An endangered fish that telegraphs its amorous desire with a flash of rainbow color has received some extra mating help from Lake County officials, who delayed a $2 million bridge project this summer so the fish can spawn in peace.
Engineers also are planning an elaborate system of dikes, dams and fencing to make sure the bridge widening at Mill Creek won’t harm the Iowa Darter, a shy, minnow-size fish that lives in the meandering trickle of brown water near Gurnee.
The cost for this public assist to darter courtship: an extra $100,000 and a year’s delay in completing the work.
“They’ve given the Iowa darter a fin up in its efforts to survive,” said Keith Shank, chief of impact analysis at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Resource and Review.
Compared with the battles over the bald eagle, spotted owl and other endangered species, the darters’ discovery and the long-delayed bridge have stirred barely a ripple of protest. Still, what happened at Mill Creek raises similar hard-boiled economic issues.
In a typical year, officials say, anywhere from 50 to 100 construction projects are delayed in Illinois–most of them in the Chicago area–because of environmental concerns about endangered species. These projects include everything from road and sewer work to home building.
Developers often question the value of such delays.
“What seems to be lacking is no one can produce the actual benefit the public is deriving from this,” said James Schneider, a contractor and former president of the Lake County branch of the Home Builders Association of Illinois. “Plus, it’s the taxpayers who are paying the brunt of these types of things.”
County decision praised
Environmentalists say Lake County’s decision to protect the darters’ habitat during the crucial summer mating season is almost as rare as the fish.
“They’re really going the extra mile, which the species appreciates and in the long run Illinoisans should appreciate,” Shank said. “We like to maintain the biodiversity of our state, and the Iowa darter is a big part of that. These little fish are an indication of the high water quality in the area, which is a good thing.”
The summer romance in Lake County is bubbling under the Dilley’s Road bridge, where the darter–a member of the perch family–was discovered during a routine construction survey. The reclusive fish pulses with blazing colors during its mating ritual, so it was easy to spot.
DNR officials weren’t totally surprised to find the fish in Lake County because the far northern suburbs are home to an estimated 170 rare or endangered species–the most in Illinois, which has more than 500 species on its endangered and threatened list.
Besides the Iowa darter, at least three more of the 18 fish on the state’s endangered list have been found in county waters–the pugnose shiner, the blacknose shiner and the greater redhorse. Two threatened species also have been spotted–the banded killifish and the blackchin shiner.
Nationally, the federal government lists 972 species as endangered and 272 as threatened, a list that doesn’t include the darter.
Finding one of these tiny fish isn’t always easy, even when they are decked out in mating colors. They tend to lurk quietly on the bottom of Midwestern streams and rivers, feeding on plankton and microscopic bugs. When disturbed, they dart horizontally through the water, the origin of the name.
“I still haven’t seen one,” said Thomas Somodji, chief engineer for the 18-foot bridge reconstruction project, who helped devise the plan to keep extra sediment from seeping into the creek during the expected six-month construction period.
Work originally slated to begin this spring is now expected to start next year.
“The project sure did end up a lot bigger than we thought when the plan was just to replace this little bridge,” Somodji said.
Law with a loophole
Illinois law requires that government agencies seeking federal or state funds have the DNR review proposed construction projects to make sure they don’t harm any of the state’s endangered species.
But a catch in the law generally lets the government agency decide what steps, if any, it will take to protect the habitat.
State law requires only that endangered species–fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, invertebrates, lichen or plants–not be killed during a construction project.
The DNR reviews about 9,000 projects each year in Illinois, of which 250 to 500 are within an environmentally sensitive area. Of those, only about 20 percent try to protect habitats, officials say.
Most developers try to do something to lessen the environmental impact, “but they don’t do everything they could, and there’s a small percentage that don’t do anything,” Shank said. “But if you can find a way to destroy the habitat without killing the animal, you’re free to do that.”
Discovery in Mill Creek
The Mill Creek bridge project was scheduled for this year, but all that changed when the DNR found the darter in the water in 1999. To figure out how to protect the fish, an additional seven months of unexpected engineering work was required, which pushed back construction schedules. The work had to be delayed even further to accommodate this year’s spawning season.
“We were concerned that dirt that would come off the construction site could end up in the stream, so we’re prohibiting construction during the spawning season,” said Lake County Transportation Department Director Martin G. Buehler.
When work finally starts next year, Buehler said, all the necessary protections will be in place.
The only other places in Illinois where darters are found are in McHenry, Boone and Winnebago Counties, so their discovery in Mill Creek was considered encouraging news.
“A darter is like a canary in a coal mine,” said Jim Bland, an aquatic ecologist who tracks Lake County’s rare fish species. “They’re a good indicator of a good habitat and good water quality conditions that probably relate not just to itself, but to a host of other things that live there.”
Neighbors’ mixed reaction
Not everyone is thrilled with the long-delayed bridge project, including Clayton Hauser, who lives within fly-fishing range of the creek.
He isn’t worried that it will take longer to get around on Dilley’s Road during the project, because the two-lane road carries mostly local traffic through the still-rural neighborhood. Instead, it’s the extra time and money being spent to save the darter that bothers him.
“I’ve never heard of that fish and I’ve lived here all my life, but if that fish can live in the murky water, it’s going to live forever,” he said.
Another neighbor, Neal Serdar, said he thought it was better to be safe than sorry when it comes to protecting the humble darter.
“Once they’re gone,” he said, “they never come back.”
