Many people in Illinois are familiar with the beautiful Kankakee River, but many do not know its history in Indiana.
At the turn of the last century, more than 800 square miles of Indiana and part of Illinois was the largest inland marsh in North America, the Grand Kankakee Marsh. Compliments of the last glaciers to visit the region, the marsh was 100 miles long and between 1 and 15 miles wide, well over 500,000 acres. All through it ran the Kankakee River, and incredible populations of waterfowl and wildlife lived here.
Flooding was not a problem because development kept away from this “vast expanse of wasteland.”
The dredging and draining of the marsh and river between the late 1800s and 1920 clearly caused the flooding and erosion that now cost taxpayers millions of dollars every year. It has caused all kinds of grief for the state of Illinois, which did not channelize the river, and contributed greatly to the extirpation and endangerment of many wildlife species in Indiana.
To undo some of this damage, various partners are now working together to restore wildlife habitat and to eliminate flooding and erosion in three different projects. These projects will increase the quality of life for everyone who lives in the Kankakee River basin.
The Indiana Grand Kankakee Marsh Restoration Project is a 30-partner, public and private venture to restore 26,000 acres of wetland and adjacent upland to restore the basin’s waterfowl populations. These projects can be located anywhere within the 2.2 million-acre watershed in Indiana, and it hasrestored or agreed to restore 12,000 acres to date.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has approved a 30,000-acre National Wildlife Refuge in the basin in Indiana and Illinois. Land will be purchased only from willing sellers and only in areas FWS determines the goals of the project can be met. The goals are to restore wetland and prairie habitat, and the plant and wildlife species dependent on them. No land has yet been purchased.
The third effort is a flood-control project by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Requested by Congress, the initial Reconnaissance Report recommended 30,000 acres of restored wetlands, reconnecting isolated river meanders, off-stream sediment traps and spot dredging as solutions to the chronic flooding and erosion problems of the Kankakee. Most of this will be in Indiana, and the next phase of the study will be complete in 2002.
The Friends of the Kankakee see these projects as key components of a genuine river-and-marsh-restoration project in Indiana. We believe the entire 100-year Kankakee River floodplain here should be in permanent wetland management, and that the river should be returned to its original course, most of which still exists isolated from the artificial channel.
This can be accomplished through the projects mentioned above as well as utilizing conservation easements with private landowners, agricultural incentive programs, local land trusts, etc.
