Slogging through the mud, whacking away at weeds, Jeff Weiss and his group of volunteers are in pursuit of worms, shellfish and insects.
But they are not happy with what they are finding.
“They’re not the kind of critters that you’d hope to see,” Weiss said.
Weiss is one of the three founders of the Buffalo Creek Clean Water Partnership, which is studying just about everything they can find in, alongside and around the stream that drains a 27-square-mile section of the northwest suburbs.
This spring, they will present their report to every government organization that will listen. The short version: The critters are losing their home.
“We’ve got some success stories, and we’ve got some opportunities, but most of all, the quality is degraded,” Weiss said. “Buffalo Creek is pretty degraded, and needs some help trying to recover.”
Endorsed by Lake County and funded by Washington, the partnership is a collection of volunteers that aims to clean up the Buffalo Creek — and, more importantly, convince other agencies and local landowners that they should, too. Founded in early 2012, the group’s first major project is coming to fruition: a comprehensive study of the stream’s water quality, the condition of its banks and the contaminants flowing into it, made possible by a $100,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as $125,000 in donated services, Weiss said.
The study’s results focus on five measurements of creek health — and Weiss said these fluctuate, at different points along the path, from “medium” to “very poor.”
* Chloride: This contaminant comes from road salt, and there is plenty of it around. Weiss said their study found that the eight village governments that oversee the watershed’s land pour about 300 pounds of road salt onto the streets each winter for each of the 80,000 residents — and that number does not include county or state road crews.
* Phosphorous: found naturally in Illinois’ soil, its levels have gone way up through fertilizer use.
* Chloroform: found in wildlife feces.
* Sediment: Phosphorous-filled Illinois dirt is shedding off the surface and spilling into the creek at a higher rate than ever before, which overfills stream beds and causes clogs downriver. This is causing much of the problem with the worms, shellfish and other unsatisfactory critters, Weiss said.
* Oxygen: The creek does not have enough of it, and all kinds of critters that want to call it home are choking.
All of that environmental stuff is well and good, but Weiss knows what images come to mind when home- and business-owners think of the Buffalo Creek: flooded basements and streets. The partnership does not address municipal-development issues like additions of rooftops, drain placements in parking lots or the size of retention ponds.
But Weiss noted the connection between erosion, sediment pile-ups that aggravate debris pile-ups, and aggravated flooding. He also pointed out that, of what little public money there is to go around these days, projects that mitigate flooding still have traction.
“We’re hoping to dovetail with those existing initiatives,” he said.
Springing out of several Lake County sources, the pathways that merge to become the Buffalo Creek drain most of Deer Park; about a third of Lake Zurich; about half of Buffalo Grove, Kildeer and Long Grove; a quarter of Palatine and Arlington Heights, and nearly all of Wheeling. Its tributaries and the main stream move southeast until they merge into the Des Plaines River by Chicago Executive Airport.
To encompass all the issues in this area, the partnership is finalizing an action plan that follows the template set by the EPA. Weiss said they won the grant in 2013 through a recommendation from Lake County’s Water Management Commission. Last summer, the commission used part of the grant to hire interns who walked the creek’s entire length.
During that process, they took 3,700 pictures and visited 400 detention basins, measuring and recording all kinds of indicators. Their results now populate the partnership’s web site, BuffaloCreekCleanWater.org.
“That was a big part of it, getting all this data captured, and putting it all in one place,” Weiss said.
The plan is going to call for renovations of one kind or another to approximately 500 locations, he said — homeowners’ sump pumps discharging waste directly into the stream, defective culverts, debris buildups and more.
In some cases, municipalities are already seeking the partnership’s input: Buffalo Grove is going to tear down and rebuild the Raupp Boulevard bridge that spans the creek in one of its most flood-prone areas, and Weiss said village engineers had been in touch with them during their planning process.
But Weiss said he understands that many of these projects are years away, particularly due to the municipal belt-tightening that is likely under Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. The partnership will give a presentation of its findings to the Buffalo Grove Village Board during its April 20 meeting. He said he hopes to schedule more sessions with other agencies this spring.
