Natalie Philip knew something was amiss when she began to hear the sound of water rushing through her typically quiet neighborhood in Algonquin.
Looking into her backyard, she discovered a mysterious quirk of nature that seemed to appear almost overnight: A stream was gushing behind her house.
For years, it was nothing but a sliver in the topsoil that carried a trickling of water only during heavy rains or snow melts. But now it was flowing steadily, washing away chunks of soil near its banks and cutting into her backyard and trees.
So Philip and her neighbors contacted village officials for an explanation.
Their answer?
“Well, this is progress,” Philip mimicked.
It’s one example of the drainage and soil erosion problems that officials say are being caused by development in McHenry County, where residential, commercial and industrial construction is at an all-time high.
Countywide, 168,000 tons of soil are lost annually, an average of seven tons per acre, officials say. In some areas, erosion occurs at rates of more than 20 tons per acre. In areas under development, erosion often occurs even more quickly.
Soil erosion is a natural process, but where developers scrape land bare, the process occurs up to 200 times faster than normal, said Ed Weskerna, district manager of the McHenry County Soil and Water Conservation District.
In McHenry County, the effects can be seen in almost every major lake. Many are filling in quickly with sediment, ruining one of the county’s most valuable resources.
But now the county board is trying to respond, appointing a special committee to draw up a plan to manage storm water runoff and reduce soil erosion.
“I’m tickled to see it,” said Ralph Ridley, Lake in the Hills public works director. “I think there needs to be a continuity across the county. Everyone lives upstream of someone else and downstream of someone else.”
From 1830, when the county was settled by people of European descent, until about 1985, there was little regard for the soil. For years, farm runoff was the big problem, Weskerna said.
When federal crop subsidies were given to farmers who used soil conservation methods, farm runoff decreased. By not plowing their fields in the fall, farmers greatly reduced the amount of soil that was washed away by fall rain or winter snow melts.
As the building boom took off, farm runoff was replaced with urban runoff, clogging the county’s lakes and streams and eroding land.
Philip said she began to hear the water behind her Spring Hill Drive home when the nearby Willoughby Farms subdivision went up. Retention ponds built by the developers are overflowing, which has created a constant source of water for the once-intermittent stream.
“They started building homes. That’s when it happened,” Philip said. “They destroyed the natural area and root system. I’m losing three to four feet of property a year.”
A major source of siltation in McHenry County is Nippersink Creek, which flows through Wonder Lake and Spring Grove before emptying into Nippersink Lake on the Chain o’ Lakes.
Nippersink dumps at least 30,000 cubic yards of silt–the equivalent of 20,000 18-wheel dump truck loads–into the lake each year, according to Karen Kabbes, executive director of the Fox Waterway Agency, which is charged with maintaining the Fox River and Chain o’ Lakes.
“Nippersink Creek is a serious and significant source of sediment,” Kabbes said. “Those kinds of numbers make this agency very interested in storm water and erosion control efforts.”
But Lake in the Hills may have the county’s most pressing urban runoff problems. Several small lakes in the village are rapidly filling with muck because Woods Creek, which flows through them, carries silt-laden storm water runoff from developments.
“I used to catch catfish when I first came out here,” said Howard Sternberg, whose home on Hiawatha Drive sits on Lake No. 4 in Lake in the Hills. “That (lake) used to be five or six feet deep. Now, it’s mostly nothing and filled with mud.”
And in the Chain o’ Lakes, a series of lakes through which the Fox River flows in Lake and McHenry Counties, similar problems are being repeated on a scale hundreds of times larger.
These are problems the McHenry County Board’s Stormwater Management Subcommittee hopes to bring under control.
The 12-person subcommittee, which is made up of municipal and county representatives, has been working five years on a storm water management plan to control storm water runoff, thus reducing flooding and soil erosion.
Their plan calls for natural wetlands to play a big part in erosion and storm water runoff control. Where possible, developers would have to direct storm water to wetlands, swales and other natural low areas, which can hold and gradually release large volumes of water.
“Smaller villages in the county may not have ordinances or staff to do something like this, so if the requirements are reasonable, this may be a good thing,” said Tom Small, a spokesman with the McHenry County Association of Home Builders.
“But ordinances like this can be used to stymie growth,” Small added, “so until we see the actual language, we can’t say whether this will be good or bad.”
Using wetlands to hold stormwater runoff sounds good in theory but may draw criticism in practice, said Clyde Wakefield, Crystal Lake’s director of public works and engineering.
“People who buy homes near a wetland may get upset at looking at cattails, or they may view that wetland as a mosquito haven,” Wakefield said. “I think there are some issues the county still has to work out.”
Kabbes said she is glad to see McHenry County adopting a regional approach to storm water management, since the eastern third of the county–the most heavily developed portion–drains into the Fox River and Chain o’ Lakes.
The Fox Waterway Agency dredges portions of the Chain but is lucky to take out as much sediment as Nippersink and other streams pour in each year, Kabbes said.
