For neighborhood residents, it has been like a slowly unfolding Stephen King novel, starting when the waters behind their homes began rising almost imperceptibly five years ago.
Ever so slowly, the puddle grew, eventually gobbling up the land untilit took over their back yards, chasing off the foxes and deer that once cavorted there.
Now, that puddle is a full-fledged lake covering about 500 acres, including the backyards of at least seven homes on the east side of Lily Lake Road near the border between McHenry and Lake Counties. Some angry property owners have tired of waiting for the waters to recede and have proposed draining the shallow lake to reclaim their land.
But not so fast, say two government agencies. Officials of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources say that what residents view as a wet mess really is a government-protected wetland, home to several species of rare birds.
Already, the Army Corps has threatened federal sanctions against some homeowners who proposed draining the land.
The state, which says a biological study indicates that the property was a wetland about a century ago before it was drained for farming, is considering buying some of the land to protect it.
Many of the property owners say they simply want their backyards again.
“We want our property back, and we want this rectified without a lot of bureaucracy and red tape,” said Patricia Stamas, who moved to her home on Lily Lake Road with her husband, Peter, in 1978. “We bought the property because it was really natural and beautiful. We could sit on the back porch and see deer and fox and raccoons. They’re all gone now.”
It’s unclear how or why the water started rising, but locals say a creek once ran through the land before early farmers, looking for more property on which they could raise crops, installed field tiles to collect the water and carry it underground to what is now Hills Moraine State Park.
But about five years ago, the tiles started losing their ability to drain the water.
Some neighbors blame improvements to Lily Lake Road, believing the weight of the new pavement began to pinch the culvert underneath.
Others blame the old tile pipes, which can clog or collapse if they’re not maintained.
Still others noted an increase in beavers and beaver dams coinciding roughly with the construction of new homes in the area.
“I think the beavers were driven out of other areas by development. They started building dams here, and that’s when the real flooding started,” said resident Sherri Peeters. The field tile crosses her property before crossing under Lily Lake Road.
The waters have risen gradually during the last five years, apparently now reaching a stable point. The Schwan Horse Farm, at the north end of the lake and a mile south of Lakemoor, has lost 10 of its 30 acres to the rising water, according to owner Rick Schwan.
“I had a fence put in three years ago, and now it’s under water,” Schwan said. “The more the water spreads, the less my land is worth.”
The water also has spread several yards across Stamas’ backyard. The fence that marks her property’s eastern boundary is under about two feet of water, and several nearby trees are leafless, killed when the soil became soaked, according to Stamas.
One recent effort to drain the water was blocked by the Army Corps of Engineers as degradation of a wetland without a permit. The federal agency’s mandate is to prevent any further loss of wetlands anywhere in the United States.
But exemptions have been made, particularly if wetland property lost in one place can be replaced elsewhere.
Residents of Lily Lake Road are not unanimous in wanting the water completely drained. Peeters is negotiating with the state for a conservation easement, in which she would keep title to the property but give up development rights on the wetland portion.
A state official said the Department of Natural Resources probably would partially lower the water level, but wouldn’t restore the pasture-like conditions of the late 1970s.
“We’d try to manage for variety of species, and maintain a mosaic of emergent plant species and open water,” said Fran Hartie, regional administrator for the department’s Division of Natural Heritage.
He said the Illinois endangered species that live in the wetland include the black-crowned high heron, the yellow-headed blackbird, the pied-bill grebe, the black tern, the least bittern, the American bittern and the common moorehen.
The environment for some species, Hartie said, actually would be enhanced by partially lowering the water level and creating a more varied environment.
He said the state will acquire land or easements only from willing sellers, and won’t try to acquire homes. He said conservation easements can be designed for specific local conditions.
“We can accommodate different options, including hunting and horses,” Hartie said.
Until landowners apply for a draining permit from the Army Corps or conclude negotiations with the state, not much can be said with certainty about the future of the land.
Schwan suggests an operating theory that should be a guide for other similar disputes.
“The drain tile has been there since 1910,” he said. “Now, all of a sudden they don’t want us to fix it. That’s wrong. There should be some kind of grandfather clause to let us restore our property to the condition it was in when we bought it.”
