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Illinois River is better but still has a long way to go

Posted October 03, 2007 11:00 pm

Terry Bibo

Multi-faceted projects along the Illinois River have gained national attention, a speaker with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told river advocates Wednesday.

"That is what is special about the Illinois River basin," said Col. Robert Sinkler, commander of the Rock Island District. "There are very few places where federal, state, local resources all come together."

He was preaching to a couple hundred members of the river choir at the 11th Biennial Governor's Conference on the Management of the Illinois River System. Representatives of a dozen state and federal agencies outlined their pieces of the river puzzle as the three-day conference continued at the Holiday Inn City Centre.

The consensus was the Illinois River has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go. From the Army Corps to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, each speaker emphasized a cooperative effort to tackle the river's huge problems.

"There's almost nothing any one of us can accomplish acting alone," said Robyn Thorson, director of the Department of Interior for Fish & Wildlife. "There is just too much to do and too few of us to do it."

But most of them also emphasized patience.

"One of the most dramatic improvements in water quality has been along the Illinois River," said Doug Scott, director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. "Obviously, it didn't happen overnight that it got into the distress that it was. It won't change overnight."

Depending upon which speaker was talking, hundreds or thousands of acres of soil conservation and wetlands restoration efforts are underway. The biggest project mentioned the most often was Emiquon, the joint collaboration between Caterpillar Inc., The Nature Conservancy and some facet of almost every governmental agency in the room. With shrinking government dollars, that private/public effort to return one of Illinois' biggest farms to wetlands may become a model.

"We know the lion's share of conservation for the future has to take place on private land with private resources," Thorson said.

As perhaps more evidence of the Illinois River impact, Sinkler said he attended a recent infrastructure conference where local efforts were highlighted. And last year's Illinois River Basin Restoration Comprehensive Plan was cited as one of the Corps' six best large plans in the nation, he said.

"The person in charge of the Illinois River is not an engineer, he's a biologist," Sinkler said. "That tells you something about the direction we're going."

Terry Bibo can be reached at (309) 686-3189 or tbibo@pjstar.com.

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