river banks they've cleaned repeatedly in previous years. Will they soon find themselves out of a job? Forays into rivers of the urban East Coast uncover vast new bodies of waterlogged refuse for the energetic volunteers, waiting just around the bend!

The weather was cool but sunny for yesterday's annual Chicago River Day. We met up with friends at Horner Park this year to pick up trash along the river bank. Horner Park has always been a bit of a disappointing park for me because a long chain link fence separates the main part of the park from the river. The park has nice ball fields but the river bank is steeply eroded and crowded with weed trees. We didn't find as much trash as I expected, if you don't count the glass shards, pottery and bricks emerging from the banks that betray that this park was once a landfill. And our clean-up team leader told us not to bother picking the invasive garlic mustard and buckthorn (always so satisfying to pull them!) so our impact on the cleanup seemed rather small.

The exciting news, however, is that Horner Park will be undergoing a massive restoration this year. The steep banks and the garlic mustard and buckthorn and that rusty fence are going to be removed by the Army Corps of Engineers, as outlined in a report created for the Horner Park Advisory Council.

The Army Corps will regrade the banks at a shallower angle and build several vernal pool wetlands to help improve drainage of the site and provide habitat for native vegetation and amphibians. In the river, the shallower banks will create improved underwater habitat for fish. The steep manmade banks of the river provide few shallow places for plants or cover for fish to hide or feed.

Horner Park is a perfect place to do a habitat restoration like this. Directly across the river we could see lots of volunteers working on the Riverbank Neighbors Trail, a beautiful restoration project by neighborhood volunteers who replanted the riverside with native flowers. The project is wonderful, but the steep bank between river and houses is so narrow in places that the houses may be in danger of falling in, unless the bank is reinforced with another layer of concrete riprap. Here in Horner Park there is plenty of room to grade the bank back at a shallower angle and create a beautiful park with walking paths along the water.

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There were many other events all over town for Chicago River Day, such as the season opening of the Bridgehouse Museum with an "adopt a fish" program to release baby bluegills.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is also highlighting the river in a series of performances of music inspired by rivers and nature. On Chicago River Day the Civic Orchestra played an impromptu concert planned for Pioneer Square near the river, although rain drove them indoors to a nearby shopping mall, until they were forced to leave by security guards. We just missed seeing them!

The Sun Times tells the charming story of the only river squatter in Chicago. Paul Buschauer has been living rent-free on his boat for the parts of the last fifteen years, tied up in various out-of-the way stretches of the North Branch of the Chicago River. Sadly the Department of Transportation forced him to move on yet again, and towed the boat away to a side channel near Chinatown. Once upon a time Chicago had numerous boat dwellers, but the river rat life is not common anymore and is even illegal in Chicago, sadly.

In an interesting article in OnEarth magazine, Matthew Power summarizes the challenges facing the future of the Chicago River and the city of Chicago. From the massive project to complete the Deep Tunnel, to the push to clean the wastewater flowing into the river, to the invasive legions of Asian Carp coming upstream, will the river emerge from these challenges cleaner and more vibrant than before?

A news release from the Lake County Forest Preserve reports that ecologists have discovered tiny freshwater shrimp in the Des Plaines river. The shrimp were collected last summer but only recently identified as Mississippi grass shrimp. The presence of these critters seems to indicate that the river water is getting cleaner, less murky and able to support the underwater vegetation the shrimp eat.

Metropolitan Planning Council newsletter writes about the challenges of planning for Chicago's water infrastructure in a world of erratic climate. The big storms of the past few days have alleviated the ongoing drought somewhat, but the wild swings between warmth and cold this winter require reinforcing the water system and planning for challenges ahead.

A Chicago Tribune news story reports that the recent rains have raised the level of the Mississippi River somewhat. The water level at St. Louis had been expected to reach the record low of 6.2 feet below normal set in 1940, but now it is on the rise again. The Army Corps of Engineers is blasting bedrock from the river near Grand Tower to dredge the river and allow towboat traffic through.

Nature Conservancy scientist Jeff Opperman is taking his family on a journey down the Mekong River through Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. Follow along online through videos and photos.

Carl Boyd has announced a tentative August 10 date for the 2013 Guerrilla Flotilla.

Last year's Flotilla met on the Chicago River behind the Whole Foods near Kingsbury St. The narrow channel around Goose Island was picturesque, but access to the water was made difficult by a 3-foot seawall. Perhaps a location with an easier launch site can be found.

Vice Magazine has an interview with the filmmakers of the Scrappers documentary.

WBEZ reports on a recent press conference by the Army Corps of Engineers predicting that if the current Midwestern drought continues long enough, Lake Michigan water levels will fall below the gradient of the Chicago River, effectively re-reversing the river to flow back toward the lake.

The original flow of the south branch of the Chicago River was reversed by excavating the Sanitary & Ship Canal below the height of the low continental divide just west of Chicago which defined the natural watershed of Lake Michigan. Locks were later built at the mouth of the Chicago River to control the flow of lake water into the canal.

Though Lake Michigan water levels fluctuate over long cycles, dredging the St. Clair River which drains Lake Michigan and Lake Huron is suspected to be increasing the outflow from the lakes. Lake levels are normally low in winter due to low precipitation, but the lingering 2012 drought, as well as increased evaporation from a lake that does not freeze over as often as in the past due to climate change, have reduced Lake Michigan to record low levels.