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OCT 30 198

LIBRARY

‘The Society ‘Page

Welcome to the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys. And
welcome to the first issue of The Nature of Illinois, published
by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys.

The Society came into being in 1984 as a not-for-profit corpo-
ration. Its purpose is to promote, foster and encourage the
welfare and programs of the three Illinois Scientific Surveys
- The Natural History, Water and Geological Surveys.

I first became acquainted with the Surveys through the Nat-
ural History Survey’s efforts to save the Illinois prairie chicken
from extinction. In my younger days I remember seeing flocks
of a thousand or so, but by the 1950’s there were only a few
flocks of very small numbers. With the help of some conser-
vation-minded people and the Natural History Survey, we
were able in one way or another to establish some sanctuaries.
The system now has expanded to two separate flocks in differ-
ent counties.

The Surveys fell on hard times in the mid-1970’s when they
lost all of their cars, and their travel budgets were limited to
$1,000 each. This situation was remedied in part by Governor
Thompson in his first year of office when he restored the
Surveys’ travel funding to normal levels. Later the Surveys
were moved into the newly-formed Department of Energy
and Natural Resources (ENR), a natural home for research
agencies like the Surveys.

The biggest problem facing the Surveys then, and now, is that
they are not really understood, recognized or appreciated by
many people in our state. The idea of a group of lay people
to act as friends of the Surveys had great appeal to the Survey
Chiefs, to Mike Witte, former Director of ENR, and Governor
Thompson. Having served on the Board of the Smithsonian
Institution Associates, I could see a parallel with the Surveys,

and I agreed to serve as Chairmen of the Society's Board of

Directors.

We have made great progress. We have enlisted an active and

involved Board of Directors with members from all parts of

the state. We have hired a full-time Executive Director. And
we have begun work on educational, corporate and communi-
cation programs to get the invaluable work of the Surveys out
before the public of Illinois.

I hope you will enjoy the first issue of The Nature of Illinois.

And if you or your organization is not already a member of

the Society, I hope you will consider joining us.
Sincerely,

Por tact Mme ler

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Sta ff

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Linda Classen Anderson
Assistant Director

Society Offices

Correspondence about memberships, magazine de-
liveries, contributions and general information should
be addressed to the Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, 2021 Illini Road, Springfield, IL 62704

The Society encourages readers to submit letters to
the editor of The Nature of Illinois at the address
above.

Copyright 1986 by the Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys. All rights reserved.

‘The
Nature
of Illinois

Volume 1, Number 1

Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

‘Board of ‘Directors

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman
Ottawa

Paul Risser

President

Chief, Illinois Natural
History Survey

Richard Schicht

Vice-President

Acting Chief, Illinois
State Water Survey

Morris Leighton

Secretary-Treasurer

Chief, Illinois State
Geological Survey

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Hinsdale

Henry N. Barkhausen
Jonesboro

Don Etchison

Director, Illinois
Department of Energy
and Natural Resources

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Bloomington

Marshall Field
Chicago

Clayton Gaylord
Rockford

Walter E. Hanson
Springfield

John Homeier
Springfield

Richard A. Lenon
Northbrook

George Lewis

Quincy

Thomas A. Pigati

Director of Administration

Illinois Department of Energy
and Natural Resources

John Rednour
DuQuoin

William L. Rutherford
Peoria

Michael Scully
Springfield

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.
Chicago

Joseph Spivey
Springfield

Harold B. Steele
Princeton

Susan Stone
Champaign

Warren Trask
Decatur

Leo Whalen
Hanover

Louise Young
Winnetka

ES

‘Editorial Staff

Tim W. Gosteli
Graphic Designer

Jane A. Bolin
Editor

Dolores Proctor
Typesetting

Summer 1986

A DEEP HOLE IN SOUTHERN ILLINOIS
A voyage to the center of Illinois is on the minds of
Illinois State Geological Survey scientists.

A PATTERN IN TIME
Long-term changes in rivers form patterns in space
and time.

POSTMORTEM AT WILSONVILLE
A controversial landfill teaches a lesson about the
difficulties of extrapolating from laboratory results.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Currents
Water use, more hazy summer days and other news
from the Illinois State Water Survey

Biorhythms
Smelt fishing, crayfishes and news shorts from the
Illinois Natural History Survey

Geograms

Four new coal research contracts, siting the Supercon-
ducting Super Collider and other items from the
Illinois State Geological Survey

Wildlife
You may not be able to tell it from your garden, but
Illinois’ cottontails are on the decline.

URBAN DEER

Deer herds in northeastern Illinois are on a collision
course with automobiles, O’Hare Airport and Cook
County's forest preserves.

ILLINOIS RESEARCHES
HAZARDOUS WASTE

The Hazardous Waste Research and Information
Center is answering some of the tough questions
about hazardous wastes with research, not guesses.

INADVERTENT WEATHER
MODIFICATION

We are doing something about the weather - whether
we mean to or not.

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In Southern Illinois

Jules Verne wrote Voyage to the Center of the Earth im 1864.
One hundred twenty-two years later the scientists at the Illinois State
Geological Survey are proposing their own version of Verne’s master piece,
a superdeep drillhole penetrating to a 6-mile depth in southern Illinois.

A continental scientific drilling pro-
gram was conceived by a group of
U.S. scientists at Los Alamos in 1978.
Iwo years later a Continental Scien-
tific Drilling Committee (CSDC) was
formed under the auspices of the
federal government to study U.S.
continental drilling targets. Priorities
fora national program of deep holes
were published by that committee in
1984.

Atthat time the probable U.S. target
was a 10-kilometer hole in the Ap-
palachian mountains near the com-
mon boundaries of Georgia, North
Carolina and South Carolina. Sub-
sequently, Deep Observation and
Sampling of the Earth’s Continental
Crust (DOSECC) was incorporated
and approved by the National Science
Foundation as the corporation to
carry out the scientific drilling pro-
gram. DOSECC spread its drilling net
farther afield and entertained 32
deep hole proposals at an April 1985
workshop in Houston.

The Illiniows Superdeep Drillhole

One of those 32 proposals was a col-
laborative effort presented by the
Illinois State Geological Survey on
behalf of about 96 principal inves-
tigators, six state agencies, one federal
agency and 43 universities. The pro-
posed Illinois Superdeep Drillhole
(ISDS) is slated to drill 20,000 feet of
Illinois basin sediments at the deepest
part of the basin in southern Illinois.
The hole would then be continued
10,000 feet deeper into crystalline
basement rocks. Southern Gallatin or
northern Hardin County is the likely
site.

The Illinois Basin can be envisioned
as a stack of spoons with handles
pointing down the Mississippi River
toward the Gulf of Mexico. The
spoons represent the sediments in the
basin, which are 20,000-feet thick in
the vicinity of the handles. The han-
dles represent the Reelfoot Rift, a
faulted or rifted region southward.
Other faulted arms or rifts extend
from the base of the spoon, northeast-

Precambrian and early
Paleozoic rift zones

Es)

Kewaneean
(1.0-1.1 Billion
years ago)

Late Precambrian Cambrian
(0.5-0.7 B.Y.)

ward into Indiana, eastward into Ken-
tucky and northwestward into Mis-
sour.

Why a Deep Hole?

Jim Eidel, Principal Geologist and

Head of the Mineral Resources
Group of the Illinois State Geological
Survey, has been an active participant
on the Continental Scientific Drilling
Committee since 1981 and was the
prime mover in getting an Illinois
deep-hole effort started.

“We've studied the ocean floor exten-
sively and ignored the continents,”
Fidel said. “The Illinois core hole is
probably the most scientifically com-
prehensive proposal that I’ve heard
during my years on the Continental
Scientific Drilling Committee. It ad-
dresses a large number of important
scientific questions.”

“First, this area of southern Illinois is
the juncture of ancient rift systems,
continental sutures if you wish, which
constitute the structural breaks where
earthquake activity can be expected
in this region. If you're going to study
how the continent was put together—
which is the main thrust of the conti-
nental scientific drilling program—

this is a unique place to start. It’s a
triple or quadruple junction of an-
clent continental rifts.”

Eidel points out that the New Madrid
earthquake in the Reelfoot Rift had
an extremely wide area of disturbance
in the United States because the flat-
lying rocks underlying the central
United States transmitted the shock
waves far afield. The Appalachian
area and the western United States by
comparison are made up of strongly
folded rock that transmits the energy
created by an earthquake much shor-
ter distances.

The focus of the 1811-1812 New
Madrid earthquake was in the north-
east trending Reelfoot Rift in the
Bootheel region of Missouri. The
New Madrid earthquake rattled
dishes in Boston. Less intense earth-
quakes occur near the proposed deep-
hole location every year.

The data gathered by the ISD on how
the continents are put together and
how the structures in the midconti-
nent are interrelated will provide,
valuable background data for scien-
usts studying earthquakes in this area.

A second practical application of the
deep-hole relates to oil and gas and
mineral resource exploration. Ac-
cording to Eidel, about 4,000 feet of
sediment that has never been seen.
before will be drilled. Those 4,000
feet will give scientists their first
chance to study the hydrocarbons
that remain in those rocks, a potential
source of petroleum or gas. More
importantly, they may suggest where
to look in the deeper portions of the
Illinois Basin for oil and gas. The
study of brines in the deep-hole may
also provide information on the ori-
gin of Illinois fluorspar deposits and
could generate renewed interests in
southern Illinois fluorite, lead zinc
and rare earth metals.

Finally, the deep-hole has important
implications for pure scientific re-

search. What is known about the deep
continental crust is based on geophys-
ical measurements—gravity, magnet-

ics and electrical measurements taken
from the surface of the earth and
projected to depth. What scientists
don’t have are physical measurements
at depth with which to equilibrate
these surface-generated measure-
ments. A drillhole at this depth

will give them the first hard data on
physical properties at these depths
and solid information on which to
base crustal models. That in turn will
give them a chance to project new

measurements even deeper into the ILLINOIS SUPERDEEP

earth.
The Russian Kola Hole...and Others

To date, the deepest core hole in the
world is a Russian core hole. The
Russians have drilled to more than
40,000 feet on the Kola Peninsula
over a period of 17 years. Last Sep-
tember the Russians began drilling a
9-mile hole near Krigoy Rog in the
southern Ukraine. The Soviet Union
views its efforts as part of an intensive
push to learn more about the mineral
resources that lie below its territories.

Playing catch-up with the Russians is
part of the deep-hole game too.
American scientists are confident that
American technology can out-drill
the Soviets. The Soviets’ efforts are
considerably slower than those en-
visioned by American drillers because
the Soviets must pull all the drill pipe
out of the hole each time they take
any rock from the bottom. It takes
them more than 18 hours to pull all
the pipe out, remove the core, change
the bit and put the pipe back in the
ground. American technology is
being geared toward taking the rock
out of the hole without taking all of
the pipe out.

Other countries are getting in the
game too. The Germans have allo-
cated $140 million to drill a deep hole
that will be deeper than the Russian
hole and are in the process of active
design. Sweden, Austria, Japan,
Canada and other countries are also
in the process of developing continen-
tal scientific drilling programs.

The deepest oil well in the United
States is 32,000 feet deep. Oil wells,
however, are drilled with rotary cones
that grind the rock into very small
chips, destroying much of its value
for scientific purposes.

The proposed Illinois hole will pro-
vide a continuous cylinder of rock
and could be completed in as little as
two to three years.

DRILLHOLE

ILLINOIS STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

What a Hole Costs

The budget for the Illinois hole is
roughly estimated at $32 million.
Funding will most likely be found
through the National Science Found-
ation (NSF), though the NSF now has
monies only for planning, shallow
drilling and deepening of existing
holes. There is a Continental Scien-
tific Drilling and Exploration Act
introduced in the Senate by Senator
Pressler. That Act calls for the Na-
tional Science Foundation, the U.S.
Geological Survey and the U.S. De-
partment of Energy to recommend
maximum and minimum budgets.
Private corporations may also be ap-
proached for funding.

In the meantime, efforts in Illinois
are being directed toward the prepa
ration of a detailed scientific proposal.
DOSECC chose the Illinois Super-
deep Drillhole as one of the eleven
sites meriting further work. A four-
day workshop, sponsored by
DOSECCG, the Illinois Department of
Energy and Natural Resources, the
Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency and others, is being organized
by the Illinois State Geological Survey.

Mr. Jim Edel is Principal Geologist and
Head of Mineral Resources at the Illinois
State Geological Survey. Eidel was U.S.
exploration manager for the Coastal Min-
ing Company until last February, when he

Joined the Survey. He has beena member

of the Continental Scientific Drilling Com-
mittee of the National Academy of Sciences!
National Research Council since

1981 and chaired the CSDC Panel on
Mineral Resources Creede target, which
received initial DOSECC drilling funds
this year.

Just as human civilizations rise and
fall over long periods of time, so do
plant and animal communities in the
world’s large rivers. The phenome-
non, known as “succession,” and
others, are being studied in the II-
linois and Mississippi rivers by an
interdisciplinary team comprised of
the Illinois Natural History, the II-
linois State Water Survey, the Illinois
State Geological Survey, the Illinois
State Museum and Western Illinois
University.

The National Science Foundation-
funded Long-Term Ecological Re-
search (LTER) project is destroying
old myths about the ecosystems and
the very nature of the Illinois and
Mississippi rivers themselves.

“The old view was that rivers are just
pipes that carry things down to the
sea, and aquatic animals are depen-
dent on what falls in upstream for
food,” according to Dr. Richard
Sparks, Aquatic Biologist at the II-
linois Natural History Survey. “Actu-
ally, rivers generate much of their
own food, although they do make use
of organic material from upstream.
The river is a whole world to itself,
not just the drain for a land area.”

What the researchers found in study-
ing the flow patterns of the river sur-
prised even them. The traditional
view of material in the water moving
from upstream to downstream gave
way when Water Survey teams found
an oval eddy, three-fourths mile
across and 3 miles long, rotating very

A PATTERN

slowly along the border of the main
channel of the river. This water mass
held suspended sediments and nu-
trients for 20 to 36 days over the area
instead of the few hours traditionally
thought by biologists.

That extended time period had im-
portant implications for the river's
ecological life. Animals and plants
were not losing food and nutrients
downstream as had been previously
thought. The researchers found that
aquatic communities were producing
their own food. Water plants were
growing, decaying and being broken
down by bacteria and fungi into the
small particles called “detritus.” De-
tritus in turn fed the animal life at the
bottom of the river.

IN TIMETI

The detritus generated in the plant
beds was also feeding the animals

offshore. The eddy’s flow pulled or-
ganic material out of the plant beds
and distributed it over a large area.

LTER team scientists believe that a
similar phenomenon exists when
summer windstorms and surges from
barge traffic redistribute detritus over
large area of the river. This summer
the team will attempt to capture wind
and barge events and measure the
amount and distribution patterns of
detritus.

The most significant long-term event
the researchers found occurred in
Pool 19 (the Keokuk pool), once a
rapid several miles long. In 1913 the
rapids were dammed into a pool, with
a gradual evolution from a rocky bot-
tom to a silt bottom as the sediment
fell out. It was here that succession
began.

The first stage saw a shift in the
ecosystem from organisms that
thrived on rocky bottoms like midges
and caddis flies to soft-bottom dwell-
ers like fingernail clams and burrow-
ing mayflies.

As the pool silted in more, the bottom
grew closer to the surface—and to the
sun—and aquatic plants began to
grow. These plants produced de-
tritus, and as more organic material
became available the insect and clam
populations grew.

The third stage saw the plants retard-
ing the flow of the water, causing
more sedimentation and an even shal-
lower bottom. The stage was set for
a transformation from deep-
submerged plants to shallower ones
with floating leavers and plants that
could stand erect. The animal popula-
tion also changed. A shift occurred
from burrowers to climbers and cling-
ers such as dragonfly and damselfly
larvae.

Flooding accelerates the process, with
each flood depositing another layer
of sediment. During this process, the
land grows higher and eventually
dries out in summer. Plants that grow
on soil and can withstand periodic
flooding appear, like the black willow.

The river’s biological communities
forma pattern in space as well as time.
Snapshots of these communities taken
over the past 70 years and displayed
rapidly, like a motion picture, would
show open water shrinking and zones
of emergent and submergent plants
moving from shore toward the chan-
nel. Today, zones of marsh near what
was the old bank extend to watery
areas filled with lotus and give way to
the deeper, submerged plants.

All of these zones are still expanding,
and the Water and Geological surveys
have done some modeling to predict
what the pool will look like in the year
2020.

“Essentially we will see a narrow, deep
channel with mudflats and islands on
either side,” explains Sparks. “Much
of the lower part of the pool will be
dry land for much of the year and
flooded in spring. There will be no
open water in midsummer. Instead a
bottomland forest with willows and
soft maples will predominate. Aquatic
plants will occur in a narrow zone
between the new forest and the chan-
nel. The water area will be perhaps
one-third of what it is today during
midsummer.

There are human implications to suc-
cession, too. People who have built
boat ramps and homes on the river-
front will be looking at forests in the
year 2020. These riverfront resi-
dences will be one-fourth of a mile
from the water.

Sparks and other researchers believe
that long-term ecological research, as
long as 30 years in their case, will

allow them to make more of these
kinds of predictions, so that man can
change his environment if needed. In
the case of the Keokuk pool, if man
wanted to retain open water on the
Illinois side of the river, a diversion
structure could be built upstream.
This kind of structure would provide
a steady current source and would
prevent sedimentation.

Sparks, who enjoys his membership
in the worldwide fraternity of “river
men,” warns: “Rivers are exciting.
People all over the world are realizing
that we don’t know much about large
rivers like this one. Large floodplain
rivers, like the Tigris, Euphrates and
Nile were the cradles of civilization
because the annual flood renewed the
fertility of the soil and made it possible
to support a concentrated human
population in one place for hundreds
of years. Man also used the river’s
aquatic resources: fish and waterfowl
for food or sport, rushes for building
material and papyrus for paper.”

The Illinois LTER project is now in
its fourth year of existence. Another
26 years of research will allow Sparks
and his fellow researchers to fill in at
least some of the gaps in river knowl-
edge.

Dr. Richard Sparks is an Aquatic Biologist
who has been with the Illinois Natural
History Survey for 13 years. He has been
with this project from the time he helped
write the proposal to the National Science
Foundation. Some of his co-workers and
fellow researchers include Ken Lubinski
and Bob Gorden of the Natural History
Survey; Nani Bhowmik, Rodger Adams
and Mike Demissie of the Illinois State
Water Survey; David Gross and Richard
Cahill of the Illinois State Geological Sw
vey; and Richard Anderson of Western
Illinois University.

POSTMORTEM

AT
WILSONVILLE

fd
©. Fe if

The first time Dr. Robert Griffin en-
tered the tiny Illinois town of Wilson-
ville, every telephone pole had an
American flag flying upside down at
half-mast and there was a dummy
hung in effigy. The head of the
Illinois Geological Survey's Geo-
chemistry Section was expecting
rocks.

It was 1976, and the angry residents
of Wilsonville (pop. 377) were begin-
ning a seven-year fight to rid the town
of a hazardous waste landfill located
at the edge of town.

In 1978 they won their fight when
Circuit Court Judge John Russell
ordered the exhumation and removal
of all wastes buried there. In 1982 the
owner of the site dropped its appeal
to the Illinois Supreme Court, and
exhumation of the waste began.
There are still many scientists who
firmly assert that the site was a good
one, that the Wilsonville disposal site
was just another example of NIMBY

- Not In My Back Yard.

The 130-acre landfill operation was a
trench-and-fill procedure that mainly
relied on natural attenuation of conta-
minants by a clay-containing till de-
posit native to the region. The politics
of waste management aside, routine
monitoring of the site by the Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency
revealed that organic contaminants
were migrating 100 to 1000 times
faster than predicted. Scientists and
regulatory officials were puzzled by
this migration in a site that had long
been thought to be one of the best-de-
signed in the state.

The Geological Survey, supported by
the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency,and the site owner, SCA Ser-
vices, Inc., began a study into why the
rate of contamination was so high and
what this meant for land disposal of
similar wastes at other sites.

What the Survey scientists found illus-
trated the dangers of extrapolating

from laboratory tests. [here were two
reasons why higher-than-predicted
migration rates were found. First,
there is a substantial difference be-
tween laboratory and field permeabil-
ity values for clay. In the lab, a scientist
deals with a very small piece of speci-
men. What he does not see is the full
range of cracks, fissures, animal bur-
rows, root holes and sand lenses pre-
sent in a site like Wilsonville.

A laboratory measures the matrix of
a sample but does not adequately
measure the cracks and fractures ina
larger block of earth. Water and con-
taminants tend to exploit these cracks
and are thereby transported through
the clay matrix.

Routine monitoring of the
site by the Illinois Environ-
mental Protection Agency re-
vealed that organic contam-
inants were migrating 100 to
1000 times faster than pre-
dicted.

Second, organic solvents caused the
clay at the site to shrink and crack at
the bottom of the trenches. The or-
ganic solvents replaced the water in
the clay, thus drying out the clay and
forming more cracks and fissures for
the contaminants to migrate through.
This proved more of a problem near
the drums, and less at deeper levels
where groundwater diluted the sol-
vents.

Regulatory response to the findings
of Griffin’s team was swift. In-place
field tests of soil permeability and
hydraulic conductivity for landfills
are now required along with labora-
tory tests. And when laboratory tests
are conducted on low-permeable en-
vironments like clay, those tests must
be discounted by a factor of 100. Just
as importantly, the Geological Sur-
vey’s work provided support fora
legislative ban in Illinois on landfilling
of liquid hazardous wastes.

The Wilsonville landfill was designed
by engineers with only rudimentary
attention to the geology of the site.
Design criteria for landfills must now
include a thorough geological evalua-
tion, sound measurements of the

soil’s hydraulic conductivity and over-
excavation recompaction of fill mater-
ial.

After a rocky start, Dr. Griffin en-

joyed working on the project: “It was

gratifying that our work had such a
strong regulatory impact. We think
we made people aware of the impor-

tance of a good geologic site evalua-
ution.”

Dr. Robert Griffin is Geochemist and
Head of the Geochemistry Section of the
Illinois Geological Survey. He has worked
at the Survey for twelve years, and has
spent his entire career working on contain-
ment migration and the effects of pollut-
ants on soil conditions. “ Mechanisms of
Contaminant Migration Through A Clay
Barrier - Case Study, Wilsonville, Illinois”
was delivered on April 29, 1985 at the
USEPA’s Eleventh Annual Research
Symposium on Solid and Hazardous
Waste. Authors of the article are R.A,
Griffin, B.L. Herzog, T.M. Johnson,
W.J. Morse, R.E. Hughes, S.F.J. Chou,
and L.R. Follmer, all of the Geological
Survey.

[LWP OIS

Coal Research

Four new coal desulfurization contracts have recently
been funded through the Center for Research on
Sulfur in Coal. The projects will: (1) investigate the
removal of both organic and inorganic forms of sulfur
from coal by bacteria; (2) perform “ultra-fine” clean-
ing of coal via explosive shattering and aggregate
flotation; (3) investigate the feasibility of improving
sulfur dioxide sorption capacity of lime through a
physical-chemical process; and (4) study hydrodesul-
furization of coal chars.

Mineral Economics

IGS recently prepared a draft report on the impact

of a hypothetical Illinois oil severance tax. An average

Illinois oil well produces less than three barrels per

day, with an estimated economic cutoff production of

1 3/4 barrels. That cutoff production figure is very

sensitive to fluctuations in cost increases, well depth
increases and oil prices. Preliminary findings indicate

that such a tax could lead to increased oil well aban-
donment.

The U.S. fluorspar industry was analyzed ina recent
Illlinois State Geological Survey paper presented at
the seventh International Industrial Minerals Con-
gress in Monte Carlo. Declining demand for fluorspar
in the United States and low-cost imports have accel-
erated the shrinking of the U.S. fluorspar industry.
Demand in the industry is closely tied to the steel and
aluminum industries. Any improvements in the
fluorspar industry must be preceded by improved
performance in steel and aluminum.

The Superconducting Super Collider

Production of the Environmental Atlas for Siting the SSC
is underway. The Atlas will demonstrate the depth of
knowledge Illinois has available for Superconducting
Super collider siting decisions. Forty-five maps and
descriptive text will be featured in the categories of
natural setting, conservation and preservation, cul-
tural features and wells. The Atlas is a joint production
of the three Illinois surveys and the Illinois State
Museum.

Satellite Mapping

A colorful “Satellite Image Map of Illinois” has been
compiled from 13 images collected from a satellite

450 miles above the earth. Within 10 days after release,
the Illinois State Geological Survey received orders
for more than 8,000 copies of the map.

Watching the Waste

An inventory of all known waste disposal sites in II-
linois is being prepared for the Illinois Hazardous
Waste Research and Information Center (HWRIC)
by the Geological Survey. The data, compiled from
federal, state and county sources, is being entered into
acomputer file for the HWRIC data base. A computer
mapping format has been developed to show the
location, method of disposal and type of waste for
each disposal site.

Personnel

Dr. Rodney D. Norby, a specialist in Paleozoic micro-
paleontology has been appointed Curator for the
State Geological Survey Paleontological Repository.
Norby replaces Dr. Lois S. Kent, long-time Curator
who relinquished her duties in the fall.

Dr. Keros Cartwright was appointed to a panel of experts
that evaluated and discussed presentations at the In-
ternational Symposium on Alternative Low-Level
Waste Technologies held in Chicago, February 27 to
March 1, 1986.

Jim Eidel completed his term as Vice-President of the

Society of Economic Geology and has assumed new
duties as Chairman of the Program Policy Committee.
Recently Eidel also joined the steering group for the
Continental Interior Crustal Studies Consortium.

Dr. Charles Collinson represented the surveys in lengthy
preparations for recommendations to be presented as
a Governor’s initiative for Lake Michigan programs.

Smelt Fishing in Lake Michigan

Rainbow smelt supporta lively sport fishery along the
Illinois shoreline each spring. On almost any Saturday
evening in April, over 1,000 smelt fisherman may
crowd Chicago’s Montrose Harbor, while another
5,000 use other sites along the shorelines of Lake and
Cook counties. During the spawning peak, anglers
may catch hundreds of fish each night, averaging over
50 smelt per net per hour. One party of five fishermen
this spring landed over 1,000 smelt in approximately
two hours on a Sunday night. Estimates made by
Illinois Natural History Survey (NHS) researcher
William Horns and his assistants indicate that Illinois
residents made 70,000 trips to Lake Michigan to fish
for smelt, for an estimated total seasonal expenditure
of $420,000.

The Crayfishes and Shrimp of Illinois

The first article in the first volume of the Bulletin of

the Illinois Museum of Natural History, now the II-
linois Natural History Survey, was an annotated list
of the crustacea of Illinois written by the survey’s first
Chief, Stephen A. Forbes. It noted the presence in
Illinois of nine species of decapods (crayfishes and
shrimp). An update to that list, called “The Crayfishes
and Shrimps of Illinois,” by NHS zoologist L.M. Page,
was recently published, raising to 23 the number of
decapod species throughout the state. Seventeen of
Illinois’ 23 species were found in the Shawnee Hills
and on the Coastal Plain.

NASA Award

As part of a large team of grassland and forest
ecologists. Dr. Louis Iverson and Dr. Paul Risser of
the NHS were awarded a grant from the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration to explore the
use of Thematic Mapper and other spectral patterns
in relating local ecosystem findings to estimates of
carbon cycling in ecosystems.

The Non-Territorial Squirrel

Information on pine (red) squirrels in Illinois is being
developed in a continuing study funded by the Illinois

Department of Conservation. The range of the Illinois
red squirrel seems to be concentrated along the
Kankakee and Iroquois rivers in eastern Illinois. Live-
trapping and radio-tracking data from red squirrels
living in deciduous habitats shows that these squirrels
are not territorial, probably because food supplies in
these forests are hard to defend.

Good News on the Des Plaines River

Environmental laws regulating point sources of pollu-
tion (e.g. power plant effluents) have reduced con-
tamination of many Illinois rivers and streams.
Numerous non-point sources of pollution (e.g. road
construction) have disturbed plant and animal
habitats, however, and decreased the number of native
species found in Illinois’ waterways. Baseline data
collected by NHS researchers Michael Heneby and
Robert Gordon on the Des Plaines River and its nat-
ural flood plain in northern Illinois revealed some
good news: Both the Des Plaines River and its quarry
lakes are relatively unpolluted areas and good exam-
ples of fairly “clean” habitats. The problem with re-
storing species to the Des Plaines rests with stream
channelization and excessive siltation. Based on these
findings, the Des Plaines River Wetlands Demonstra-
tion project will go foward in an attempt to recreate
a wet prairie habitat and to increase aquatic and ter-
restrial habitats.

Wetlands Inventory

NHS is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
in a project to identify and classify the nation’s wet-
lands ona state-by-state basis. The Illinois component
of the National Wetlands Inventory began in 1984.
Working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and
the Illinois Department of Conservation, the survey
will replace paper-copy wetland maps with quadrangle
maps retrievable via the statewide Geographic Infor-
mation System. The new mapping format will allow
better management of these fragile ecosystems.

10

Water Use Updated

The latest information on water use for 1984 shows
that water withdrawals in Illinois totaled 36,83 1.7
million gallons per day (mgd). Of this total, 1,098.8
med came from groundwater resources and 35,732.8
mgd came from surface water resources.

The largest user is electric power generation, 92 per-

cent of the total. Public (mostly municipal) water sup-

ply systems in Illinois withdrew 1,797 mgd in 1984,
a 3.3 percent increase from 1982.

Irrigation Increases

There has been a substantial increase in the acreage
of agricultural lands irrigated, from an estimated
9,000 acres in 1950 to 150,000 acres in 1980 and
208,000 acres in 1984. Total acreage, which includes
golf courses, cemeteries, and other grassed areas,
under irrigation was estimated to be 245,000 acres in
1984.

Water withdrawals for irrigation during 1984 were
estimated to total 200.1 million gallons per day (mdg),
compared with 96.8 mgd in 1980. The increase re-
flects changes in acres irrigated and rainfall.

More Hazy Summer Days

Those hazy, lazy days of summer in Illinois have be-
come more frequent during the past 30 years, Illinois
State Water Survey research shows. Visibility, which
reflects the most noticeable effects of air pollution,
decreased in all parts of the state during summer, but
only slightly in spring and fall. During winter there
was little change, and winter visibility actually 1m-
proved at Chicago and Peoria observation stations.

Impact of New Wells

‘The Water Survey and the Illinois State Geological
Survey, in accordance with the Illinois Water Use Act,
now conduct studies of the impacts of proposed major
new groundwater withdrawals (more than 100,000
gallons on any given day). The surveys also provide
technical assistance to state and local agencies as part

of the effort to inform the public of major water with-
drawals and possible conflicts.

Since requests began in January 1985, the two surveys
have made 108 well-site groundwater resource impact
evaluations. These concerned 101 wells intended for
irrigation use, six wells for public water supplies and
one well for industrial/commercial use.

Streamflow Assessments

As the demand for water in Illinois increases, it be-
comes increasingly important that streamflow condi-
tions, and low-flow conditions in particular, be well
managed. This is needed not only to allow for protec-
tion of the natural environment of the stream, but
also to ensure that enough water is available for users
during periods of low flow. Many state policies and
tools for water resource planning depend upon evalu-
ation of certain flow values at a given point of interest.
The Water Survey has recently developed the Illinois
Streamflow Assessment Model to provide the needed
standard of information for streams in the state.

Dr. Lin to China

Dr. Shundar Lin, of the Water Survey’s Water Quality
Section, has received an invitation from the University
of Pennsylvania Civil Engineering Department to
participate in an 18-day educational exchange pro-
gram to China being organized under the auspices of
the China-U.S. Scientific Exchange. The purpose of
this program, which starts July 4, 1986, is to exchange
ideas and information on environmental protection.

Huff Gives Horton Lecture

Floyd A. Huff, Principal Scientist Emeritus in the
Water Survey’s Climate and Meteorology Section,
gave the Robert E. Horton Lecture in Hydrology at
the American Meteorological Society’s conference
on hydrometeorology in Indianapolis. The Horton
Lecture recognizes an eminent scientist for outstand-
ing research on topics of interest to both hydrolo-
gists and meteorologists. Huff spoke on “Urban
Hydrometeorology—Problems, Progress and
Potential.”

Cottontail Rabbits

Illinois has three native leporids. The eastern cotton-
tail, Sylvilagus floridanus, occurs throughout the state.
The subspecies Sylvilagus f. alacer is found in extreme
southern Illinois (south of the Shawnee Hills). The
subspecies Sylvilagus f. mearnsil is found through the
remainder of the state. These subspecies are similar
in size and general appearance, but a slightly larger
and more darkly colored leporid is the swamp rabbit,
Sylvilagus aquaticus. Its distribution is restricted to
bottomland forest, canebrakes, and thickets along the
Ohio River and its tributaries in southern Illinois.
Illinois’ only hare, the white-tailed jackrabbit, Lepus
townsend, is found today in at most a few scattered,
low-density, remnant populations. It may in fact sur-
vive only on the Savanna Ordinance Depot in Jo
Daviess County.

The cottontail is brown to gray-brown in color witha
white underside, a conspicuous cotton-white tail and
often a small white spot in the middle of the forehead.
Fully mature, they weigh about 3 pounds. Cottontails
have earned their reputation for reproduction; how-
ever, they do not breed year-round in Illinois. Their
annual reproductive cycle is controlled by hormones
secreted by the endocrine system centered in the
pituitary. That organ responds to changes in length
of day—photoperiod. As days grow longer after the
winter solstice, cottontails respond physiologically to
an increased production of sex hormones and become
capable of reproduction. During the truly warm
period of late February or early March, they breed.
A high degree of synchrony occurs in mating, and
essentially all females in local and even regional popu-
lations breed in a period of relatively a few hours.
The cottontail is said to be a postpartum breeder
because females normally copulate only a few minutes
after giving birth. Given the synchrony of the initial
breeding, a 28-day gestation and postpartum breed-
ing, cottontails show a high degree of synchrony in
their reproduction throughout the annual breeding
season.

Adult females have four to six litters each breeding
season, with an average litter size of about five. Thus

an average female in March has the potential to pro-
duce 25 to 30 young in the next five to six months.
In addition, much of the late summer breeding is
probably by juveniles. In a single breeding season,
therefore, cottontails have the potential to produce
50 or more young per adult female at the start of

the breeding season. Species with high rates of repro-
duction, however, suffer high rates of mortality, and
so it is with cottontails. Typically only one out of six
cottontails in early November will survive to the next
November.

The peak abundance of upland game, including cot-
tontails, in Illinois probably occurred from 1870 to
1880. Since then the relatively continuous trend to
intensively farm has been accompanied by loss of
habitat quality and quantity—and by a reduction in
the statewide abundance of cottontails. Two conspicu-
ous breaks in this trend have occurred. During the
depression of the 1930s, thousands of acres went

unfarmed or were withdrawn under subsidy of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture and seeded to soil-
conserving forage grasses and legumes. These fallow
fields and seeded grasslands provided much improved
wildlife habitat and cottontail numbers jumped.

World War II brought strong grain markets and the
fields diverted from cropping in the 1930s were again
plowed; in the 1940s and early 1950s rabbit numbers
once again fell. By the mid-1950s American farms
were again overproducing and grain prices fell. The
Soil Bank was established in 1956 in an attempt to
restore agricultural markets and to conserve soil by
seeding diverted acres to grasses and legumes. Once
more cottontails benefited. As the Soil Bank began to
be phased out in the early 1960s, cottontail numbers
began a decline that has continued more or less un-
abated. Since about 1960 the number of cottontails
has declined more than 70 percent statewide and

12

more than 90 percent in intensively farmed regions.

The phasing-out of the grassland-type seedings made
under federal subsidy was particularly significant.

Perhaps even more important was the continuing loss
of unimproved pastures that often provided an ideal
combination of weeds, briars and brush for cottontail
cover. In the long run cottontail populations clearly
reflect changes in land use and habitat; however, even
where habitat is relatively stable, large fluctuations in
numbers from year to year are apparent on individual
farms locally and even regionally. Cottontail numbers
are also affected by adverse weather (especially sub-
normal temperatures accompanied by above normal
precipitation), predation and diseases such as
tularemia. Where rabbits are found in relative abun-
dance, however, they remain a sought-after game
species in Illinois.

Cottontails tend to clump together on “islands” of
favorable habitat. They apparently evolved the capac-
ity to survive in a variety of woodland edge and dis-
turbed environments that developed locally as a result
of such random events as fires, floods, outbreaks of
plant diseases and grazing. These islands of cover
were somewhat separated in space and temporary in
time (successional) because they reflected natural
types of habitat disturbance. Dispersal is critical for
the perpetuation of animals like the cottontail that are
dependent on successional habitats. Although dispers-
ing individuals typically suffer high rates of mortality,
sufficient benefit accrues to those who are successful
in establishing home ranges in new locations for dis-
persal to have survival value for the species.

Wildlife managers often refer to a “harvestable
surplus” of annually produced animals that provides

the basis of sport hunting. Under normal conditions

wild populations produce considerably more young
than are needed to compensate for the natural mor-

tality of purely resident individuals. As a rough ap-
proximation about half of the annual number of

young that survive until the hunting season may be
taken by hunters without jeopardizing the local breed-
ing population or the number of dispersers needed

for recolonization. If we return to the idea of cottontail
habitat as islands in a sea of intensive agriculture,
dispersal comes into clearer focus. In effect, as agricul-
tural land use intensifies, habitat islands become
fewer, smaller and farther apart. These islands sustain
fewer residents and put out fewer dispersers; these
dispersers in turn have less chance of reaching another
island. Populations on smaller islands have a greater
chance of becoming extirpated (going to zero), with
longer average time intervals to recolonization at
lower rates of recolonization. On average the result
is a combination of less habitat supporting lower
densities of animals per unit of a habitat.

Dr. William R. Edwards is an Upland Wildlife Ecologist
with the Wildlife Research Section of the Illinois Natural
History Survey. He specializes in research on upland wildlife
ecology and has been with the survey for 23 years.

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URBAN DEER

mer Tee

[he forest preserve district in Cook
County is unique with about 100

square miles
land in the heart of one of the most
heavily populated regions in the

66,747 acres—of open

country. But the forest preserves are
coming under attack from what most
city dwellers would consider an un-
usual foe, the urban white-tailed deer.

Dr. Jim Witham of the Illinois Natural
History Survey is Project Leader for
a six-year study investigating deer
ecology and deer-related problems in
urban areas of Cook, DuPage, Kane
and Lake counties. The project,
jointly sponsored by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service and the Illinois De-
partment of Conservation (DOC),
began in July 1983, and has just re-
ceived a three-year extension.

A large deer population has de-
veloped in the forest preserves,
nearby parks and other suitable
habitats. Some herds have increased
dramatically during the past decade,
altering forest vegetation and reduc-
ing the quality of habitat for the deer
themselves. Areas with more than
100 deer per square mile have experi-
enced a severe impact on vegetation.
An aerial survey conducted in the
winter of 1984-1985 found a
minimum count of 1,800 deer in the
Cook County forest preserves. Many
deer remain undetected during aerial
surveys, and it is extremely difficult
to estimate the percentage of the total
herd that is observed. In reality, the
number of deer in Cook County is
probably much greater than 1,800
animals.

Jim Witham explains the effects of
large numbers of deer in limited

habitat: “In several preserves there
has been substantial damage to forest
vegetation, both in the herbaceous
and shrub layers. The deer have es

tablished a browse line in the forest
about | to 1 1/2 meters high. Heavy
foraging pressure by the deer is
changing the composition of the
forest vegetation, reducing the
number of plant species and altering
the vertical structure of the forests.”

“Numerous complaints have been
received from area residents about
deer eating valuable ornamental
shrubs, and there has been damage
at the Morton Arboretum and the
Chicago Botanical Gardens. Many
homeowners used to put out corn for
the deer to draw them into their back-
yards. Now they’re writing into DOC
for literature on deer repellents.”

“Finally, there are the deer transpor-
tation problems. Deer inhabit wood-
lots adjacent to the runways at O’ Hare
Airport and have been removed from
the airport on occasion. Beyond that,
deer-vehicle collisions on Cook
County highways have substantially
increased during the past decade. In
the past four years deer-auto acci-
dents in northwestern Cook County
have doubled each year. We finished
our deer carcass collection program
last October and examined 1,000 car-
casses—most resulting from deer-
vehicle collisions.”

Urban deer are a problem in other
cities like Milwaukee, Minneapolis,
Cleveland and Detroit and along the
East Coast. But no area compares
with the Chicago metropolitan area
in terms of size and distribution of
forests, the large number of deer and
the human population affected.

Before DOC can do anything about
the deer population, it needs solid
information. The Natural History
Survey’s goal is to give DOC that fac-
tual base. The objectives of the study
are to determine how many deer are

in the urban area, where they are,
how fast their numbers are increas-
ing, what their behavior and habitats
are, whether they are healthy, how
much damage they are causing, how
many need to be removed for effec-
tive control and relative costs of sev-
eral possible methods of control.

The two areas sustaining the greatest
damage are the Ned Brown Preserve
near Elk Grove Village and Schaum-
burg and the Des Plaines River near
Wheeling. The deer in the Ned
Brown Preserve show the classic signs
of over population: smaller antlers
and body weight, less fat reserves for
winter, chronic seasonal malnutrition,
high subadult mortality rates and low
reproductive performance.

“Many homeowners used to
put out corn for the deer to
draw them into their back-
yards. Now they're writing
into DOC for literature on
deer repellents.”

The study has also allowed the survey
to perform some much-needed re-
search on the nutritional profile of
the deer herds in northern Illinois.
The bulk of Jim Witham’s time is
spent picking up road-killed deer and
performing autopsies in conjunction
with Dr. Bruce Watkins, a Brookfield
Zoo nutritionist. The whole body
composition study conducted with
Dr. Watkins augments the research-
ers’ general nutritional assessments
of herds in northeastern Illinois. Data
from this segment of the study will be
used to evaluate how accurately con-
dition indices (physical measure-
ments, weights, fat deposition, blood
parameters and others) used in the
general nutritional assessments pre-
dict true body composition. ‘Tissues
have also been sampled and tested for

levels of polychlorinated biphenyl
(PCBs), pesticides and heavy metals.
All of this will give Witham and fellow
researchers the data to build a com-
plete profile on urban deer herds.

The population study on the deer will
phase intoa management study. That
study will evaluate methods of con-
trolling the deer population. Options
include no direct intervention and
then projection of the consequences
for both deer and vegetation, the use
of live traps and transportation to
other sites, direct reduction of
selected herds through professional
shooters or public hunters and
chemosterilization.

According to Witham, every option
has a host of associated problems: “A
single method of control will not be
effective under all circumstances. We
need to make individual assessments
of each area and situation. It is clear
that white-tailed deer will remain an
important component of the urban
environment in northeastern II-
linois.”

Dr. Jim Witham, Project Leader of the
Urban Deer Study, has been with the Il-
linois Natural History Survey since Sep-
tember 1983. He is currently headquar-
tered on land owned by the Cook County
Forest Preserve. The Project Field Super-
visor is Jon M. Jones, also with the Natural
History Survey. Dr. Glen C. Sandersen,
head of the survey's Wildlife Research
Section, ts the Principal Investigator of the
project.

ILLINOIS RESEARCHES
HAZARDOUS WASTE

A 1981 U.S. Environmental Protec-
tion Agency survey of hazardous
waste generators indicated that 264
million metric tons of hazardous
waste are generated each year in the
United States. The implications of
this figure are staggering fora highly
industrialized state like Illinois. Every
state generates hazardous waste, but
about 60 percent of the total is gener-
ated in 10 states. New Jersey is the
number one generator, followed by
Illinois and Ohio. Between 3 and 10
million tons of hazardous waste are
generated in Illinois each year, about
7 percent of the nation’s total.

These numbers have not gone un-
noticed by the media or the general
public. Names like Times Beach,
Wilsonville and Sheffield are indelibly
imprinted on Illinoisans’ memories.
More sites like these come to the pub-
lic’s attention every week. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency is
projecting that federal cleanups
under the Superfund program at
1,400-2,200 sites will cost between
$8.4 billion and $23 billion. Two ver-
sions of a Superfund extension bill
now under congressional considera-
tion would increase monies available
for Superfund projects from $1.6 bil-
lion for 1980-1985 to $7.5 billion-$ 10
billion for 1986-1990. State hazard-
ous waste program managers, even
less optimistic, estimate that more
than 7,000 uncontrolled hazardous

waste sites will require some form of

cleanup action.
Regulation and Research

New federal laws have established
unprecedented corporate liability for
the cleanup of hazardous wastes.
Many states have established compar-
able
quirements. As a result, federal and
state regulatory agencies are now
armed with broad legal authority to
complete cleanups and the resources

and in some cases stricter—re-

HAZARDOUS WASTE RESEARCH
AND INFORMATION CENTER

to do it themselves if industry refuses.
Two federal laws are causing high
levels of anxiety in America’s corpo-
rate boardrooms.

The first of these is the Comprehen-
sive Environmental Response, Com-
pensation and Liability Act, better
known as Superfund, which applies
mainly to abandoned hazardous waste
sites. Liability under this law attaches
without regard to fault or negligence
and is subject to only a few narrowly
drawn defenses. The second act is the
Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act (RCRA), which regulates the
handling of hazardous wastes at cur-
rently operating or future facilities.
More and more businesses are coming
under the regulatory aegis of RCRA,
many of them small businesses.

Much of the hazardous waste in II-
linois was generated prior to the es-
tablishment of any regulations gov-
erning waste management. The dan-
gers and liabilities resulting from im-
proper waste handling were barely
recognized when these wastes were
disposed of. Even now there are still
critical “unknowns” which must be
addressed before the handling of
hazardous wastes becomes a science.

The Illinois Chemical Safety
Research Initiative

Illinois has responded to these de-
velopments with its own legislative
program. That program included
legislation that:

@ encourages recycling rather than
landfilling

@ prohibits the landfilling of liquid
hazardous waste beginning in 1985

@ requires industry to reveal to work-
ers their exposure to chemicals in
the workplace

@ allows local governments a voice in
the process of locating hazardous
waste landfills

“We walk a fine line. We’re
not consultants and we're not
a regulatory agency. We give
industry, particularly small
businesses, a first line of ad-
vice on how to handle these
wastes.”

Legislative changes in the way Illinois
regulated hazardous wastes were ac-
companied by the recognition that
answers needed to be found to the
critical unknowns of hazardous
wastes: what wastes are most liable to
be released into the environment,
what are their characteristics, what
are the best management methods
for disposal of these wastes and how
can reduction of hazardous wastes be
accomplished?

In July 1984, Governor James R.
Thompson launched the Illinois
Chemical Safety Research Initiative
to find answers to these unknowns.
The program had three major com-
ponents:

@ Development of toxicity testing
protocols by the Illinois Environ-
mental Protection Agency to
evaluate the health and environ-
mental effects of chemical sub-
stances in wastes and effluents

16

@ Data-gathering on chemicals and
health effects by the Illinois De-
partment of Public Health’s Health
and Hazardous Substances Regis-

try

@ Establishment of a Hazardous
Waste Research and Information
Center in the Illinois State Water
Survey

The Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center

The Hazardous Waste Research and
Information Center is an interdivi-
sional program of the Illinois Depart-
ment of Energy and Natural Re-
sources, hosted by the Illinois State
Water Survey. It is designed to be the
focus of a comprehensive research
and information program on hazard-
ous waste issues. Its three major
programs are:

@ Research to determine the extent
and magnitude of Illinois’ hazard-
ous waste problems and to work
toward solutions for those prob-
lems

@ Information Resources, gathered,
analyzed and disseminated to im-
prove the understanding of the
complexities, costs, risks and poten-
tial benefits of proper hazardous
waste management

@ Assistance provided directly to in-
dustry to encourage the adoption
of alternative technologies for
treating hazardous wastes

David Thomas, Director of the center,
summarizes its mission: “We walk a
fine line. We’re not consultants and
we're not a regulatory agency. We
give industry, particularly small
businesses, a first line of advice on
how to handle these wastes. Eventu-

ally we'll add to that the services of a
hazardous waste laboratory, with
chemical analyses of samples available
and research and pilot studies on
alternative treatment technologies.”

Categorizing Special Waste

In the center’s first year of operation
nine research projects were begun.
The Special Waste Categorization
Study was mandated by the Illinois
Legislature. Special wastes included
those wastes covered by the federal
RCRA, all industrial process waste
and pollution control waste. The
study developed a system for
categorizing wastes according to the
threat posed to human health and the
environment—the “degree of
hazard.” Wastes that ranked low or
posed a negligible threat could be
subject to less stringent regulations in
the future.

When the study began, it was
assumed that even the oldest
disposal sites (50-100 years
old) might still pose a threat
to groundwater. The results
so far indicate that the threat
is not as great as originally
believed.

Because this study generated so much
interest, additional monies were ap-
propriated to continue the categoriza-
tion of special wastes. The methodol-
ogy for determining the degree of
hazard will be refined and applied to
categorize up to 200 individual waste
streams. Recommendations will then
be made for the deregulation of those
non-RCRA wastes that do not posea
hazard to human health or the envi-
ronment.

Looking at Old Waste Sites

Ten research projects are currently
underway at the center. Some of these
continue to address the nature of the
hazardous waste problem. Others
focus on finding solutions to specific
identified problems.

One such project is identifying areas
of possible groundwater contamina-
tion due to improper disposal of in-
dustrial wastes over 100 years ago. An
historical geography of waste disposal
in Winnebago County in northern
Illinois is being conducted in conjunc-
tion with an analysis of geology and
groundwater flow patterns. Two con-
ditions make Winnebago County
ideal for this type of study. It has a
century-long history of intense indus-
trial activity and over 50 percent of
its drinking water is drawn from shal-
low and gravel aquifers. These aquif-
ers are very susceptible to contamina-
tion.

Using a computerized mapping sys-
tem called the Geographic Informa-
tion System, historical maps of indus-
trial activity will be generated and
combined with contemporary maps
of the county’s water wells and
groundwater flow patterns. These
maps will be overlaid to indicate the
location of potential groundwater
contamination from industrial wastes.

Research so far has led to some tenta-
tive conclusions. When the study
began, it was assumed that even the
oldest disposal sites (50-100 years old)
might still pose a threat to groundwa-
ter. The results so far indicate that
the threat is not as great as originally
believed. Sand and gravel aquifers
drain quickly and the contaminants
move rapidly through them. Al-
though hundreds of disposal sites
have been discovered, the current

study focuses on those that contain
hazardous wastes and are located
near sand and gravel aquifers.

Future Challenges

From a scientific standpoint, Thomas
finds cross-media pollution one of the
most interesting in dealing with
hazardous wastes.

“Suppose you destroy dioxin in an
incinerator, a method that’s highly
touted nowadays. Most measure-
ments are being taken at the stack, in
fear of dioxin escaping there. But the
problem might not be the output of
principal organic compounds
(POC’s). The problem may be in the
process itself. That process might
generate by-products knownas PICs,
products of incomplete combustion
that you aren’t even looking for,”
Thomas said.

Thomas’ vision of the Hazardous
Waste Research and Information
Center is one of a multi-service or-
ganization offering a number of ser-
vices to a large and diverse client base.

“A balanced natural resource and
waste management strategy in Illinois
requires timely expert advice based
upon the best available engineering
and scientific analyses. The center
will fill that role,” he said.

Dr. David Thomas joined the Illinois State
Water Survey as the Director of the
Hazardous Waste Research and Informa-
tion Center in May 1985. He received his
bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ecology
from the University of Illinois and his
doctorate ecology from Cornell University.
Most recently he worked for a private
consulting firm performing environmental
studies.

INADVERTENT WEATHER MODIFICATION

reece

i

18

Introduction

For the last three millennia mankind
has struggled with the vagaries of
nature. Among those elements most
seriously affecting our survival and
efforts to improve our lives is the
climate. Beginning with the Romans
there have been various beliefs and
practices for purposefully influencing
the weather including prayers, incan-
tations, offerings and cannonades.
However, it has only been in the re-
cent 35 years, in what might be labeled
the modern age of meteorology, that
serious scientific attention has been
given to two weather change issues:
how man might purposefully alter
the weather to protect or enhance his
world and secondly how man is acci-
dentally altering the weather. This
article will focus on the second
phenomenon, also known as “inad-
vertent weather modification.”

Inadvertent weather modification is
defined as the study of those atmos-
pheric processes altered only during
certain conditions and over limited
geographic scales. In contrast climate
modification is seen to come from a
persistent bias imposed upon the at-
mosphere that acts on hemispheric
scales.

History

The field of inadvertent weather
modification followed a very different
track than planned weather modifica-
tion, but it too has had scientific con-
troversies. In the United States some
of the earlier definitive work on inad-
vertent weather modification occur-
red in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Helmut Landsberg and others
brought their interests and research
to the United States from Europe,
where urban-related weather modifi-
cation studies had occurred for dec-
ades.

A conference held in Cincinnati in
1960 brought together for the first
time a series of scientists who were
beginning serious studies of inadver-
tent weather modification. The con-
cept of atmospheric modification as a

result of man’s land use changes was
gaining awareness and attention. The
announcement of the LaPorte Ano-
maly in the mid 1960s brought forth
considerable interest and debate
about whether urban areas altered
precipitation well beyond a city.

Public concern and scientific aware-
ness of inadvertent weather modifica-
tion grew rapidly from 1967 to 1975.
Urban-induced modification of many
weather conditions had been recog-
nized for many years and the clouds
and fogs induced by large power
plants were obvious. All facets of the
weather and climate, including the
temperature, humidity, clouds, pre-
cipitation, wind, visibility and air com-
position are changed by large cities.

Urban induced modification
of many weather conditions
had been recognized for
many years, and the clouds
and fogs induced by large
power plants were obvious.

Attention to inadvertent weather
modification became quite high dur-
ing the 1970s. The Metropolitan
Meteorological Experiment (MET-
ROMEX), the first major effort to
intensively study urban effects on
weather, occurred during 1971-1976
at St. Louis. Other climatic and field
studies addressing power plants, irri-
gation effects, contrail effects and
industrial complexes were pursued.

Inadvertent weather modification is
assessed herein on the bases of scale
of the conversion force or factors
influencing the atmosphere, not on
the processes. Inadvertent weather
changes are primarily caused by
changes in the radiative and heat
budgets of the atmosphere. However,
particulates and changes in the mois-
ture budget are also involved.

Non-Urban Production Centers

One set of studies focused on “non-
urban production centers,” generally

isolated power plants and industrial
centers where concentrated releases
of heat, energy and pollutants exist.
For example the magnitudes of latent
heat (in the form of water vapor)
released from cooling towers in a
single large (2200 megawatts) power
plant in Illinois is one-seventh of that
released by the entire St. Louis met-
ropolitan area. Studies have shown
that coal-fired power plants, pet-
rochemical industries and wood pro-
cessing plants are prolific sources of
cloud condensation nuclei (CCN),
leading to observed increases in fogs
and clouds and in some instances
snow and rainfall. The weather
changes produced by such isolated
centers are reasonably well-ex plained
and predictable, at least for the major
climatic zones of the United States.

Urban Weather Changes

Attention to weather change from
urban areas has exceeded that given
to any other land use. Several defini-
tive climatic studies for a variety of
cities in the United States were done
during the 1960s and 1970s. The
METROMEX field experimentat St.
Louis focused on all summer condi-
tions, primarily in an effort to dimen-
sionalize the urban factors affecting
clouds, precipitation and storminess.
The urban influences on the precipi-
tation conditions are the primary
urban-induced changes that extend
well beyond the city.

Subsequent studies have been pur-
sued in the Chicago area. Studies of
summer precipitation at Chicago
largely substantiated the findings at
St. Louis; that is, rainfall was in-
creased about 15 percent on the aver-
age over portions of Chicago and in
an area east of the city. This
increase was realized most often in
the more unstable convective condi-
tions typically with squall lines,
another finding common to St. Louis.
In many respects knowledge of how
urban areas influence weather condi-
tions is more advanced than that with
any other type of land use change.

19

20

Agriculture

Agricultural lands and related ac-
tivities also affect the weather. The
slash and burn approach to elimina-
tion of crop and weed residues in
certain areas provides aerosols that
can effect radiation and visibility, and
some are effective as CCN and thus
effect clouds and rainfall production.
Another agricultural activity that has
been partially studied, but only from

a climatic point of view, are the wea-
ther influences of large-scale irriga-
tion. Climatic studies of sizable areas
of irrigation in the state of
Washington and in other sub-humid
regions from Nebraska to Texas
suggest summer rainfall increases of
15 percent or more.

Transportation Corridors

Another area of study of inadvertent
weather modification relates to
“transportation corridors.” The po-
tential effects of contrails and their
influence on cloudiness and in turn
on temperature have been studied. In
the major east-west flight corridor
across the Midwest, there has been an
anomalous increase of 20 percent in
high cloudiness in the last 20 years.
Available evidence strongly suggests
it is largely the result of jet contrails.
Major surface transportation cor-
ridors also affect the atmosphere by
direct heat emissions from vehicles by
moisture emissions and by pollutants
from vehicles. These have been de-
monstrated to lead to local tempera-
ture changes and to a production or
intensification of fogs. Such corridors

also add to regional concentrations of
particulates that diminish visibility.

More Research Needed

There are still many areas of uncer-
tainty with respect to inadvertent
weather modification deserving of
further research. First, urban influ-
ences on winter precipitation have yet
to be examined in depth. It is recog-
nized that urban areas affect winter
precipitation, but how the effect
occurs and to what extent is yet to
be well-defined.

Another area of considerable uncer-
tainty relates to influences from siza-
ble nonagricultural areas; that is, what
really happens after major deforesta-
tion, drainage of swamps or the
changing of grasslands? The current
concern over weather effects in
Florida due to draining of interior
lands is an illustration of just one such
research opportunity.

Physical-type studies are needed to
define how large-scale irrigation af-
fects the weather. Climatic studies

have indicated that the area of irriga-
tion in the Great Plains has produced
summer rainfall changes, but how?

In general the ability of man through
megalopolises, jet aircraft, irrigation
and the production of haze to alter
regional weather conditions seems to
be a principal area of research. Some
of the more simple and easy research
has largely been accomplished and

what remains will be more difficult,
often requiring in-depth climate

studies, modeling and extensive field
studies.

There is great need for further
studies of the impacts, whether they
are social or environmental, relating
to known inadvertent weather and
climate changes. The major issue
facing both the National Climate

Program and the weather modifica-
tion interests is the question, “What
happens when the weather or the
climate changes?”

This article is excerpted from a paper
presented at the 1983 Annual Meeting of
the Association of American Geographers,
Denver, at the invitation of the Climatol-
ogy Special Interest Group.

Stanley Changnon retired as Chief of the
Illinois State Water Survey in August
1985. Changnon has been with the survey
since he graduated from the University of
Illinois in 1951. Under his leadership, the
Water Survey grew to 230 staff members,
with research and service programs im
atmospheric and water chemistry, water
quality, surface and groundwater hydro-
logy, and climatology and meteorology.
After his retirement, Changnon returned
to the survey as a Principal Scientist. He
is also a Professor of Geography at the
University of Illinois.

‘The
Nature
of Illinois

About the Cover

The cover depicts the scenic Mississippi River at Mississippi
Palisades State Park. Our story on understanding the nature of
rivers appears on page 4. Photo by Tom Hecht.

Society for the

Illinois Scientific Surveys
607 East Peabody Drive
Champaign, IL 61820

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PAID

Permit No. 925
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eet fb
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OF ILLINOIS Winter 1986

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Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

bf

ee ee PO oe

OF ILLINOIS

+

Under Water

Lake Michigan is rising, and beaches,
residences and roads may soon
disappear.

6

Building a Better Scarecrow

Birds and airplanes cannot occupy the
same space at the same time without
disaster resulting — radar may be the
answer.

9

The Big CHILL
Champaign’s updated and upgraded

weather research tool detects and plots
storm movements.

12

The Endangered Pines

Pine wilt strikes Scotch and Austrian
pines in 50 of 102 Illinois counties.

14

Slip, Sliding Away

[llinois soil is floating down the state's
waterways as man tampers with
meandering streams.

16

Illinois Black Treasure

Desulfurizing Illinois coal can mean a
boost to the state's economy.

19

Surveying Illinois

Biorhythms
Geograms
Currents
Wildlife
Transitions

About the Cover

Lake Michigan’s waves encroaching on
the base of an apartment building in
the Rogers Park area of Chicago.

Published by the Society for the Illinois
Scientific Surveys

Volume I, Number 2

Winter 1986

Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Linda Classen Anderson
Editors

ComUnigraph
Design and Production

Society Offices

Correspondence about memberships,
magazine deliveries, contributions and
general information should be addressed
to the Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, 2021 Illini Road, Springfield,

IL 62704.

The Society encourages readers to
submit letters to the editor of The Nature
of Illinois at the address above

Copyright 1986 by the Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys. All rights
reserved.

Society for the Ilinois Scientific Surveys

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman
Ottawa

Walter E. Hanson
Treasurer
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Hinsdale

Henry N. Barkhausen
Jonesboro

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Bloomington

Marshall Field
Chicago

Clayton Gaylord
Rockford

John Homeier
Springfield

Richard A. Lenon
Northbrook

George Lewis
Quincy

John Rednour
DuQuoin

William L. Rutherford
Peoria

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.
Chicago

tO

Joseph Spivey
Springfield

Harold B. Steele
Princeton

Susan Stone
Champaign

Warren Trask
Decatur

Leo Whalen
Hanover

Louise B. Young
Winnetka

Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director

Linda Classen Anderson
Assistant Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Illinois Scientific Surveys

’ Morris Leighton, Chief

Illinois Geological Survey

Lawrence Page, Acting Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

Supporters*

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Inc.; Chicago Community Trust,
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& Moore; Donnelley Foundation;
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Dorothy Donnelley Foundation; R-R.
Donnelley & Sons; Dow Chemical;
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Illinois; Jamee & Marshall Field
Foundation; Freeman United Coal
Mining Company; Hamilton Consulting
Engineers; Hanson Engineers; Henry,
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Subsidence Insurance Fund; Illinois
Soybean Program Operating Board;

Joyce Foundation; Klingner & Associates;

Robert R. McCormick Foundation;
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Chemical; Peabody Coal Company;
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Associates; Sahara Coal Company;
Sargent & Lundy Engineers; J. R. Short
Milling Company; A. E. Staley Continental;
Tonrose, Campbell & Associates; Union
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Individuals: E. Armbrust, Henry
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® Contributions of S200 or more

The Society Page

The Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys is proud to present its second
issue of The Nature of Illinois, a
magazine dedicated to informing the
public about the important research
conducted by the Illinois Scientific
Surveys - The Geological, Natural History
and Water Surveys.

Following our first issue, we
received many requests for more infor.
mation about the Society, which I will
share with you here.

The Society is a not-for-profit
organization with tax-exempt status. Its
purpose is to enhance the wise use and

management of the natural resources of

Illinois through support of the activities
and programs of the Surveys, thereby
enhancing the economic development
of the State and improving the quality
of life in Illinois. The Society is needed
to help build a constituency for the
Surveys, and to provide a program
through which citizens of Illinois can
better understand the natural resources
of the state.

Membership in the Society is open
to any person or group that subscribes
to the purposes of the Society and that,
after applying with the appropriate
payment of fees, is accepted. The types
of membership available are listed.

Initially, the Society hopes to

educate the public through its magazine,

programs for students and science
teachers, public television programs
and more.

It is a worthwhile endeavor, and I
hope you or your organization will
consider joining us.

Sincerely,

Por bd Mower

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

The Society for the

Illinois Scientific Surveys

Scale of Contributions

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Illinois residents with lakefront property
on Lake Michigan are getting a better
view and closer access to the water than
they anticipated.

Lake Michigan, as well as the whole
Great Lakes system, is at its highest
recorded level since the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers began taking records in
1860. In June, the lake was at 581.08 feet
IGLD, surpassing the previous record
high set in July of 1974. It broke the
record in July, August and September,
and having climbed past 582 feet IGLD,
now stands at 581.7 ft.

“What was once thought to be
abnormally high levels, may in fact be
the normal level for the lake,” said
Dr. Charles Collinson, Principal Geologist
at the Illinois Geological Survey. The
Survey has been involved in shoreline
erosion studies for the past 15 years.

Previously, researchers believed that
the Great Lakes water levels fluctuated
in regular 22-year cycles. This was based
on information recorded during the last
126 years. However, if the 22-year cycle
theory is true, the lake levels should now
be falling instead of rising.

Recent evidence gathered in a study
funded by the Geological Survey sug-
gests that the 126-year period of record-
keeping represents only a small portion
of a longer, historical cycle for the lake.

It suggests that every 500 years over the
last 2,000 vears, Lake Michigan rose to

about 585 feet - or nearly 3.5 feet higher

than its current levels - and stayed there
for decades.

If this theory is true, Collinson said,
much of Illinois’ shoreline development
took place during abnormally low lake
levels. Scientists fear that beaches,
residential and commercial buildings,

4

and roads along the lakefront could be
submerged not only in Illinois, but in
other states and Canadian provinces that
border the Great Lakes.

Outside of the cycles theory, the
climate has been a factor in rising lake
levels. Since 1900, rainfall has been 6
percent above average. Also, the air
temperatures have been one-half degree
cooler than normal, so there has been

less evaporation from the Lakes.

How do we stop the rising tide?
Water could be diverted out of the Great
Lakes, but not without consequences.
Last summer the flow of water from Lake
Superior was lessened resulting in a
3-inch reduction in Lake Michigan.
However, that action caused Lake
Superior to rise, damaging property in
Michigan and Wisconsin. If water is ,
diverted through the Chicago River, the
side effect could be flooding down the
Illinois River. At best, with either of these
options, the lake would be lowered only
a few inches.

Eroding the Sands of Time

In the last 40 years as the Great Lakes
were on the rise, storm waves and shore
ice have played havoe with nearshore
and shoreline structures. About 20 per
cent of Illinois’ 65-mile Lake Michigan
shoreline is rapidly eroding. Hundreds
of acres of publicly-owned land in
Chicago and Lake County are in danger
of, or have already been flooded by

the lake.

As well as studying the rising lake
levels, the Geological Survey assists
lakefront communities and landowners
with evaluating existing and potential
erosion damage, suggesting various
methods to prevent or mitigate the
effects of shore erosion, and aiding in
the design of shore protection structures.

In response to the record high lake
levels this summer the Geological Survey
was called upon to create a computerized
inventory of all the properties along the
Lake Michigan shore. The inventory pro-
vides a description of beach conditions,
shore structures, bluff stability and the

history of the site.

“This type of information is
important for use in identifying changes
taking place in shoreline properties and
structures, for evaluating properties and
making recommendations on what
should be done to help prevent further
damage, said Nancy Holm, Limnologist
for the Lake Michigan Program at the
Geological Survey. “Having the informa-
tion computerized gives us easy access
to it as we get many calls from property
owners, engineers and state officials
interested in this information.”

Out of the 65-miles of shoreline
included in the inventory, approximately
40 percent is public and private beaches.
The inventory reveals that they are
rapidly disappearing. In Chicago, all
beaches are manmade and many south
of McCormick Place are essentially gone,
said Holm. Beaches north of Hollywood
Beach are partially submerged, if not
completely. Oak Street Beach is half as
large as it was three to four years ago.
Glencoe Beach is one-third smaller. In
1964, Highland Park beaches lined 95
percent of the shore; now 70 percent
of the shoreline consists of concrete sea
walls, piles of rock and other shore
erosion prevention structures.

At Illinois Beach State Park where
the Geological Survey has done exten-
sive work for the Department of
Conservation, thousands of feet of
beach have been lost in the past ten
years, said Holm.

For an individual who resides on
the lake, cars frozen in ice, ice chunks
shattering windows, and water seeping
under doors are constant reminders of
the problem.

One of the areas hit hardest is a
section of Chicago along North Sheridan
Road, which has the highest population
density on the Great Lakes. Residents are
working to establish some type of con-
struction in the lake to break the wave
force. With urging from a task force
consisting of city, state and federal
officials, and residents, Governor James
R. Thompson requested federal assist-
ance from the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers through the Advanced
Measures Authorization. The Corps has
used much of the data collected by the
Geological Survey in its shoreline study
to determine if there is a cost-effective
solution to the flooding and water
damage.

As well as the shoreline inventory,
the Geological Survey has recommended
establishing an Office of Lake Michigan,
which would be the main coordinator
of programs and policies for shorelines
Holm said. Other recommendations

ce i ae ne a ae x

oe

Lake Michigan waves washing over the end of the street at West Granville in Chicago.

“What was once thought
to be abnormally high
levels, may in fact be the
normal level for the lake?

included community planning for shore
line structures since erosion protection
in One area can have a detrimental effect
on other properties down the shore; and
that structures such as breakwaters and
groins be built two feet above present
guidelines.

“We have proposed a project to
study the environmental impact of
elevated lake levels,” Holm said. “It was
not funded for this year, but we would
hope to get support for it in the future.
We would be studying the geological
aspects of increased sedimentation - the
littoral drift patterns, shore instability,
beach destruction, and more. I don't
know of anyone studying the effects of
the high lake levels and increased sedi
mentation on plant or aquatic life in the
nearshore of Illinois now. Our study
would help to provide some detailed
geological information for these other
studies. ”

A project involving all three
Scientific Surveys that would encompass
atmospheric studies, geological, biolo
gical and water chemistry (pollutants,
etc. ) on Lake Michigan is also being
planned.

“The more we know about the lake,
the more prepared we will be in the

Lake Michigan's waves pound Chicago's
shoreline this summer as the lake reaches
its highest levels ever

The City of Lake Forest is in the process
of building an offshore breakwater to
lessen the erosion along its shoreline. This
is controversial since it may have adverse
effects on property down the shore

future for dealing with fluctuating water
levels and the consequences,” Collinson
said. “It’s important to develop a
long-term approach to co-existing with
the lake, not just quick fixes, which will
not last in the long run.”

Di: Charles Collinson, Principal Geologist
at the Illinois Geological Survey; is

in charge of the Lake Michigan program
Vancy Holm, Limnologist, is also involved
with the program

JV

Building a Better

Scarecrow

Reports of collisions and near-misses
between large and small aircraft have
become a staple in the daily news. Of
lesser notoriety, but also costly and
dangerous, are collisions between air
craft and their smaller brethren — birds.
Accurate statistics on these collisions are
hard to come by, but reliable evidence
suggests they cost tens of millions of
dollars annualk:

Hazards caused by birds are divided
into two categories: collisions that occur
on or near the ground and collisions
that occur enroute, About half of these
impacts occur near the ground. Civilian
and military aircraft are equally affected.
Civilian aircraft are in greater danger near
airports, while low-level, high-speed
military exercises are subject to contin-
uous collision hazard whenever birds are
flying.

Drs. Ronald Larkin and Douglas
Quine of the Illinois Natural History
Survey are experts on the theory and
practice of scaring birds away from air
ports and aircraft. As the US. Air Force
and federal agencies develop a radar
weather waming system called NEXRAD,
the Survey researchers are working to
piggyback a real-time bird waming system
onto NEXRAD,

The Biological Underpinnings

‘To frighten birds away from airports and
airplanes, the basic biological mechan-
isms of birds must first be understood.
Dr. Larkin describes a bird's reactive
system: “In deciding whether or not a

6

particular object or stimulus represents
a danger, it is probably best for a small
animal to be conservative and react im-
mediately to any possible danger. Flight
or protective response may be elicited
by a wide range of stimuli: moving
objects, strange stimuli or situations,
and stimuli which are sudden in nature
or high intensity.”

Given the propensity of birds to
flee such a large range of sumuli, it
would seem an easy task to frighten
them away from aircraft and airports.
Unfortunately, an animal's fleeing re-
sponse wanes after a number of presen-
tations. This process is called habituation:
the bird becomes accustomed to the
stimulus and ignores it.

Municipalities have tried
to site dumps near ait-
ports, hoping to group
garbage nuisance and

noise nuisance together.

Unfortunately, this means
birds have a stronger
motivation to stay near

the airport.

The habituation response has
proved the undoing of many promising
attempts to scare birds away from air
fields. One such system involved lines
of loudspeakers arranged along runways,
with tapes of distress calls played by
operators in the conwol towers. The *
system worked for five months, after
which the birds habituated to the calls
and “with the speakers working, congre-
gations of birds would gather around
individual speakers in the manner of
audiences at an open air theater, listen-
ing to the anguished cries of some long
lost acquaintance suffering in the cause
of science.” Finally the birds lost all
interest in the show and ignored the
playbacks completel:

“Three points should be kept in
mind by airport managers in keeping
birds at bay,” says Larkin. “The scaring
stimulus should have so definite a bio-
logical meaning to the birds that reac-
tions persist without habituation or they
abandon the airfield altogether Second,
stimuli can acquire biological meaning
as birds leam danger from other birds.
And third, birds are alert, sensitive,
quick creatures that are much more
at home in the air than the most
experienced pilots. They have color
vision and hearing that is comparable
to mans.”

Scaring Techniques
Using this basic information about bird

biology has resulted in a variety of bird-
scaring techniques. No one solution has

Bird-aircraft collisions cost tens of millions of dollars annuatlh:

proved effective because of the problem
of habituation and the differing responses
of bird species to the same stimuli.

What doesn't work: intensive micro
wave radiation sources — possibh
hazardous to humans, and starlings like
to nest in the antennas of large radar
sets; sounds at ultrasonic frequencies;
shooting campaigns with shotguns
birds quickly learn to stay just out
of range.

What does work: arm-flapping by
airport personnel — cheap and
effective, but hard on the morale and
the arms of the workers; dead birds and
models of dead birds; using actual preda
tors, such as dogs, falcons and accipiters;
exploding devices including acetyline
cannons, loud pistols and the Shellcracker,
a 12-ga. shotgun shell designed to
explode with a flash, a puff of smoke
and a loud report; and taped recordings
of bird vocalizations.

Of all these strategies, two have
proved most effective. Shotgun-fired ex
ploding shells are most effective when
a bird is actually killed occasionally, thus
preventing habituation. The other very

effective technique, taped vocalizations,
are of two types: distress calls and alarm
calls.

Distress calls are high-intensity
calls given by restrained birds, and are
commonly recorded by trapping a bird
of the species in question and holding
the captive in hand while recording
Alarm calls are given by birds when
they sense danger from a predator and
are used to alert other members of the
species to danger The problem with
taped vocalizations is, of course,
habituation

A combination of taped distress and
alarm calls and the Shellcracker shot
gun approach works better than either
method alone. In Great Britain, taped
distress calls have been used to raise
flocks of gulls and other birds which are
feeding on the ground, followed by
Shellcracker explosions nearby to dis
perse the birds

Some Caveats

All of this sounds easy enough, until bird
scaring theory collides with reality, Larkin

Wams airport managers that they n
to be sensitive to the possibility of
violations of local noise codes, gar
and migratory bird laws and enviror
mental laws

There are less predictable biologi
considerations to be dealt with, too. The
success Of a bird-scaring effort depends
on the traffic density of birds at the air
port at different times of day: Early and
late in the day are peak feeding times
for birds, necessitating some unusual
scheduling for bird control personne!

Larkin also recommends that the
strength of the birds motivation be taken
into account. Some municipalities have
tried to site dumps near airports, hoping
to group garbage nuisance and noise
nuisance together. Unfortunately, this
means birds have a swonger motivation
to stay near the airport, and habituation
as in the case of a Hyannis, Massachusetts
dump, occurs rapidly even when vocali
zations and shot shells are used

Birds are scared and
dispersed by people, not
gadgets and stimuli.

Other complications to a uniform
bird-scaring approach occur because
species differ in their responses to play
backs. Herring gull cries are ineffective
when played back to Ring-billed gulls. In
some cases, distress and alarm calls will
have to be species-specific. Birds may
also complicate matters by initially ap
proaching the source of the calls or by
delay in responding to a stimulus. Bird
control personnel must ensure that final
dispersal has been achieved. Even then,
final may not be final. Herring gulls have
retumed 30-45 minutes after being driven
away by distress calls

Dr. Larkin makes these final com
nents: “First, none of the bird-scaring
techniques are effective at night against
birds roosting or owls hunting near the
runway. Second, the size of moder ait
ports often makes the goal of seeing
yirds and moving them off the runways
unrealistic. They may simply move from
one runway to another. Third, and most
importantly, birds are scared and dis
persed by people, not gadgets and

stimuli. The most successful bird-scaring

efforts have been conducted by trained
motivated, and resourceful people wh«
are willing to take the behavior and
biology of birds into careful considera
tion before acting

Birds (and Planes) Enroute

The problem of collisions once airborne
(the “enroute” problem ) is one of
encounters with birds that are engaged
in long-distance migration and shorter
distance local movements, such as feed-
ing flights, homing and other activities
that bring birds into altitudes frequented
by aircraft. Enroute collisions are of
particular concem to the military because
of training flights that take place at low
altitudes frequented by birds.

Dr Quine talks about the two
approaches used to reduce the enroute
problem: “One approach is to warn the
flight crew of potential collision hazards.
The other is to make the aircraft more
visible or salient to flying birds. Birds
are known to avoid aircraft by veering
away from them just before the aircratt
passes. But the opposite problem exists
as well: birds may be attracted to air-
craft. Good documentation exists show-
ing large-scale kills that occur at
illuminated communications towers and
at airport ceilometers during periods of
heavy bird migration.”

The best bird-warning devices may
be visual stimuli mounted on aircraft.
Reactions to a 200 watt narrow-beam
incandescent spotlamp mounted on a
tracking radar have been documented
out to beyond 500 meters. An aircratt-
mounted light or strobe need only il-
luminate a very small area in the flight
path of the aircraft, so that such a
device could be compact and consume
little power.

Warning aircraft and pilots of bird
hazards is now the focus of efforts by
Drs. Larkin and Quine. Although birds
represent radar targets with certain
definable characteristics, radars need
not be specially adapted to detect birds.
Echoes from birds are easily detected on
radars designed for detecting weather and
aircraft. Which brings us to NEXRAD,
the acronym for a joint radar weather
detection system now under develop-
ment by the Departments of Transpor
tation, Commerce and Defense.

NEXRAD

NEXRAD will replace present systems
being used by these three agencies with
a single comprehensive system of radars
that will cover the continental United
States at 200 km intervals. Its primary
purpose is weather-detection. However,
research at the Natural History Survey
shows that it can be adapted to detect
bird targets at long range.

The system consists of three stages:

radar hardware and data collection equip-
ment, a computer system of substantial
power, and user locations where addi-
tional sophisticated computers will be
located.

Most of the NEXRAD design work
now underway consists of designing and
testing computer programs to meet user
needs. In studies for the US. Air Force,
Drs. Larkin and Quine are investigating
the feasibility of providing real-time
warnings of the presence of hazardous
birds to flight controllers and ultimately
to aircraft pilots.

Birds or Weather?

Radar hardware detects a signal in the
form of an echo positioned in a certain
place in the polar coordinates of the
radar at a certain time. The problem is
then classifying the echo — determining
whether it is water, airborne, debris, birds,
bats, insects, etc.

re)

The success of a bird-
scaring effort depends on
the traffic density of birds
at the airport at different

times of day. Early and
late in the day are peak
feeding times for birds.

Several factors make identification of
biological targets a possibility. While
formulae describing the likelihood of
bird occurrence are more complex than
weather formulae, larger amounts of
information on bird behaviors exist than
information on meterological targets. For
example, roosting flights of many species
of blackbirds are a significant bird hazard.
They occur during a well-defined period
just after dawn and just before dusk.
According to Larkin, “Hazardous weather
phenomena are seldom if ever confined
to such a strict schedule.”

Bird targets sometimes show on
radar with identifiable distribution in
space. They are often confined to certain
altitude regions, or associated with
certain topographic features or certain
habitats. Localized targets, unlikely as
weather patterns, at certain times of day
and year can represent potentially lethal
dense flocks of birds or smaller gather-
ings of large species.

Bird targets also have a rather
predictable annual and daytime distri-

bution. In addition, flying animal targets
fly through the air around them, in
contrast to passively-moving meteoro-
logical targets.

Observations on birds engaged in
long-distance nocturnal migration were
performed by Natural History Survey
researchers using a prototype radar for
NEXRAD. The radar system used was the
CHILL unit located at Willard Airport
near Champaign. Additional support for
their observations was later supplied by
the US. Air Force.

Night Flying

When many birds move long distances
over land, they usually do so at night.
They take to the air at sunset, usually
flving for several hours before descend-
ing sometime after midnight. The re-
searchers found several characteristics of
these nocturnal migrants, which when
coded into a NEXRAD algorithm, would
allow real-time warning of hazardous
concentrations of birds. These included
stronger bird echoes than clear air or
insect echoes; the confinement of bird
targets to altitudes below 2000 feet
(most weather echoes will have com-
ponents at much higher altitudes ); time
of year; time of day; and wind direction.
Certain species also form highly dis-,
tinctive radar patterns.

The Survey researchers are now
engaged in collecting even more data
on distinguishing birds from weather to
build a better warning system for
NEXRAD use. Long-range components
of their studies include evaluation of
geographical differences for bird targets.
Some birds, for example, will not fly
Over Water

The significance of the Survey's work
doesnt really sink in until the magnitude
of just one bird hazard is appreciated.
“A single goose can destroy a jet
engine, says Dr. Quine. “A flock of
geese can disable several expensive jet
engines, disabling an aircraft, with pos-
sible loss of life.”

This article was excerpted from the
work of Drs. Ronald Larkin and
Douglas Quine. Dr: Larkin is an
Associate Wildlife Ecologist at the
Natural History Survey: He received his
Ph.D. from The Rockefeller Univer
sity in New York, and bas been

with the Survey since 1980. Dr:
Douglas Quine is an Associate
Biophysicist at the Natural History
Survey in the Wildlife Section. He
received his Ph.D. from Cornell in
1979, and has been with the Natural
History Survey since 1984.

A $2 million renovation of a sophisticated
weather radar system called CHILL is
scheduled for completion this year Once
the Chill Radar system gets its new lease
on life, compliments of the National
Science Foundation (NSF), University of
Illinois, and the State of Illinois, it will
Operate as a national facility available to
scientists located anywhere in the
counury, for all types of meteorological
research and education either at its site
in central Illinois, or at locations of
major national experiments.

Stanley Changnon, Principal Investi-
gator on the CHILL project, said, “Willing-
ness of NSF to make a highly unusual
five year commitment of $1.4 million to
the Water Survey for the CHILL radar
reflects on the many unique ways the
radar can sense different atmospheric
conditions — including hail, rainfall
rates and total amounts, wind move-
ment, small ice particles, and even
insects.”

The CHILL radar (developed by the
University of CHicago and the ILLinois
State Water Survey ) is owned, operated
and maintained by the Water Survey, It
was used in numerous weather research
projects across the nation from 1972 to
1984 until age and heavy use took its toll.
In 1984 a decision had to be made to
either rebuild the CHILL, or scrap it

As a last effort, the Water Survey

ty of Illinois’
Willard Airport at Savoy near Champaign. At right is a truck van that houses the
radar’s controls.

Antenna and pedestal of the CHILL radar system. The massive radar is 40 feet high
and the antenna “dish” is 28 feet in diameter.

invited 18 scientists and radar engineers
to Champaign to help plan the scientific,
engineering and management aspects
of the CHILL as a national facility, The
recommendation was proposed to the
NSF and it awarded funds for two years
of renovation and then three years of
operation. Now, major hardware is being

replaced and more advanced data hand-

ling and control equipment is being
installed in the system.

“This continuation of funds to
operate the radar as a national research
facility,” said Changnon, “is also a sign
that the Water Survey had performed its
role well as host facility for the CHILL
in the past.”

10

The CHILL radar was first used in
the National Hail Research Experiment,
but its meteorological capabilities are
much more extensive. As a weather re-
search tool, the CHILL system has special
features that can detect and plot storm
movements and characteristics.

“The dual-wavelength and Doppler
velocity features measure rainfall, hail
and in-cloud wind speeds toward and
away from the radar,” Changnon said.
“These features can also be used to track
migrating insect pests in their relation

to weather The radar can also detect dif

ferent shapes of particles, allowing in
ferences about the presence of ice and
water particles in clouds.”

The Doppler feature can detect
potentially dangerous forces that are
developing inside storms but cannot be
seen by the naked eye. Changnon said
research using the CHILL produced
results that aided in designing future
operational radars by significantly im-
proving the accuracy and timeliness of

Air turbulence, such as
wind shear, which has
been responsible for
many aircraft accidents
and deaths in recent
years, can be measured
by a radar such as CHILL.

severe weather warnings. Many features
of new national weather radar, set to

be purchased and installed in the next
five years across the US. by the National
Weather Service, were based on CHILL
capabilities.

Air turbulence, such as wind shear,
which has been responsible for many
aircraft accidents and deaths in recent
years, can be measured by a radar stich
as CHILL, added Changnon. However,
work toward this for future radars is
still in the developmental stage.

“Tllinois is the perfect location,
climate-wise, for a national weather
facility,’ Changnon said. “Practically all
forms of precipitation common to North
America occur here over a 12-month
period.” Besides the climatic advantages,
the support facilities available at both the
Water Survey and the University of Illinois
will contribute a great deal to the CHILLs
standing as a national facility. The Water
Survey has an extensive inventory of
weather instruments and a long history
of experience in using them. Its com-
puter facilities, coupled with similar
systems in the University’s Department
of Astronomy and Atmospheric Science,
will provide the capability for analyses
of routine weather data and satellite data
to assist forecasters and researchers in
their projects, as well as allowing on-site
review and analysis of any radar data
collected. The computer systems vill also
be available for post-operational review.

What if'a research project requires
data at a geographical or climatological
setting not available in Illinois? The
CHILL is a movable system. It takes about
three days for workers and a crane
operator to take apart the 60 tons of

equipment and then transport it on flat
bed trailers. From 1971 to 1981 the
CHILL was moved 25 times to seven
different sites in Illinois, Colorado,
Oklahoma, Michigan and Montana.

CHILVs Operation

There will be four components to the
CHILUs operation as a national facility:
The first two of these are research
related. The radar will be used as an
operational data collection system for
various research projects. It will also be
used as an experimental-developmental
tool to test new techniques, processes
and equipment.

The third component will be devoted
to educational purposes at its home base
in Champaign. Likely activities are
demonstrations for meteorology and
engineering classes, training workshops
for graduate students specializing in radar
meteorology, cloud physics, and mesoscale
weather conditions, and as a site to
educate engineering students in remote
sensing and systems design, system
modification, and collection of small data
sets for component research.

The fourth component of the CHILL
operation is maintenance. Out of every
year, three months will be spent on
routine maintenance, and hardware re
search and development.

As a weather research
tool, the CHILL system
has special features that
can detect and plot
storm movements
and characteristics.

Requests to use the CHILL will be
reviewed by an advisory panel to resolve
any conflicts. Another group composed
of users of the facility and other scientists
who have research interests with the
CHILL will meet periodically to deal with
future developments of the system,
especially as they relate to existing or
anticipated research needs.

Stanley Changnon, Chief Emeritus, is a
Principal Scientist in the Climate and
Meteorology Section at the Illinois State
Water Survey Changnon beads up the
PACE field program, which used the
CHILL radar in an experiment this
summer (See related article ii Currents
section. )

Dave Brunkow of the Climate Information Unit of the Water Survey controls the
CHILL radar from a nearby van. The tape drives in the background record data
gathered by the radar.

CHILL features

The CHILL radar has specialized research-oriented features that separate it from
conventional weather radars.

1) The dual-wavelength feature of the radar is what makes it useful for hail
research. The radar sends out signals at two wavelengths. One reacts differently
to large raindrops or hailstones. By electronically comparing the two signals
from a storm, the presence of hail can be detected. This capability is very useful
in cloud physics and weather modification research.

2) The CHILL was designed with a Doppler processor, which permits the
measurement of the velocity of a target toward and away from the radar Doppler
radar is very useful in detecting and measuring air motions within storm systems,
particularly in severe storms like tornadoes. This is useful not only for meteor
ological applications, but also for biological applications as well. The CHILL
has been used to study the flocking patterns and flight speeds of certain species
of birds during the late fall.

3) CHILL has the ability to switch polarization of the radar signal. By switching
polarization of the radar beam while scanning an object, the shape of the target
such as a raindrop or ice particle can be determined. (Raindrops are not usually
round, but slightly oblong in the horizontal.) Differences in the presence of
raindrops and ice particles are helpful in determining whether cloud seeding
is producing effects inside clouds. This was applied to the 1986 cloud seeding
experiment in central Illinois.

With these three features, it’s easy to see why the CHILL is a valuable remote
sensing tool for cloud physics, storm detection and other applications.

ie ; , so .
Up to 90,000 pine wilt nematodes are carried in the breathing pores of the sawyer beetle shown here.

In 50 of 102 Illinois counties, a recently
recognized disease called pine wilt has
become epidemic, threatening the state's
Scotch and Austrian pines. The disease is
caused by the pinewood nematode,
Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, a small
roundworm carried by a sawyer beetle,
the Carolina pine sawyer When the
disease strikes, it kills quickly. The most
prominent symptom of pine wilt is the

decline and death of the entire tree
within a few weeks or months after the
first signs of the disease.

History

According to Dr Jim Appleby of the
Illinois Natural History Survey, pine wilt
was discovered in the United States in
Columbia, Missouri in 1979. The disease
was epidemic in Japan for over three
decades, decimating much of that
counuy’s red and black pines. A much
earlier mention of the nematode in this
country was made in 1934 in Louisiana
when the roundworm was found in a
dead longleaf pine. In 1934 it was not
associated with the cause of a disease.

Jim Appleby explains the significance
of the disease to Illinois: “The disease
has been found in almost all of the states
east of the Rockies and in California. But
Illinois has experienced a dramatic in-
crease in the disease in the southem two-
thirds of the state. The nematode has
been found in dead pines in half of all
Illinois counties and is probably present
wherever there are substantial numbers
of pines. Scotch, Austrian and red pines
are particularly susceptible to the
disease.”

Drs. Jim Appleby and Hassan
Oloumi-Sadeghi from the Natural History
Survey, Mr Katsumi Togashi, a visiting
Japanese biologist, and Dr. Richard B.
Malek of the University of Illinois are
conducting research experiments on the
interactions between the nematode and
the beetles. They note that pine wilt
does appear to be associated with in-
creases in population of a tree species
in an area of the country with few native
stands of conifers. Other factors include
aging of the pines, increases in the
beetle population, and an overall weaken-
ing of the pines by drought stress and
severe winters in the 1970's. To add to
the destruction, as more wilt killed pines
remain on the ground, the beetles and
the nematodes have an even larger breed-
ing habitat.

In Illinois pine wilt was first dis-
covered near Collinsville in Madison
County in an Austrian pine. Scattered
pine wilt losses were uncovered in and
near the University of Illinois campus at
Champaign, at the Dixon Springs Agri-
cultural Center in Pope County and in
the Morton Arboretum in DuPage County
Over 300 cases of pine wilt, represent-
ing only a small fraction of actual fatali-
ties, were confirmed during 1980-1982,
and 85 percent of these were in Scotch
pine, the dominant landscape, wind-
break and Christmas pine in most areas
of Illinois.

Symptoms

Native American pines are relatively
resistant to the pinewood nematode. This
is not the case in Japan, where the native
pines are very susceptible. Pine wilt in
Illinois is most common in the widely
planted Scotch and Austrian pines which
are not indigenous to Illinois. The sudden-
ness of tree death after infection with
the nematode is the most startling
symptom of the disease.

Symptom development is most rapid
during the warmest months of the year,
when the needles die seemingly all at
once. The foliage of the tree turns rapidly

When the disease strikes,
it kills quickly. The most
prominent symptom of
pine wilt is the decline
and death of the entire
tree within a few weeks

or months.

from green to yellowish green and then
to yellowish brown and then to total
brown as the chlorophyll disappears
from the needles. The wilt-killed tree
may stand out prominently among
healthy pines.

Most mortalities occur from late
summer to late fall. Some trees may
survive the winter, with dead branches
standing out among the healthy portions
of the tree. The second peak period of
tree mortality is during the spring.

The Disease Cycle

Three different organisms are involved
in the pine wilt disease. The sawyer
beetle, considered one of the worst pests
by the timber industry, lays eggs under
the bark of dead trees in summer; the
larvae tunnel into the wood. Beetle larvae
and the parasitic nematodes spend the
winter in the wood. In spring, the beetle
larvae pupate in the wood and the
nematodes accumulate there and enter
the beetle's breathing pores. Up to 90,000
nematodes can live in one beetle. The
adult beetle then chews its way out of
the wood in June and July, carrying large
numbers of nematodes in a quiescent
State in its respiratory system.

Soon after its emergence from the
dead wood, the beetle flies to a healthy

pine and feeds on the branches. The
nematodes enter the live pine through
these feeding wounds and migrate to the
resin canals where they reproduce very
rapidly, resulting in a virtual population
explosion.

The nematodes spread throughout
the canal system, into the trunk and
virtually all the branches and even into
the roots. The resin flow stops and the
tree dies. Bluestain fungi then invade
the dead wood, and the nematodes feed
and reproduce on these fungi.

Finally, female sawyer beetles are
attracted to the wiltkilled pines for egg-
laying and the disease cycle begins again.

Prevention and Control

One of the most effective steps in
preventing the spread of pine wilt is
sanitation. Homeowners should be aware
of the need to destroy diseased wood
before beetle emergence. The wood can
be bumed, or in the case of city-dwellers,
can be chopped and put into a disposal
area covered by soil. The wood should
not be stored for firewood. Dead pines
should be removed in a radius of three
miles for maximum protection of new
plantings.

Appleby also suggests that home-
owners plant a variety of pine trees and
move away from the Scotch pine and
into white pine and spruces.

The pine pathology team from the
Natural History Survey and the University
of Illinois is now concentrating on dis-
covering a weak link in the biology of
the sawyer beetle that carries the nema-
todes and on the life cycle of the nema-
tode itself. They know that the adult
beetle may live as long as two months —
and that no insecticide will last that long
without causing other serious side
effects. The answer may be a nemati-
cide — conwolling the pine-wilt nematode
itself In the meantime simply controlling
the spread of the disease is the order of
the day.

This article is based on articles by Di:
James E. Appleby of the illinois Natural
History Survey and Dr Richard B. Malek
of the University of Illinois. Dr: Appleby

is an Entomologist at the Survey and an
Associate Professor in the Department of
Forestry at the University of illinois. Dr:
Malek is an Associate Professor of Nema
tology at the Department of Plant Path
ology at the University of Illinois. Dr
Appleby is the Principal Investigator of
the team that also includes Dr; Hassan
Oloumi-Sadegsi of the Survey and Mr:
Katsumi Togashi, a visiting Japanese
scientist

Illinois soil is sliding in and floating down
the state's waterways at an astonishing
rate, as streams and rivers cut their
natural paths through the earth. Land-
owners now suffer more damage from
this activity, researchers have discovered,
than from flood waters submerging row
crops such as corn and soybeans.

The problem of stream bank
erosion — where rapidly moving water
cuts away portions of a bank — and low-
cost ways of combatting it are being
studied by Illinois Water Survey scientsts
under a research program funded by the
Illinois Department of Conservation. The
Court Creek Watershed in Knox County
(west of Peoria) is the site of the study.
At 62,000 acres, almost 100 square miles
this watershed is the largest studied in

2

Tivo rows of corn are shown washed into the stream channel of Court Creek in February 1980.

14

the state for the effects of land use on
water quality. It is located in the center
of the Illinois River basin, which was
labled, “the critical sediment producing
area of the Upper Mississippi River
Basin,” by the U.S. Soil Conservation
Service. Most of the streams in this area
are tributaries of the Illinois River.

“Tt flows so slowly that much of the
sediment is deposited within the river's
floodplain, especially its backwater lakes,
such as Lake Peoria, Senachwine Lake,
and Wrightman Lake,” said Don
Roseboom, Principal Investigator on
the project for the Water Survey: “Sedi-
mentation affects stream quality by inter
fering with its biological, chemical and
physical conditions, which determine a
stream’s ability to function as habitat
for fish and wildlife, to convey runoff,
and to meet recreational needs.”

Roseboom said efforts have been
underway to control sediment problems
by altering cultivation practices in the
fields. “This has been somewhat success-
ful But it is important that ALL agri-
cultural lands — including pastures — be
studied to explain the outpouring of
sediment and nutrients that are degrad-
ing lakes and streams throughout the
Illinois River basin.”

In the Illinois River basin much of
the high velocity runoff originates from
steep bluff areas, which are not in row
crops. This high velocity water is the
force which erodes stream banks from
downstream floodplain fields. The Water
Survey's study suggests that as preventa-
tive measures, land management practices
should be re-examined. Pasture manage-
ment, conversion to forests and con-
struction of brush dams along steep
bluffs should be looked at as possible
practices.

“For eroded areas that need restora-
tion, several stream bank stabilization
techniques are under study in the second
phase of the project,’ Roseboom said.

The first phase of the project began
in 1981 as the Water Survey tried to
correlate the acreage of row crop fields
upstream in the Court Creek Watershed
to the amount of sediment measured in
the Waterway. The figures did not add
up. Soil washed from farm fields did not
account for a large portion of the sedi-
ment in the stream.

The Water Survey measured bank
erosion during three storms at seven
sites in the Court Creek Watershed.
According to findings, 600 to 2,500 tons
of soil eroded from the seven stream bank
sites during each storm.

These figures alone accounted for
5 to 10 percent of the sediment washed
into the stream from the entire 62,000-

acre watershed. “What's more,” Roseboom
added, “the seven sites represent only a
small portion of the bank erosion occur
ring in the watershed.”

The Water Survey identified two
factors: high-velocity streamflows and
unstable stream banks as the major con-
tributors to poor stream quality and
severe erosion damage to the floodplains.

“One of the factors that can intensify
stream bank erosion is channelization,”
Roseboom said. This is a process in which
a meandering stream is straightened to
make an adjoining field larger and more
uniform. “The problem is that streams
meander naturally, and once straightened,
they will begin immediately to cut back
into the land,” Roseboom said. “In
addition, when a stream is straightened,
the speed of its flow increases, giving it
more power to erode stream banks.”

Roseboom said they compared 1940
aerial maps of Court Creek with 1979
maps and found that major stream bank
erosion sites were located where the
stream had been straightened. However,
the study found that channelized streams
with wooded banks did not suffer from
intense erosion. The stability of the
stream channels with wooded banks is
clearly demonstrated in that series of
aerial photographs.

“A landowner who was losing large
pieces of his stream banks planted
willows along the banks during the dry
years,’ said Roseboom. “These trees grew
large enough to provide protection during
a 6-inch rain that fell in 10 hours. The
amount of erosion in his field was
minimal compared to upstream and
downstream areas. A woody belt will
work if it can get a good start.”

The second phase of the Water
Survey's study that took place this
summer concemed stabilization of seam
banks. “The problem of stream bank
erosion is well-documented,” Roseboom
said, “but we're just getting started on
solving it.” The low cost erosion control
techniques selected for the demonstration
phase of the project were first used by
the Soil Conservation Service in the
1930s during the WPA (Work Progress
Administration ) program.

The lowest cost method is largely a
stream maintenance method which will
use logjams and nearby trees as bank
protection structures and flow de-
flectors. This method has been success-
fully applied in other states by private
consulting firms. The large logs are
cabled to the bank. Once sediment
gathers among the logs, trees are
planted to provide “natural” stabilization.

At sites where this method is not
sufficient, the project will attempt to re-

establish the tree line by planting large
dormant cuttings of willow and cotton
wood in the eroding bank. The dormant
cuttings will regrow root systems and
branches to stabilize bank soil and de
flect streamflow.

The Soil Conservation Service in
Arizona has successfully used this method
in major rivers, including the Colorado
River. It is more expensive than the first
method because usually a large number
of cuttings must be transported to the
site.

Once the stream stabilization
methods have been applied, the Water
Survey will monitor stream stability
through a series of stream cross-
sections and aerial photographs.

“The problem is that
streams meander
naturally, and once
straightened, they will
begin immediately to cut
back into the land.”

“The development and maintenance
of the low-cost methods will require the
long-term commitment of local residents,”
Roseboom said. “Landowners have al-
ready demonstrated their real concem
about the extensive damages by forming
a watershed steering committee.” The
committee is administered by the Knox
County Conservation District. Land-
owners also have donated row crop land
along stream banks for stabilization work
and monitoring.

An important part of the new project
is that work crews for all stream restora
tion methods will include local residents,
who will be trained in application and
maintenance of the methods. In this way
watershed landowners can maintain the
stabilized stream channels after the con
tractors and government agencies are
gone.

The Water Survey will incorporate
the suggestions of participating land-
owners and photographs of the stream
work in educational materials to be
published for landowners in other
watersheds, Roseboom added.

Don Roseboom is Principal hiwestigator
on the Illinois State Water Survey's Court
Creek study: Water Survey staff who also
worked on the study include Ralph
Evans, John Erickson, Lyle Brooks and
Dana Shackleford.

Texas has its oil, Florida has its citrus,
and Illinois has its corm and soybeans.
But the Prairie State also has coal, an
underdeveloped asset, which if fully
developed could mean a stronger
economic climate for the people of
the state.

Illinois possesses the largest
recoverable reserves of bituminous coal
in the United States, with 181 billion tons

iN

Ss
Hhlinois’
Black
Treasure

Illinois possesses the of coal underlying 60 to 70 percent of
1 bl the state. Developing this resource pro-
argest recove € vides a temendous economic oppor
reserves of bituminous tunity for the residents of see _
: : coal is considered to be “high sulfur”
coal in the United States, ou
with 181 billion tons of The Illinois Geological Survey in
. Champaign-Urbana is working on ways
coal underlying 60 to 70 to increase the use of coal through a
percent of the state. number of research projects, primarily

concemed with the removal of sulfur
from coal. Sulfur must be removed from
coal either before burning or after bum-
ing to assure an environmentally safe
practice.

“Most of Illinois’ coal resources have
a relatively high sulfur content, ranging
from three to five percent sulfur,” said
Henry Ehrlinger, Minerals Engineer at the
Geological Survey. “About half of the
sulfur in the coal is pyritic and half is
organic. We can get rid of about 80
percent of the pyritic sulfur, but the
organic sulfur which is chemically part
of the coal cannot be adequately re-
moved with the same processes used to
remove pyritic sulfur”

“There are two approaches for
removing organic sulfur from coal,” said
Carl Kruse, Senior Research Scientist.
“One is to catch the sulfur after it has
been bumed, which is post-combustion,
or to remove it before it is burned by
pyrolysis, solvent extraction or microbial
desulfurization.”

The Illinois Geological Survey is
one of several coal research facilities in
Illinois which is part of the Center for
Research on Sulfur in Coal (CRSC). Some
of the other contractors are: University

of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; University

of Illinois, Chicago Circle Campus;
Southern Illinois University, University
of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory,
Northwestern University and a number
of others. The Center coordinates the
efforts of the contractors thereby avoid-
ing duplicate effort and assuring that
the solutions to the sulfur in coal
problems are resolved with the most
efficient use of talent and funds.

Major Research Projects
in Progress

Fine Coal Cleaning or
Aggregate Flotation

“For our project,” Ehrlinger said, “we
are using equipment already commercially
available, but drastically changing reagents
to maximize coal recovery while rejecting
pyritic sulfur and ash. We believe this
approach is economical, practical, and
has an excellent chance for commercial
acceptance.” The Minerals Engineering
team has batch and pilot scale equipment
in use at the Survey: After three and one-
half years of research the process is almost
ready for commercial application.

The Aggregate Flotation process
involves the forming of aggregates of
very fine coal while rejecting, by selective
wetting, the pyrite and ash constituents
in the coal.

The Run of Mine coal is wet ground
to liberate the pyrite and ash, then
treated with reagents for the coal
selectivity and to form a froth as air is
introduced into the agitating slurry. The
clean coal attaches to the bubbles and is
skimmed off, while up to 80 to 90 per
cent of the pyrite and ash are drawn
from the cell as a waste product.

Thermal, Chemical and
Magnetic Desulfurization
of Coal

A new approach to desulfurize Illinois
coals combines thermal (heat), chemical
and magnetic steps. Basically, coal is
heated to temperatures high enough to
liberate oil and gas. During this heating
step, significant amounts of sulfur are
also liberated. Some of the remaining
sulfur is removed by chemical treatment
which employs hydrogen gas. Some of
the remaining sulfur is removed magneti-
cally along with iron. The integrated
three-step approach is anticipated to
remove enough sulfur from many high
sulfur Illinois coals to produce a
compliance-level coal-derived fuel. This
would allow for the direct combustion
of this fuel without the need for sulfur
dioxide scrubbers. Mike Stephenson,
Associate Chemical Engineer, is project
manager of this activity.

Microbial Desulfurization

“What is unique about the research
at the Geological Survey,” said Kathy
Miller, Assistant Geochemist, ‘is this
technique has never been tried on coal
char, and only sparingly on coal.”

One part of this project attempts
to use microbe bacteria to remove the
sulfur from coal char. These tiny bacteria
attack the pyrite sulfur in coal and use
it as a growth mechanism, or food.

Before the image of micro-organisms
attacking and eating sulfur out of the
coal begins to sound like a fantasy
science fiction thriller, note that the
microbial approach has been used
successfully in benefication processes
for other minerals, such as copper. Early
results have shown that about 90 per
cent of the pyritic sulfur can be removed
from coals, and about 55 percent can be
removed from char.

“A second portion of the project is
attempting to use a thermophilic organism
which grows at 158°F to remove organic
sulfur. So far the results are inconclusive,”
Miller said.

A new project will combine micro
organisms in the physical coal cleaning
process. Iron and sulfur oxidizing organ-

isms will be mixed with physical cleaning
feed to alter the surface of the pyrite to
make it less floatable.

Carbon Monoxide — Ethanol
Desulfurization of Illinois High
Sulfur Coal and the Demonstration
of the Process as a Continuous Unit

These two projects — one is aimed at
research, the other at commercial devel
opment — are funded by the Illinois
Com Marketing Board and Exxon Over
charge Funds. “The technique works,”
said Dick Shiley, Organic Chemist. “We
are trying to streamline the process to
get a better handle on the economics.”
The process involves using ethanol, a

Larry Camp, Associate Staff Chemist,
skims off froth containing clean coal in
the aggregate flotation project

com product, to remove the organic
sulfur To remove the inorganic sulfur,
magnetic separation would be used, or
the coal used should be pre-washed
The by-products of the process can be
used for cogeneration. This particular
process can be done at the mine site,
rather than at the plant site.

Since Illinois is a leading corn
producer, this method would be a boon
to the Illinois economy. It would take
approximately 690 million gallons of
alcohol, or 20 percent of the Illinois
corn crop, to desulfurize 60 million tons
of coal by this method. “Scott Bidner of
the Corn Marketing Board said the idea
is to ‘get the farmers out of the hole,
and put the miners back in’,” said Shiley

The next step is to build a demon
stration unit and eliminate some pro

-

|

In the Thermal Analyses Lab Dave Moran, Assistant Chemical Engineer, uses the

Thermography Metric Analyser (TMA) to measure sulfur dioxide absorption

reactivin:

cedures to make the method cost-
effective.

Combustion Characteristics
of Coal Char

This project, just started, explores the
combustion activity of low sulfur char
Can it be burned, and if so, what are
its characteristics? The Survey is doing
the research in conjunction with Argonne
National Laboratory and the University
of Illinois Mechanical Engineering
Department. “This is an alternative to
removing the sulfur before combustion,”
said Massoud Rostam-Abadi, Associate
Chemical Engineer, who is in charge of
the project. “If we can’t get the sulfur
out before the coal burns then we need
something to remove the combustion
gases after.”

The research is done on a very
small scale — currently they are using
one gram of coal — on very sensitive
equipment in the Thermal Analysis
laboratory. The fundamental character-
istics of coal are looked at, such as its
softening characteristics. Everything is
computerized in the lab to increase pro-
ductivity, accuracy and data collection
transfer

Support Effort

There are three programs in place at the
Geological Survey which provide valuable
support to the specific research projects
on the sulfur content in coal. The three
programs are the Coal Sample Program,
the Coal Information System and Coal
Analysis Support.

10

Coal Sample Program

The Coal Sample Program, started in
1983, by the Illinois Coal Development
Board, provides uniform samples of
Illinois coal to facilitate comparability

of results. It is important that the re-
search projects utilize samples from the
Coal Sample Program. This strengthens
the overall CRSC program by allowing
project-to-project comparisons of results,
decreasing the time required for sample
selection and gathering, and reducing
the cost by providing an analytical data
base on each sample. There are three
tons of coal in each of the several
samples. They are available free of charge
to those doing research on coal. The
project is administered by Carl Kruse.

Coal Information System

This program provides valuable informa-
tion about coal in the Illinois Basin to
researchers throughout the state. It is a
computerized program and is capable of
supporting on-line users at remote
terminals. The project was initiated with
two objectives in mind: to determine
useful characteristics properties of the
samples and to establish a computerized
information system.

The properties determined are
various petrographic, mineralogic, and
minor and trace element analyses. These
data together with the more standard
chemical analyses are incorporated in
the data base. In addition, the data base
includes information about the users of
the samples that will promote collabora-
tion among users and help them and

others plan future projects using these
samples. Richard Harvey; Senior Geologist,
is the Principal Investigator for this
project.

Coal Analysis Suport

“We examine the products from the
research projects, and provide accurate
and timely analyses of these products,”
said Chusak Chaven, Associate Chemist,
who, with a crew of five, conducts coal
analyses which include moisture, ash,
fixed carbon, BTU’s, and varieties of
sulfur. Chaven recently developed a
method of analysis for the forms of
sulfur which helps to increase the scope
and productivity of the laboratory: During
the last several years, the Survey has been
able to purchase the latest scientific
equipment which has aided the group
both in accuracy and volume.

Summary

All research projects described began at
a very small scale. After developing guide-
lines, they advance into a continuous
flow or pilot plant stage, and they have
commercialization as an ultimate goal.

“Tf it fails, it is better that it fails
here in the laboratory rather than on a
large scale” said Massoud Rostam-Abadi.

By having geologists, chemists, and
engineers working on the sulfur in coal
research projects, the Geological Survey
believes it is taking a “real world” ap-
proach to the problem. “We are not just
doing research in an ivory tower that
can't be applied anywhere else,” said
Kruse. “We have a team of chemists and
engineers working together for solutions
that are economically and technically
sound for industrial use. The engineers
know how to take the analytical data and
apply it.”

Illinois’ coal reserves could mean
invaluable riches to this state's economy,
but only if the research on sulfur in coal
can produce an economically viable way
of using coal as a fuel source in the
commercial sector. Illinois Geological
Survey staff are working hard to meet
that goal.

Illinois State Geological Survey staff
engaged in coal research who were
contributors to this article include
Henry P. Ebrlinger I, Mineral Engineer,
Carl W. Kruse, Senior Research Scientist,
Massoud Rostam-Abadi, Associate
Chemical Engineer, Chusak Chaven,
Associate Chemist, Kathy Miller, Assistant
Geochemist, Richard Harvey Senior
Geologist, and Dick Shiley; Organic
Chemist.

ILLINO

A Microscope With A Memory

Early in 1987 the NHS will have a
powerful and sophisticated microscope
at its service. The Amray 1830, now under
construction in Bedford, Maine, is a
digital-imaging, computer-conwolled auto-
matic scanning electron microscope. For
the first time the NHS will have a micro-

scope with an image storage and proces-

sing system as standard equipment.

Stream Fish Densities

Dr Peter Bayley of the NHS has been
_awarded funds from the Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation for a project that
will enable Department and Survey stafis
to interpret the actual densities of stream
fish populations from catches using
stream fishing gear

SURVEYING

BIORHYTHMS

Mosquito Control

The NHS is involved in planning for a
Research Center for Vector/Pest Biology
and Control, aimed primarily at mosquito
abatement in Illinois. The Center will
focus first on Illinois and the Midwest,
and then move to national and inter
national research. The first meeting of
the Center was held October 29 at
Pheasant Run Resort in St. Charles, as a
prelude to the annual meeting of the
Illinois Mosquito Control Association.

Endangered Bat Found
in Illinois

One nest of a federally endangered
species of bat, more often found in
Indiana, has been discovered in Illinois.
Plans by the Natural History Survey (NHS)
for tracking captured bats by attaching
tiny radio transmitters to the animals are
being made for next summer in hopes
of finding more of these rare creatures.

Lead Poisoning in Waterfowl

The latest publication of the Natural
History Survey, a review of lead poison-
ing in waterfowl, has become one of its
most popular Over 3,000 copies of the
article, co-authored by Glen C. Sanderson
and Frank C. Bellrose, have been re-
quested since it came off the press in
late August. Plans are now underway for
a reprinting.

Educating

The NHS took part in the National
Council for Geographic Education meet-
ings at the Palmer House in Chicago
October 9-12 in collaboration with the
Illinois Water and Geological Surveys. A
series of slides were shown detailing the
educational offerings available to Illinois
educators from the three Surveys.

Stannard Named Fellow

Dr Lewis J. Stannard, Golconda, a retiree
from the NHS, has been named a Fellow
of the Entomological Society of America,
for his outstanding contributions to the
science of entomology. He and other
newly-appointed Fellows will be given
formal recognition December 8 at the
Annual Meeting of the Society in Reno,
Nevada.

GEOGRAMS

SSC Parties Meet

David L. Gross of the Illinois Geological
Survey, who is head of the environmental
studies portion of the Superconducting
Super Collider (SSC) project, was Illinois
representative at the Third National SSC
Site Conference held at Ohio State,
October 31 and November 1. Representa-
tives from each state were invited to the
conference to hear speakers from the
Department of Energy, which will make
the decision whether to go ahead with
the SSC. This decision is anticipated in
January. Representatives from the design
group hired by DOE to design the SSC
also made presentations. The construction
status of other accelerators in the world
was reviewed.

The SSC will be the world’s most
powerful particle accelerator, a scientific
instrument for exploring the basic struc-
ture of nature. It will allow scientists to
“see” the subatomic particles that hold
the universe together If US. DOE decides
to go ahead with the SSC, the country
would regain its preeminence in high
energy physics in the world. The SSC also
means a great economic boost to the
state it would be built in. This has
already lead to intense competition
among the states.

Ultradeep Drillhole
Bills Waiting For Action

Work is continuing on the Illinois Basin
Ultradeep Drillhole project (IBUD),
formerly referred to as the Superdeep
Drillhole. Jim Eidel, Leader for the
project at the Illinois Geological

20

Survey, has testified before the Senate
subcommittee on Natural Resources,
Development and Production conceming
the Continental Scientific Drilling and
Exploration Act that is currently before
the Senate. An identical bill is before
the House. The bills call for the National
Science Foundation, the US. Department
of Energy and the US. Geological Survey
to recommend maximum and minimum
budgets for a continental drilling program
to Congress within six months. Senator
Wamer, chairman of the subcommittee,
predicted action on the bill this session.

A $2 million proposal for a geo-
physical study to select the site of the
ultradeep drillhole will be presented to
the Deep Observation and Sampling of
the Earth’s Continental Crust (DOSECC),
Inc., this fall. DOSECC was incorporated
by the National Science Foundation to
carry out the scientific drilling program.
Eidel estimates it will take two years to
conduct this study and to locate the
specific site.

To date, no money has been allo-
cated for developing the drilling
technology needed for the IBUD ultra-
deep hole. The US. Engineering Founda-
tion held a weeklong meeting on the
subject of US. drilling technology in
April 1986. The Illinois Geological
Survey is considering a second workshop
on IBUD drill technology.

The data gathered by studying an
ultradeep drillhole will provide
valuable background data for scientists
studying earthquakes, and oil, gas and

. mineral exploration. The drillhole will

provide the first hard data on physical
properties at such a depth, and informa-
tion on which to base crustal models and
predict earthquakes.

Fossil Find in Southern Illinois

An unexpected bonus of the State
Geological Survey and the US. Geological

Survey quadrangle mapping program in
southern Illinois is the recent discovery
of well-preserved marine fossils in a lower
Pennsylvanian stratum. This important
fossil find will enable scientists to make
an accurate age determination of the
stratum and correlate it with lower
Pennsylvanian strata in other regions of
the world.

In southem Illinois, most Pennsylvan-
ian sandstones have been considered
deltaic or fluvial in origin. Some marine
sandstone exist, but they contain no
fossils because of diagenetic leaching;
the shells, which are basically calcium
carbonate, dissolve over time. Yet below
the Pounds Member of the Caseyville
Sandstone lies a black shale containing
a diverse marine fauna of four different
genera and five distinct species of
ammonoid cephalopods — coiled crea-
tures that are distant relations of the
present-day chambered nautilus. The
ammonoids could not live in freshwater,
so their fossils are evidence for a
shallow sea.

“One of the goals of our surface
mapping programs is to reconstruct
environments of deposition,” said,
Joseph A. Devera, a Palentologist with
the Survey. “We attempt to map paleo-
environments not just rocks, using
paleontology, sedimentological relation-
ships, and often ichnology — the study
of organism traces preserved within and —
upon these paleo-landscapes and sea-
scapes. When we combine this informa-

tion with data on the type of rocks
present, we get an idea of what conditions
_ were like millions of years ago.” Devera
points out that the reconstructions of
ancient environments can help geologists
predict where new fossil fuel resources
may be likely to occur

Map Has Popular Appeal

The Statellite Image Map of Illinois tops
the “Most Requested” list at the Geologi-
cal Survey. No other map or publication
has enjoyed such popularity: The Satellite
Image Map was created from 13 over-
lapping infrared and visible light photo-
graphs taken in October 1982 from the
LANDSAT 4 satellite. It is the first false-
color photograph of Illinois rectified to
the standard U.S. Geological Survey pro-
jection of the state at a scale of 1:500,000.
Rectifying the map removes the distortion
caused by the tilt of the statellite. Accord-
ing to Christopher Stohr, an Engineering
Geologist involved with production of the
map, any measurements taken on the
satellite map have the same precision
that can be expected from a map of this
scale.

False color, not true color, was used
on the map because blue and ultraviolet
light produce a haze that makes it diffi-
cult to see the ground clearly: This haze
vanishes when false color is used. False
colors also allow a better distinction
between vegetation, soil and water.

The viewer is provided with an
overall picture of Illinois geology,
geography, topography, water supplies,
and their relation to land use and
agricultural practices. Also visible are

small features such as airport runways,
bridges, Navy Pier of Chicago, and the
Assembly Hall of Urbana-Champaign; even
smaller features can be seen with the
aid of a magnifying glass. Such a synthesis
of information has never been available
for Illinois. Previously, a person would
have needed to consult many types of
maps to find the information combined
in the Satellite Image Map.

Land-use planners, farmers,
engineers, businessmen, and educators
are among the people who have found
this map useful

Landslide Inventory Available

A landslide inventory program set up by
Geological Survey geologists with the
partial support of the US. Geological
Survey provides quick access to informa-
tion on all known landslides and land-
slide-prone areas in Illinois.

Landslides occur throughout Illinois,
but are found primarily in areas adjacent
to major rivers and lakes. Most landslides
are not life threatening; however, lack of
awareness or disregard of landslide
potential has resulted in delay or abandon-
ment of construction projects and in
considerable property damage. Known

landslides have caused more than $8
million of property damage in the state
over the past 60 years.

The inventory should be particularly
useful to builders, engineers, community
planners, geologists, and homeowners
concemed with preventing or minimizing
problems that may result from landslides.

Personnel Notes

Dr Keros Carwright has been appointed
to the US. Committee for the Inter
national Association of Hydrogeologists.
The appointment is for a three-year term,
ending in September 1989.

Symposium held

The “International Symposium on
Drought: Prediction, Detection, Impacts
Assessment and Response,” was held
September 29 through October 1, 1986,
at the University of Nebraska, co-
sponsored by a number of national and
intemational organizations including the
Water Survey. Pete Lamb and Bill Easter
ling of the Climate and Meteorology
section helped organize the conference.
Commissioned papers from an inter
national roster of distinguished experts
addressed the physical and societal
implications of drought on a variety of
spatial scales, from the farm level to
supemational regions. These issues were
addressed in the contexts of developed
and developing nations. By holding a
conference, organizers hope to facilitate
the interchange of ideas between
scientists and decision makers, identify
research needs, and review the need for
and development of effective drought
response plans in an international arena.

Water Notes

The electronic power generation industry
is the largest user of water in Illinois.
This industry withdraws about 33,888.8
million gallons of water a day, but more
than 99 percent of this is returned to its
source with only an increase in
temperature.

Unusual Ups and Downs Mark
Winter of 1985-86

The winter of 1985-86 (December.
February) was colder than normal
throughout Illinois, and precipitation
amounts were near to above normal for
the northern three-quarters and about
60 percent of normal for the southern
quarter of Illinois. Snow fell over all of
Illinois this past winter, but it was
generally light in extreme southem
Illinois. The snows that did fall did not
stay on the ground very long except in
extreme northern Illinois.

CURRENTS

John Vogel, head of the Water
Survey's Climate Information Unit,
reported that temperatures averaged 2 to
3 degrees below normal statewide this

past winter, largely due to the extremely

cold December. Except for December,
the winter was relatively mild and few
temperature records were broken.

Chernobyl Disaster

The nationwide acid rain monitoring
network has provided portions of its
regular precipitation samples to labora-
tories of the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) for measurement of radioactive
contamination generated by the Cher-
nobyl nuclear power plant accident in
the Soviet Union.

The Central Analytical Laboratory of
the National Atmospheric Deposition
Program (NADP) and National Trends
Network (NIN), located at the Water
Survey, sent NADP/NIN precipitation
samples to DOE's Battelle Pacific North-
west labs in Richland, Washington, for
analysis of radioactive contamination.

Samples from 45 sites in 15 states
in the Pacific Northwest, Great Plains
and Rocky Mountains were processed.
Areas in these states had precipitation
during the three-week period of April
29-May 20 that is believed to have mixed
with the plume of radioactive contamina-
tion from Chemobyl

According to NADP/NTN researcher
Gary Stensland, the radioactive con-
tamination was contained mainly in the

‘middle and upper atmosphere, and was

brought to the ground by precipitation
which forms in tall clouds.

Rain in the Pacific Northwest states
during the week of April 29-May 6
coincided with the first surface observa-
tions in Oregon of the plume of radio-
activity from the Soviet Union.

Rains over the Pacific Northwest and
later over the Rocky Mountains and the
upper Great Plains intercepted the
radioactive plume. The states from which
samples are being analyzed are California,
Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota,
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North
Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah,
Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Personnel Notes

Ellis W. Sanderson has been named
head of the Groundwater Section of the
Illinois State Water Survey. Sanderson
has been Assistant Head of that section
since 1980 and Acting Head since
November 1985. He came to the Water
Survey in 1965.

Water Survey Chief Richard G.
Semonin has announced the appoint
ment of Ronald E Karr as Assistant
to the Chief for Administration. Karr
has been with the Water Survey since
1976. In his new position, Karr will
continue to supervise the staff and
activities of the former Financial and
Personnel Unit, which will become a
part of an enlarged Office of the Chief

PACE Takes Place

Researchers of the Water Survey's Climate
and Meteorology Section this summer
manned radar and satellite controls on
the ground and boarded aircraft to study
the insides of clouds for the research
project PACE — Precipitation Augmenta-
tion for Crops Experiment. .

‘Two aircraft were used — one plane
to seed clouds and the other to collect
cloud physics data such as cloud tempera-
ture, ice content and droplet size. The
goal of the 8 year old PACE project is to
measure precipitation alterations that
can be made in various growing season
weather conditions, to determine impacts
of rain alterations on all facets of agri-
culture, and ultimately to determine the
socio-economic and environmental de-
sirability of weather modification. The
CHILL radar, recently renovated (see
story this issue ), was instrumental in
this weather modification experiment.

The radar was used to direct the
aircraft to candidate clouds for seeding
and in-cloud measurements. Radar data
were then collected to see how the
clouds behaved — their growth, longevity
and rain production.

WILDLIFE

The Navajos called them “God's dogs.”
Biologists call them opportunists. Farmers
shoot them as predators. Hunters see
them as competitors. To many they are
symbolic of the Old West. They are
coyotes, and they are becoming more
prevalent in Illinois and the eastern part
of the United States.

Size and Appearance

Coyotes ( Canis latrans ) most closely
resemble German shepherds in size,
conformation and color The most notice-
able difference is in the tail. The coyote
carries its tail below the level of its back
instead of curved upward. The upper part
of the body is grizzled gray or buff, the
muzzle is reddish-brown or gray, and the
lower parts are whitish, cream-colored
or pinkish-yellow. The coyote is dis-
tinguished by a bushy tail, pointed ears
and long legs. Weight ranges from 25 to
45 pounds.

Illinois coyotes have a bigger,
broader muzzle and are generally larger
than western coyotes. Some biologists
believe that Illinois coyotes are mainly
coyote, with a little bit of dog blood
mixed in. The more heavily-mixed coy-
dogs are primarily seen farther east.

Range and Distribution

The coyote species is found throughout
most of western North America, from
central Alaska almost to Panama. In the
United States coyotes have greatly
expanded their range over the last 25-30
years. Their movement north and east
has been spurred by man’s destruction
of the great midwest forests. The creation
of more open land drove out the eastem
timber wolf and the red wolf, the coyote's
chief hunting competitors.

Coyotes are most abundant in
southem and western Illinois in areas
with a good mix of brushland and farm-
land. They are less likely to be seen
in forests and land used strictly for
farming. The only good indication of
the coyote population in Illinois is in
terms of the fur harvest. In 1983-1984,
7,289 coyote pelts found their way to
the fur market, 1.42 percent of Illinois
estimated total fur harvest, worth $68,516
or $9.40 per pelt.

Feeding Habits
The meat and potatoes of the coyote’s

diet are rabbits and rodents, with sup-
plementary meals taken from insects,

vegetable matter, birds and carrion
Individual coyotes and the occasional
pack will hunt hogs, sheep and white
tailed deer. Most coyotes however pre
fer the easiest meal around, and that is
usually rabbits and rodents.

Breeding and Social Ecology

The female coyote is choosy in picking
a mate, and may reject several suitors.
Coyote breeding pairs do seem to live
and hunt together for many years —
perhaps even for life. The female coyote
has one litter per year in the spring,
with an average of six pups. The gestation
period for a litter is 60-65 days.

Both male and female coyotes
supervise all phases of their pups’ up
bringing. Females nurse their young for
up to two months, and males bring back
semi-digested food for both mate and
pups. If a female is killed, the male
will raise the litter Coyote pups are
aggressive in play, much more so than
dog or wolf pups. This helps establish
a dominance hierarchy early and may
result in the cooperation seen in coyote
packs as they hunt and live together.

Coyote packs can include juveniles,
parents, yearlings and other adults.
Summer is hunting time for coyote packs.
Coyotes have a keen sense of smell and
can hunt equally well day or night. They
have extremely sharp teeth, are capable
of 40 mile-perhour sprints and work
together when hunting. They are formid
able predators. There are also many
coyotes who live and hunt very success
fully as solitary individuals. The average
maximum lifespan of the coyote is eight
to nine years.

Outlook

Illinois coyotes seem to be maintaining
if not increasing in number. Without the
competition afforded by the timber and
red wolves of Illinois (now extinct) and
with the destruction of more forestland
and the creation of more open land, the
outlook for the survival and prosperity
of “God's dog” seems excellent

Lawrence Page Paul Risser

Page New Acting Chief

Lawrence Page was named the Acting
Chief of the Illinois Natural History
Survey following Paul Risser’s resignation
as Chief. Risser left the head position at
the Survey to become Vice President of
Research for the University of New
Mexico in Albuquerque.

Page, an Ichthyologist, is an Affiliate
Professor at the Department of Ecology,
Ethology, and Evolution — as well as a

TRANSITIONS

member of the graduate faculty — at the
University of Illinois. Formerly he was
the Acting Head of the Faunistic Surveys
at the Natural History Survey. His primary
research interests are systematics, evolu-
tion and ecology of freshwater fishes,
and natural areas. He is the author of
numerous publications and articles. Page
received a BS. in biology from Illinois
State University and an M.S. and Ph.D.

in zoology from the University of Illinois.

Page will head the Natural History
Survey during the search for a permanent
Chief The Board of Natural Resources and
Conservation, chaired by Don Etchison,
Director of the Illinois Department of
Energy and Natural Resources, will select
Risser’s successor

Risser, whose resignation was effective
July 1, said he accepted the position at
the University of New Mexico because of
the challenge of being responsible for
a broad array of topics at a major uni-

versity: Much of the research he will
oversee pertains to engineering, bio-
technology, communications technology
and medicine. Risser also may continue
some of his ecological research.

ENR Director Etchison said that
during Risser's five-year term at the
Natural History Survey. Risser and his staff
gave the institution “more visibility and
recognition in the state and the nation.”
The caliber and size of the staff and the
data collection and management systems
also had improved, he added.

The Natural History staff, made up
of about 230 scientific experts, is
responsible for research about plants
and animals of the state, and provides
recommendations about the status, pro-
tection, development and use of these
resources. The staff also maintains
huge collections of plant and animal
species.

Richard G. Semonin

Semonin named
Water Survey Chief

Richard G. Semonin was named Chief
of the Illinois State Water Survey,
effective August 1, 1986.

Semonin succeeds Stanley A.
Changnon who retired as Chief in
August 1985. Richard J. Schicht,

Acting Chief since that time, will con-
tinue as Assistant Chief The Survey
staff that Semonin heads includes
some 200 chemists, meteorologists,
hydrologists, engineers, biologists and
their support staff.

“This is one of the most challenging
positions of my 31 years at the Survey,”
Semonin said. “The quantity and par-
ticularly the quality of Illinois water,
whether underground, on the surface,
or as rain, are vital for the economic
growth of the state and for the health
and recreation of its citizens.”

Semonin began his career with the

24

Water Survey as a radar meteorologist in
1955 upon graduation from the University
of Washington. A meteorologist by formal
training, he worked in various fields,
frequently crossing into other disciplines
important to Water Survey programs. His
interests in radar meteorology led him
into cloud physics and weather modifi-
cation research, both in the laboratory
and in the field. These studies led to

an interest in atmospheric chemistry.

Semonin rose through the adminis-
trative ranks while developing a major
‘research program in atmospheric
chemistry and a specialty in acid
rain. He was named Assistant Section
Head for Atmospheric Sciences in 1972
and Section Head in 1980, Later that
year he was appointed Assistant Chief
for Administration and Research, a post
he held until named Chief.

He was co-director of the Charged
Particle Research Laboratory at the
University of Illinois in the mid-1960s
and has been Adjunct Professor of
Meteorology at the U of I since 1975.

Active in the development of the
National Atmospheric Deposition Program
(NADP), Semonin was elected chairman
of the NADP Site Criteria and Standards
Committee for 1977-1979 and again for
1984-1986. He led the effort through
which the Water Survey was selected to
operate the NADP’s Central Analytical
Laboratory, which now processes weekly

precipitation samples from 200 monitor
ing stations in the U.S. and Canada.

Semonin is a Fellow of the American
Meteorological Society and ofthe «
American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, serving in various
positions for both groups. He also is a
member of the National Weather As-
sociation, Weather Modification
Association, Illinois Academy of
Science and Sigma Xi.

Semonin expects research at the
Survey to continue to grow under his
leadership. “I have always felt that
the Water Survey should anticipate
water and atmospheric resource
problems rather than react to them
after they happen,” he said. “Our re-
search and services should focus on the
water and atmospheric problems that
will confront Illinois in the next decade
and into the next century.”

Among the unresolved problems he
notes are the gradual loss of lake and
stream water resources to sedimentation,
the potential degrading of groundwater
quality, the ever-changing weather and
climate stress on Illinois agriculture
and other sectors of the economy, and
flooding in both urban areas and the
open waters of the state.

Semonin and his wife of 35 years
live in Champaign; they have four
children and seven grandchildren.
Semonin is a native of Akron, Ohio.

Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys Non-Profit Org.
607 East Peabody Drive US. Postage Paid
Champaign, IL 61820 Springfield, IL

Permit No. 453

OF ILLINOIS ee

Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

OF ILLINOIS

A Tempest of Whirlwinds

Tornado season is here, and Illinois
ranks first in tornado-related deaths.

~

Picking Apples and Pears from
the Right Family Tree

Are apples pears? Botanists debate
family trees.

2

In Danger

A look at four of Illinois’ endangered
and threatened species.

Bb

The Hidden Landscape

315 million years ago, shallow seas
covered parts of Illinois, and an
Illinois Geological Survey researcher
has found marine fossils to reveal
more of the state’s geological history.

IS,

Hazardous Waste in Your
“Home, Sweet Home”

Oven cleaners, drain and toilet bow]
cleaners, garden herbicides, motor oil
and antifreeze — your house may be a
source of hazardous waste, too.

18

Surveying Illinois

Geograms Currents Transitions
Biorhythms Wildlife
On the Board

Profiles of the Society's Board Members.

About the Cover

Twin twisters, a very unusual event, occurred
March 20, 1976 near Sidney, Illinois. The entire
length of the tornado, which started near Danville,
was 63 miles. There was concem for people in the
University of Illinois Assembly Hall since the Boys
Class AA State Basketball Tournament was in pro
gress as the tornado was hitting small towns near
Champaign. Sidney is about 13 miles from the
Assembly Hall. This photograph was taken by
Frank Grussing of Sidney

Published by the Society for the Illinois
Scientific Surveys
Volume I, Number 3

Spring/Summer 1987

Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Linda Classen Anderson
Editors

ComUnigraph
Design and Production

Society Offices

Correspondence about memberships,
magazine deliveries, contributions and
general information should be addressed
to the Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, 2021 Illini Road, Springfield,

IL 62704.

The Society encourages readers to submit
letters to the editor of The Nature of
Illinois at the address above

Copyright 1987 by the Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys. All rights
reserved.

Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman
Ottawa

Walter E. Hanson
Treasurer
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Hinsdale

Henry N. Barkhausen
Jonesboro

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Bloomington

Marshall Field
Chicago

Clayton Gaylord
Rockford

Ralph E. Grim
Urbana

John Homeier
Springfield

Richard A. Lenon
Northbrook

John Rednour
DuQuoin

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

William L. Rutherford
Peoria

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.
Chicago

Joseph Spivey
Springfield

Harold B. Steele
Princeton

Susan Stone
Champaign

Warren Trask
Decatur

Leo Whalen
Hanover

Louise B. Young
Winnetka

Stafil

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director

Linda Classen Anderson
Assistant Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Ehhinne is Scientili Slit

Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief

Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

Supporters’

Corporate and Foundation:

BASF Wyandotte; Borg-Warner
Foundation, Inc; Chicago Community
Trust; Commonwealth Edison; Crawford,
Murphy & Tilly; Dames & Moore;
Donnelley Foundation; Gaylord
Donnelley Trust; Gaylord & Dorothy
Donnelley Foundation; R.R. Donnelley
& Sons; Dow Chemical; Farnsworth &
Wylie; Field Foundation of Illinois;
Jamee & Marshall Field Foundation:
Freeman United Coal Mining Company;
Hamilton Consulting Engineers; Hanson
Engineers; Henry, Meisenheimer &
Gende; Illinois Bell; Illinois Coal
Association; Illinois Mine Subsidence
Insurance Fund; Illinois Soybean
Program Operating Board; Joyce
Foundation; Klingner & Associates;
Robert R. McCormick Foundation;
Midwest Consulting Engineers; Mobay
Chemical; Peabody Coal Company;
Abbie Norman Prince Trust; Rhutasel &
Associates; Sahara Coal Company;
Sargent & Lundy Engineers; J.R. Short
Milling Company; AE. Staley
Continental; Tonrose, Campbell & *
Associates; Union Carbide; Whistling
Wings.

Individuals: E. Armbrust, Henry
Barkhausen, Jane Bolin, Clayton Gaylord,.
Dr. Morris Leighton, Richard Lenon,
William Rutherford, Michael Scully:

* Contributions of $200 of more

The Society Page
The Society for the

The third issue of the The Nature of Illinois Scientific Surveys
Illinois comes to you from the Society
for the Scientific Surveys to tell you more Scale of Contributions

about what they are and do. Spring is a
season of growth and development, and
the work of the Surveys becomes most
visible. Of course, the results are from

Personal Memberships

: Individual $25 per year
the work the Surveys do year round, See ae mehr
. d : Family 50 per year
but we do become more aware of the Lee Soc =f
: : Contributing 100 per year
natural resources surrounding us at this ; er
: Founding 1,000 per year
time of year. ’
The Natural History Survey in its :
work with fhe nee | miele bE Corporate) Eustace
: ee ee ee ae Memberships
the state ensures that future generations
will be able to enjoy a walk through the Patron $250 per year
wilds, catching a glimpse of a red squir- S bi c ioe
= 5 : Sponsor 500 per year
rel or a hawk. The Water Survey provides ae Seer
; with valuable information on Bssocale mcaee Sl set
We Me Bal eae 4 a 7 : os ee ; Benefactor 5,000 per year
predictable weather in the spring, allow- Founding 10,000 per year

ing the agricultural community to plan
ahead and warning the rest of us about
unusual weather patterns that might
develop. The Geological Survey aids the
residents along the shoreline of Lake
Michigan, helping them cope with and
look for answers to the ravages of the
rising lake levels which spring weather
may aggravate.

In my opinion, the three Surveys
are among Illinois’ finest assets, not
universally recognized, understood and
appreciated for what they can do for our
state in so many ways. Our Society’s role
is to bring them the visibility they de
serve. Please support the Society and the
Illinois Scientific Surveys in their work
to enhance the wise use and manage-
ment of the natural resources of our
state.

Sincerely,

Prod thee

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

A Tempest

of Whirlwinds

Descriptions often vary. People who have
seen one say it appeared as a massive
cloud, dense as black smoke, with a deep
roar like a freight train approaching.
Others say it resembled a snake twisting
out of the sky, writhing across the ground
with hail and heavy rains pouring down.
Some say the air became still, and the
sky grew dark with an eerie green glow
and brilliant lightning.

A tornado can be all of these
things, or none of them. But one thing
is for certain — it is a vicious natural

Tornadoes result from a
combination of the rapid
lifting of warm air,
coupled with the rapid
rotation of air.

phenomenon responsible for death and
destruction.

The Illinois Water Survey, as the
state's primary weather research agency;
investigates all severe weather phenomena
related to thunderstorms and significant
precipitation production. It has published ,
information on tornadoes that is par
ticularly useful now that tornado season
is upon us.

It is estimated that 90 percent of
the world’s tomadoes occur in the United
States with the maximum frequence

Tivin tivisters head northeast, away from Sidney; lllinois, and toward St. Joseph and
Ogden on March 20, 1976. Photo by Frank Grussing of Sidney:

= \ . ete
This is what remained of Alvin, Illinois’
central business district following the
March 16, 1942 tornado that swept a 60-
mile path through east-central Illinois.
Photo courtesy of Champaign County
Historical Archives.

This car overturned near St. Joseph,
Illinois. A 25-year-old woman and her
two daughters, ages 2 and 4, were thrown
jrom the car and killed by the March 16,
1942 tornado. Photo courtesy of
Champaign County Historical Archives.

located in the central area. The factors
which produce the high frequency of
tornadoes in the central United States
are the low-level tongue of moist air
which penetrates into the heart of the
continent, and the incursions of the jet
stream over this low-level warm, moist
tongue which cause vertical motion fields
that modify an air mass to make it con-
ditionally unstable. Tormadoes result from
a combination of the rapid lifting of warm
air, coupled with the rapid rotation of

There is considerable seasonal
movement of the center of maximum
tomado frequency in the United States.
The center of maximum activity moves
northward from the Gulf states in late
winter, to Iowa in the summer, and then
returns southward in the fall.

The seven states with a greater fre
quency of tornadoes than Illinois all lie
west and southwest. Texas, Kansas and
Oklahoma are the leading states of tor
nado activity, with lowa, Nebraska, Mis
souri, and Arkansas leading Illinois.
However, with 1,014 deaths in the 1916
1970 period, Illinois ranks first in deaths.
Illinois ranks second in property loss and
has 10 percent of all the tornadoes in

the United States.

The state’s high tornado rank is due
to occasional, extremely large tornadoes,
and the densest population of all the
tornado states. If the statistics from the.
Tri-State tornado of 1925, the most
devastating on record, were excluded,
Illinois would rank eighth in deaths.

Tornado alley in Illinois (see map )
represents an area of more frequent
occurrences. The areas with the highest
frequency are the southwest and west
central to central part of the state.

Prime season for tornadoes is March
through May, when 62 percent have oc
curred. Narrowing it down even further,
April is the most dangerous month,
followed by May, March and June. The
busiest week is April 15-21, claiming 9
percent of all Illinois iomadoes. Of all
tomadoes, 50 percent occur between 3
and 7 p.m.

Illinois’ tornado climate is significant
because of the relatively high incidence
of extremely severe tornadoes. Of 25 US.
tomadoes that traveled 150 miles or more,
5 occurred in Illinois, with 20 of the 25
occurring east of the Mississippi River
The state has experienced the nation’s
two worst, longest-track tornadoes. One
occurred on March 18, 1925 (the Tii-
State tornado ) and left 695 dead, 2,000
injured and $130,000,000 in losses. The
second was the Mattoon-central Illinois
tornado of May 26, 1917 which left 101
dead, 638 injured and $55,000,000 in
losses. In recent times, a long-track
tornado occurred on March 20, 1976 in
central Illinois. It was 63 miles long
traveling from five miles southeast of
Decatur to five miles northwest of
Danville. No one was killed, but 16 were
injured and damages amounted to
$5,000,000.

Even with these statistics before us,

it is amazing to realize that very few
people have actually seen a tornado.
Those that have become uneasy as a
storm approaches. Reading eyewitness
accounts of those who have survived
tornadoes makes it easy to understand

nervousness during storms. The following

is an eyewitness account from the worst
tornado in history, the 1925 Tri-State
tornado. Mrs. May Williams relates what
it was like to be inside one of the build
ings demolished by the tornado in
Murphysboro in a letter to her mother.
An evangelist in the “Whosoever Will”
Mission in St. Louis, she had gone to
Murphysboro for the day to help the
Rev. and Mrs. Everett Parrott conduct a
revival meeting at the Moose Hall:

We left the Logan Hotel at about
2:25 p.m. and a goodly crowd was

awaiting us in the Moose Hall.
Mrs. Parrott opened the service
singing ‘More About Jesus’.

She had sung the first verse and
chorus, which we were repeating,
when it grew dark as suddenly a
thunderbolt flashed from the sky
and there fell upon us what we
thought was hail. But only for a
moment. Then rocks began to
break through the skylight above
and in a moment’ time we were
being showered with glass, stones,
sticks, old buckets, pans, trash,
bricks and anything.

At first, people were frenzied.
The Methodist minister crawled
under the front of the piano for
protection and Brother Parrott
under the back of the piano. Sister
Parrott and I stuck together closely
and somehow got out of the jam
in which people were milling
around. Mother, I wasn’t afraid to
die. Indeed, we all looked for it.

Areas of relative
tornado frequency

High Frequency

Low Frequency

As I stood helpless looking up to
heaven, I saw the concrete wall at
the back of the hall collapse and
come crumbling in. Then the roof
started to give way and I closed my
SVeSerar

Suddenly, from the bottom of one
of the stoves which heated the hall
came a great puff and the flames
burst out like tongues of fire

There was the sound of an ex-
plosion, and the other stove was
broken. The whole place rocked.
From the outside as well as from
within we could hear terrible cries,
yells, screams and there were great
popping noises.

The wind roared — I cannot
describe it — it tore great hand-
fuls out of the roof above us. You
could see the shapes hurling over
us in the air. The only place in our
building which wasn't damaged was
the spot where Mrs. Parrott and I
stood. Then the storm passed.

The Tri-State tornado began in
southeastern Missouri and remained on
the ground for 219 miles in passing
across southern Illinois and into south-
western Indiana. It was extremely wide.
Throughout most of the 86-mile track

The state has experienced
the nation’s two worst,
longest-track tornadoes.
One occurred on March
18, 1925 (the Tri-State
tornado) and left 695
dead, 2,000 injured and
$130,000,000 in losses.
The second was the
Mattoon-central Illinois
tornado of May 26, 1917
which left 101 dead, 638
injured and $55,000,000
in losses.

in Missouri the path was 4 mile wide,
but shortly after crossing into Illinois

it widened to a mile and varied from a
Y2 mile to a mile in width across Illinois
and on to Princeton, Indiana, a distance
of 121 miles. The path then narrowed to
44 mile until it dissipated. The total area
of extreme damage amounted to 164
square miles across the three-state area.
Its movement was also unique. It traveled
in a straight path over much of the
distance, and traveled at an extremely
fast speed, the third highest on record.
Contributing to the high number of
deaths was the inability to see a funnel
over much of the path. The tornado per
sisted for 3.5 hours, which is the longest
duration on the ground on record and
much longer than the average duration
of tornadoes.

6

There is no doubt that the great
loss of life in the Tri-State tornado
of 1925 might have been reduced if
highly developed communications net-
works had existed at the time.

It is argued that the threat of
tornadoes in present day has been
diminished because structural methods,
particularly as used in modern homes,
are substantially better than those
employed 30 or more years ago. With-
out a doubt, forecasting technologies,

communication systems (radio and TV),

and remote detection of tornadoes (by
radar ) have improved greatly since 1950,
and these should lead to a reduction of
deaths and damages from tornadoes.
However with all the wonders of a
modern age, the threat is still there
because of our growing population,

Safety Precautions

1. Tornado Watch — This is an alert.

urban sprawl, and the inability to
communicate tornado warnings to all.
We are still as vulnerable to the
massive, long-track tornado storm and
widespread outbreaks of tornadoes

as were the citizens of Illinois in 1925.

This article is based on information
provided by the Illinois Water Survey:
“Facts about Tornadoes”, compiled by
SA Changnon, Jr, and [.L. Vogel: “Illinois
Tornadoes”, by John W. Wilson and
Stanley A. Changnon, Jr; and “The
Great Tornado’, Illinois Magazine,
March 1978, pg 8-30. Wayne Wendland,
State Climatologist, is currently compiling
data on tornadoes from 1955-1986,
which will be available to the public
shorth:

- Listen to radio or TV for further information.

- Plan where to go if a tornado is seen.

- Be prepared to act quickly.

2. Tornado Warning — Issued when tornadoes are sighted.
- If for your area, take safety precautions immediately — otherwise, continue
to listen to radio or watch TV and watch the skies.
- Listen to NOAA weather radio, if one can be heard. ‘

- Inform all family members.

- Be prepared with a radio with batteries and a working flashlight. Keep car

keys on your person.

3. If a tornado is seen or reported near you, or a community warning

system is sounded, do the following:

- Act quickly according to where you are.

- If you sight a tornado and time permits, call the Emergency Services and
Disaster Agency (check phonebook) and/or the sheriff.

’. Where to go depends on where you are. Always design a personal plan ahead
of time.

- Always stay away from outer walls and windows of any structure, and use
a storm cellar if available.

- Ifin a car, drive away at right angles after the direction is defined, or if
uncertain, park and go into a sturdy building.

- If in open country, get in a ditch or depression.

- If in a house with a basement, go to the center of basement, and if possible
get under a strong table or bench.

- If in a house without a basement, go to the center of the home and if possible
get under a strong table or bench — or go to a closet, bath, or other small
room.

- Ifin a house trailer, leave it. Go to a permanent sturdy shelter, or lie flat
in a low-lying area, or if time permits, drive away. It is helpful to have a trailer
park warning system.

- In large open space buildings such as auditoriums, gymnasiums, supermarkets,
or malls with wide free span roofs, go quickly to designated shelters. If none,
go to a nearby reinforced buiding, to closets, to stairwells, or restrooms.

- In a school, stay out of rooms and gymnasiums and go to central hallways.

- In office buildings, stay in an interior hallway on the lower floor, and
preferably in the basement.

- Keeping windows open is a marginal help, but stay away from windows.

Bradford Pear (Pyrus Calleryana )

Are apples pears? It would hardly seem
so. They have different textures and
tastes, and their shapes are dissimilar
But dig a little deeper under their skins
and there are many similarities. And,
when pear and apple trees are in bloom,
they look very much alike

Scientists at the Illinois Natural
History Survey are investigating the
similarities and differences between ap
ples and pears and many other species
of plants that are classified in the same
group

Apples, pears, strawberries, raspbet
ries, blackberries, cherries, plums,
peaches and apricots are all similar
examples of the Rose Family (Rosaceae )
This family is broken down further into
four subfamilies. Apples and pears belong
to the subfamily Maloideae, characterized
by a particular fruit type called a pome,
with a thin skin covering a fleshy layer
and a cartilaginous or a stony core. Also
belonging to the subfamily Maloideae
are hawthorns, cotoneasters, shadbushes
firethorms, mountain ashes, rowan trees,
medular, loquats, chokeberries, Christ
mas berry and quinces. Botanists break
the group down even further into
genera and species. The Rose Family
has approximately 100 genera and 3,000
species, and subfamily Maloideae about

23 genera and 1,000 species

Dr Kenneth Robertson, a Botanist
at the Natural History Survey, says there
is a great deal of controversy among
botanists about what the limits of each
genus in the subfamily should be, or in
other words, what species should be
assigned to what genera. Dr Robertsor
and his postdoctoral assistant Dr Joseph
Rohrer, with Drs. James Phipps and Paul
Smith of the University of Western
Ontario, London, are in their third year
of a study funded by the National Science
Foundation to study this problem
light of today’s knowledge, and how

genera are related to one another

“The information gained in this
study will be important to horticulturists,
commercial nurserymen, systematists,
and pomologists by providing a standard-
ized classification system,’ Robertson said.
“The subfamily Maloideae is of great
economic importance.”

The fleshy pomes of Malus (apples),
Pyrus (pears), and Cydonia (quince ),
are major fruit crops. Fruit of several other
genera reach limited markets, especially
Amelanchier (shadbush, serviceberry ),
Eriobotray (loquat), Mespilus
(medlar), Chaenomeles (Japanese
quince), and Crataegus (hawthorn ).
Also, Maloideae includes a number of
important woody ornamentals cultivated
for their showy flowers and/or fruits with
Sorbus (mountain ash ), Malus (crab-
apple), Pyrius (pear), Chaenomeles
(Japanese quince ), Pyracantha (fire-
thom), Crataegus (hawthorn ), Aronia
(chokeberry ), Cotoneaster, and
Photinia being the more significant.

In fact, almost all the species in Maloideae
are decorative and cultivated to some
extent. These plants are native to the
North Temperate area of the earth,
primarily in the United States, China and
Europe.

“We want to develop a good classi-
fication system for this group of plants,”
Robertson said. “For example, should
pears and apples be placed in the same
genus? These determinations will be is-
sued on a careful look at new informa-
tion and on our own observations, not
on other's work.”

“After the information has been
gathered we will define what species
belong in what genera,” Robertson said,
“and then, determine the evolutionary
relationships within the subfamily, or how
the genera are related.”

The team that is working on the
project is definitely a qualified one. This
research is a continuation of Dr Robert-
son’s work on the Rosaceae (Rose
family) at the generic level and of his
current investigations on fruits and seeds
of the family, Dr Phipps is a biosystema-
tist who is studying the systematics and
reproductive biology of Crataegus
(hawthorn ). Participating in the data
analysis portion of the study is Dr David
Swofford of the Survey's Faunistics and
Insect Identification Section. He is a
leading developer of computer programs
for evaluating evolutionary relationships.

Collecting the enormous amount
of plant samples needed was the first
step. Drs. Robertson and Phipps traveled
to England to collect the majority of the
samples. They returned with over 3,000
photographs, pressed plant specimens,
and materials pickled in alcohol. A

8

number of institutions were sources of
plant material including The Hillier
Arboretum in Hampshire; The Royal
Botanic Garden, Kew; and The Royal
Botanic Garden, Edinburg. In the
United States, The Morton Arboretum,
Lisle, Illinois; Arnold Arboretum of
Harvard University at Jamaica Plain,
Massachusetts; the Field Museum of
Chicago; and the Missouri Botanical
Gardens, St. Louis also assisted. A
number of samples were collected in
Mexico as well.

Analysis of the samples is now being
conducted at the Natural History Survey
in Champaign. The form and structure,
or morphology, of the numerous species
are being observed and noted. This is
considered a crucial portion of the re-
search since many of the differences in
characteristics of the plants are subtle.
Characteristics of the leaves, flowers and
fruits are being examined.

Once these characteristics are
recorded, data is entered into the
computer, and the species are compared.

When pear and apple trees
are in bloom, they look
very much alike.

Now in the last year of the study,
the majority of materials have been
collected. Analysis of the flowers has
been completed. The co-investigators in
Canada have looked at the clusters of
flowers and right now fruits and leaves
are being examined.

“We have entered the flower data
into the computer,” Robertson said.
“We will finish up the research this year,
with the writing on our findings left to
do.”

The project is still in the informa-
tion-gathering stage, but some general-
izations concerning their findings are
possible. Most of these preliminary find-
ings are based on the flowers.

Are apples really pears? No, accord-
ing to Dr Robertson. “They are very
similar but clearly belong to separate
genera. It appears that apples are more
closely related to Docynia (Chinese
quince ) and pears are more similar to
the Cydonia (quince ).” Other pre-
liminary findings are that the genus
Sorbus, which includes mountain ashes,
will be split into five different genera.
“Some species are more closely related
to other genera,” Robertson said. “For
example, the genus Aronia and a species

of Sorbus will probably be grouped to-
gether Also, it is generally believed that
Japanese quinces and quinces are closely
related. We don't think they are.”

Once the results of the study are
published, it will be the first major
worldwide systematic treatment of all
genera of Maloideae since the late 1800's.
Drs. Robertson and Phipps will be
presenting papers at the International
Botanical Congress in Berlin this coming
July, and Dr. Rohrer will be presenting
a paper to the American Institute of
Biological Sciences at Ohio State
University in August.

Dr. Kenneth R. Robertson is a Botanist
and Professional Scientist in the Botany
and Plant Pathology Section at the Illinois
Natural History Survey and holds an af-
filiate appointment with the Department
of Plant Biology at the University of
Illinois. He received his Bachelor's and
Master’s degrees in Botany from the
University of Kansas, and his Doctorate
from Washington University and the
Missouri Botanical Gardens, St. Louis.
Robertson has been with the Survey since
1970. Dr Joseph R. Robrer serves as a
postdoctoral assistant. He received a
Bachelor's degree in Biology from David-
son College in North Carolina, a Master's
in Botany from the University of North
Carolina and a Ph.D. from the Univer-
sity of Michigan in Botan: He is an
Assistant Professional Scientist and has
been with the Survey since 1980.

‘

Dr David Swofford, Assistant Professional

Scientist in the Faunistics and Insect
Identification Section at the Surve);
serves as consultant on the project. He
received Bachelor's and Master's degrees
in Biology from Eastern Kentucky Uni-
versity and his doctorate from the Uni-
versity of Illinois. He has been with the
Survey since 1980.

There are some 23 threatened and 58
endangered species of animals in Illinois:
mammals, birds, fishes, salamanders,

turtles, snakes, frogs, mussels and snails.

There are 52 threatened and 312 en-
dangered species of plants. At least 20
species of vertebrates have disappeared
from Illinois since European man arrived
here including the bison, elk, cougar,
black bear, pine marten, fisher, timber
wolf, red wolf, passenger pigeon, ivory-
billed wood pecker, Carolina parakeet,
Ohio lamprey, blackfin cisco, muskel-
lunge, rosefin shiner, gilt darter, star-
gazing darter, and crystal darter. The
latter seven species are fishes.

Loss of suitable habitat, environ-
mental contamination, and the inadvert-
ent introduction of hardier rival species
all have contributed to the eradication
and endangerment of native Illinois
flora and fauna.

There are now federal and state laws
to protect endangered and threatened

At least 20 species of
vertebrates have
disappeared from Ilinois
since European man
arrived here including
the bison, elk, cougar,
black bear, pine marten,
fisher, timber wolf, red
wolf, passenger pigeon,
ivory-billed wood pecker,
Carolina parakeet, Ohio
lamprey, blackfin cisco,
muskellunge, rosefin
shiner, gilt darter,
stargazing darter, and
crystal darter.

species. “Endangered” status is the
more critical, meaning that the species
is in danger of extinction. The “threat-
ened” status is one step down from
endangered, having the potential for
becoming endangered. An endangered
species in Illinois is “any species which
is in danger of extinction as a breeding
species in Illinois:

The Illinois Endangered Species
Protection Board, appointed by the
Govemor and staffed through the Natural
Heritage Division of the Illinois Depart
ment of Conservation, designates species
as state-endangered or state-threatened.
On occasion it also conducts research on
certain species, using information sup
plied by the Natural History Survey
(NHS) and other agencies.

Four threatened or endangered
Illinois species are described below
where they once lived, how they lived
and why they may live no longer

The Bobcat (Lynx rufus)

Named the bobcat because of “its
impudent and abbreviated tail,” this
member of the Lynx family is a threat-
ened species in Illinois. Also known as
the wildcat, it is now very rare and oc-
curs in the wooded bottomlands of some
of the major rivers throughout the state.
It is found most frequently in the
southern regions of Illinois. There are
no good numbers on how many bobcats
remain in Illinois, but in neighboring
Missouri the cat numbers anywhere from
4,200 to 10,000 maximum. Dr. Glen
Sanderson, head of NHS’s Wildlife
Research Section, guesses that Illinois
has nowhere near this number.

The range of the species includes
western North America from southern
Canada to central Mexico; across the
northern United States and southern
Canada to Nova Scotia and the lower
Appalachians; across the southerm United
States to sourthern South Carolina.

The bobcat is a short-tailed cat
about twice the size of the average
domestic cat, standing 20-23 inches high
at the shoulder and weighing about 20
to 25 pounds. Its color is mostly
yellowish-gray, with a sprinkling of black.
The sides of the face support a ruff of
cheek whiskers; the streaks on the long
hair covering the cheeks are dark gray,
and the upper tip of the tail is black.
Each pointed ear bears a small tuft of
hairs. Bobeat fur is dense, short and
very soft. The bobcat is more muscular,
more compact and better adapted for
springing than the housecat.

Ideal hunting ground for the wildcat
is broken country where the bobcat can
feed on its usual diet of mice, rabbits,
squirrels, birds and insects. The hunting
territory of the cat can be very large. A
bobeat den may be under a log, in a hol-
lowed-out standing tree, or even in a

LO

Illinois Natural History Survey

thicket. Its young are born in March or
April, and those young are usually only
one litter of three every year. The
development rate of the bobcat is very
similar to that of the domestic cat, with
the young leaving their mother in the
late summer.

According to Dr. Sanderson, “Most
people have a positive reaction to the
bobcat, partly because it is such a beau-
tiful animal and partly, I suppose,
because so many people like cats’

This reaction persists despite the
eerie and very loud series of yowls and
meows the cat emits during mating
season, leading people nearby to believe
that a lion is in the vicinity.

The bobcat is a threatened species
under state law and is protected from
interstate shipment of illegal pelts under
federal law. The season on bobcats is
closed in Hlinois, and various educa-
tion and law enforcement programs aid
in their survival. There are no bobcat
management programs because the cat
population is so scattered. While loss of
habitat due to intensive agricultural
practices is the main reason for its
decline, the bobcat may have survived
so far because it lives in so many habi-
tats of varying sizes. Now the bobcat’s
most serious enemies are man and his
dogs.

I'm optimistic that the bobcat will
survive in Illinois,” states Dr. Sanderson,
“But I don’t expect any big increases in
population outside of the Shawnee
National Forest?

The River Otter
(Lutra canadensis )

A threatened species under Illinois state
law, the river otter is a large elongate
mammal with a broad flattened head,
prominent whiskers, moderate eyes and
small ears. It is a short-legged, thick

tailed aquatic cousin of the mink and
the weasel. The otter is made for
agility and speed in the water, with its

streamlined body, webbed feet and long

tapering tail. Its fur is mostly rich dark

brown and serves as insulation for waters

of all temperatures. About 43 inches long
overall, it weighs about 20 pounds. The
otter is relatively long-lived, living
up to 19 years of age in captivity.

The visual sense of the river otter
is not acute - it is nearsighted, all
the better for underwater vision. How-
ever it can detect movement at con-
siderable distances. Its auditory senses
are well-developed. Otters make a variety
of noises for communication - they
chirp, growl, chuckle, grunt, snarl,
whistle and scream.

The otter's favorite habitat is a
large den never more than a few hundred
yards from a stream or lake. The den
entrance may be above or below water,
protected by overhanging banks or large
tree roots. Breeding occurs in winter,
with a litter of three usually born 11
months later. The male stays in the
vicinity of the den, although the female
does not let him join the family until
the young are old enough to travel.
Adult females are devoted parents, teach-
ing their young survival skills and fight
ing very aggressively for them when
needed. At the third or fourth month,
otter cubs must learn to swim. A family
group may hunt and fish over a water
way of 10 or more miles during the
season. Otters feed on fishes, crayfish,
frogs, turtles, earthworms and aquatic
insects.

Otters live in groups and are very
sociable in contrast to their: more
solitary cousins, the weasel and mink.
Otters love to build and play, and move
at high rates of speed down homemade
slides of clay or snow banks into water.
A favorite activity is tossing something

into the water and then retrieving it.
The river otter can swim 1/4 mile under
open water or ice and can remain sub
merged for 3 to 4 minutes. On the sur
face, the otter can swim at least 6 miles
per hour. It is a highly intelligent, very
curious, readily trained animal, able to
make a game out of any occupation. Most
of its active time is spent exploring new
surroundings or objects, especially for
play potential. One documented report
has a river otter learning to retrieve
waterfowl by watching a Labrador
retriever perform.

There are now fewer than 100 river
otters in all of Illinois. River otters
were once fairly common along the large
streams of Illinois, but by the early
1800's they were scarce in most parts of
the state. Now river otters in Illinois
may be found along the Mississippi River
and along the lower reaches of the
Illinois River They have been around in
these low numbers for at least 30-40
years.

The range of the species includes
most of Canada, Alaska and the conti-
guous 48 states. Historically the biggest
negative impact on the otter population
came from fur trapping. Their natural
enemies include dogs, bobcats, coyotes
and foxes.

“The problems faced by Illinois’ river
otters now are the silting-in of streams,
destruction of habitat and inadvertently
being caught in fishermen’s nets and
steel traps set for other animals,” accord-
ing to Dr Sanderson. “The Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation may decide to
modify trapping and commercial fishing
areas in certain areas where river otters
can still be found. A further possibility
is simply closing these areas to these
activities. Since they have been present
in the state for so long, even though in
small numbers, I believe their chances
for survival are good:

The Eastern Woodrat
(Neotoma floridana )

A state-endangered species, the eastern
woodrat is a medium-sized rodent with
large black eyes, prominent ears and a
long tail. The upper parts of the woodrat
are brownish-gray mixed with black, with
its underparts white and a blackish-brown
tail. The woodrat, also known as the pack
rat and the trade rat, weighs in at 6 to
12 ounces.

According to Dr. Sanderson, most
people are not afraid of this rodent, as
they are of the Norway rat, probably
because it is such a beautiful animal
with a very soft pelt and very large
eyes. It is also extremely shy of human
beings.

The woodrat prefers timbered
habitat in southern Illinois, inhabiting
the cliffs and rocky bluffs overlooking
the bottomlands of the Mississippi. It
now exists in Illinois only in the Pine
Hills of Union County, with a total popu-
lation of only 25 to 35. As recently as
1973, the population was estimated at
50-75. The principal range of the species
is in the southeastern quarter of the
United States.

The woodrat builds nests in crevices
or caves within these crevices and packs
anything it can carry: bottle caps, belt
buckles, buttons, gun cartridges, sticks,
leaves, and the like. Most of these valu
able items end up in its nest. If in its
shopping spree it sees something it likes
better, the woodrat will drop what it is
carrying and pick up or “trade” for the
new object. Campers may find they ve
received a pile of stones for their car
keys, ammunition or what-have-you.

The woodrat is nocturnal, rarely
coming out in daylight. It breeds in
March, with a litter of 2-3 appearing in
April. There may, however, be as many
as 3 litters annually. Weaning occurs 4

weeks after birth. Woodrats are almost
completely vegetarian, feeding on all
types of plant food and fungi, but it
sometimes eats snails and insects.

Their home range is small, 100 feet
in diameter, and several woodrats may
nest close together. They usually walk
or run, are good climbers and very
pugnacious. They often fight one
another, rearing up on their hind legs
and fighting with their front feet. Almost
all carnivorous mammals living in
woodrat country are enemies including
hawks, owls, and snakes. They provide
several benefits to the ecology: their
nests are often used by other creatures,
their droppings make good fertilizer and
they are part of the foodchain for several
other creatures.

“The outlook for survival of the
woodrat in Illinois is questionable,” Dr
Sanderson said. “We had a small popu
lation in Illinois to begin with, and now
their habitats have been greatly altered
by timber cutting and increased use of
their range by humans. I am not opti
mistic, although there has been talk of
re-introduction of the woodrat into some
areas not currently inhabited by them!

The Bald Eagle
(Haliaeetus leucocephatus )

The only North American representative
of the fish or sea eagles, the bald
eagle, is an endangered species in
Illinois and is also a federally endangered
species. The species range is the North
American continent south to southern
Florida and the coast of Baja California,
Mexico. The bald eagle is also found on
Bering Island, the Aleutian Islands and
the islands off the coast of British
Columbia and eastern Canada. The
number of eagles has declined greatly

since settlement of the continent by
white men. That decline was greatly
accelerated after World War I.

In Illinois, bald eagles historically
have inhabited the major river systems
of Illinois throughout the year, but now
nesting of eagles in Illinois is a rare
occurrence. They do still winter in the
state, arriving from Minnesota and
Canada and concentrating along the
large rivers, the Illinois and Mississippi.
Regular surveys of eagle populations are
conducted by NHS personnel in 11
Illinois regions. Four of those regions -
the central and southern lakes, northeast
lakes, strip mines and lower Kaskaskia
River - had relatively few numbers of
eagles. There were seven regions where
significant numbers were seen: the north-
west Mississippi river, the upper and
lower Mississippi, the southern Missis-
sippi, and the northeast, upper, and
lower sections of the Illinois river.

The bald eagle is brownish-black
except for the head and tail which are
snowy white, and the bill, eye and feet
which are bright yellow. It has a wing-
span of 6 to 72 feet. Its vocalizations
comprise mostly squeaky cackling, very
close to that of a gull’s.

The eagle soars impressively or sits
on a commanding perch along the
shore. It has two perches, really. One
is a night roost, where the eagle rests
after sunset, in an area usually well-
protected from the wind. Its diurnal
perch is almost always near open water,

12

Illinois Natural History Survey

usually dams in Illinois, which allows
easy feeding on fish and waterfowl. The
eagle may hunt its prey in pairs, to tire
out and catch a wounded or weak flying
waterfowl, or even drag a large floating
fish to shore.

A pair of eagles will remain together
at nesting season as long as both are
alive, and engage in various courtship
flights including a spectacular locking
of talons in mid-air and descending for
several hundred feet in a series of
somersaults. Its nest is found in a large
tree or rocky promontory. It is gener-
ally a large structure of sticks lined with
softer material. Nests are added to year
after year until the tree dies. Two eggs
are normally laid, plain dull white with
a rough shell. Incubation lasts about 35
days, with the young eagles staying in
the nest for 10 or 11 weeks. After the

eggs hatch, there may be severe antagon-

ism between the two siblings, and some-
times the weaker is killed or starves.

The leading causes of mortality
among bald eagles in Illinois were loss
of suitable habitat, illegal shooting,
chemical contamination and reduced
reproduction due to environmental con-
tamination. Now protected by the federal
Bald Eagle Protection Act, the Migratory
Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered
Species Act of 1973, the eagle faces
several obstacles to survival, including
illegal shooting, loss of forest bottom-
land, and disturbance of nesting and
roosting by humans.

The Natural History Survey
conducts aerial surveys and counts of
bald eagles on a regular basis. NHS
inventories in five Illinois regions show
that the central Mississippi River sup-
ported the highest average number of
eagles counted per weekly or biweekly
census period, with peak average values
between 318-369. Comparable values for
other regions inventories were: 200-204
for the Illinois River; 139-149 for the
northern Mississippi; 76-78 for the
southern Mississippi,and 21-24 for north-
eastern Illinois. Wintering eagles appear
in October, with the eagles departing
Illinois by mid-April. The number of
eagles now appearing each fall and
winter in southern Illinois has increased
greatly since the period 1949-1970, and
they may be re-establishing a population
in the Mississippi River valley similar to
its historic pattern. One to three nesting
pairs have been recorded in southern
Illinois since the mid-70’s.

The resurgence in bald eagle popu-
lations is due in good part to planned
events associated with refuge develop-
ment and management, good publicity
and increased law enforcement efforts.
The Nature Conservancy, the Audubon
Society, the Wildlife Federation and the
Illinois Department of Conservation,
along with the NHS, have all been active
in the fight to keep the bald eagle a
part of Illinois’ natural heritage.

Dr Glen Sanderson is head of the Natural
History Survey's Wildlife Research section
and a member of the Endangered Species
Technical Advisory Committee for
Mammals, which serves as an advisory
body to the Illinois Endangered Species
Protection Board.

The Hidden Landscape

In Illinois 315 million years ago, the air
was damp, foggy and misty. Lands were
swampy, with low lying woodlands. Shal-
low seas encroached onto the deltas,
creating estuaries, while insects and
dragonflies flitted to and fro. Amphibians
and early reptiles roamed the lands and
waters, and primitive fish swam in the
seas.

It was what scientists would later
label the Pennsylvanian Period of the
Paleozoic Era, or the “Era of Ancient
Life”, when coal was deposited in great
swamps. Amphibians and reptiles be-
came good-sized and common by the
end of the Pennsylvanian Period.

In November of 1985 Joe Devera,
an Assistant Geologist with the Illinois
Geological Survey, was conducting busi-
ness as usual working in the field on
the Survey's and US. Geological Survey's
joint quadrangle mapping program.
Devera, while traversing up a ravine
northeast of Eddyville in southern Illinois,
saw black shale exposed. “This was in-
teresting, Devera said. “Most of the
strata in the area is sandstone. Black
shale sometimes indicates marine en-
vironments. I wondered if this was shale
marine.”

Devera picked through the shale
and excavated it, breaking away the
matrix to expose the organisms. “When
I saw it I started jumping up and down,”
Devera said. “I knew immediately it was
a marine fossil of a goniatite cephalopod
and there was a good diversity of them.”
Devera had found 350 marine organisms
in shale from the lower Pennsylvania
Period.

It is doubtful that those little
organisms, which lived in anonymity 315
million years before, realized what a hit
the discovery of their remains would be
in 1985.

A find such as Devera’s is one of

the joys of paleontology, the science of
past plants and animals based upon fos-
sil evidence. Fossils help geologists
figure the ages of rock strata and the
relative times at which animals and
plants lived. Fossils also are clues to
changes that have taken place on Earth.
For example, paleontologists sometimes
find fossil seashells in strata high in

a mountain, far from an ocean. These
discoveries indicate that the strata formed
a muddy ocean bottom long before the
rocks were lifted to form a mountain.

The black shale that Devera dis-
covered contained a diverse marine fauna
of four different genera and five distinct
species of ammonoid cephalopods -
goniatites, or coiled creatures that are
distant relations of the present-day
chambered nautilus.

Devera said the fossils were primarily
juveniles. “It is thought that this area was
a ‘nursery’, or protected environment for
the young cephalopods. Since the estuary
was low in oxygen, as seen from the shale
color and marcasite replacement, this
would have provided a rough environ-
ment for anything else to survive.”

Devera picked through
the shale and excavated
it, breaking away the
matrix to expose the
organisms ... Devera
had found 350 marine
organisms in shale from
the lower Pennsylvanian
Period.

Cephalopod fossils have been found
in rocks of many ages, and numerous
representatives are alive today: Squids,
octopuses, cuttlefish and the pearly
nautilus are among the cephalopods
living in moder seas.

Cephalopods are one of the most
advanced groups of animals without
backbones. They have a highly developed
nervous system and eyes much like those
of humans. The cephalopod’s mouth is
surrounded by long tentacles commonly
armed with suckers. Beneath the tentacles
is a tube through which the animal can
force a jet of water and move about
by jet propulsion.

Coiled cephalopods live today only
in the South Pacific, but in the geologic
past they were scattered throughout the
world. Modem squids live in shallow
coastal waters over much of the globe.

What was most important about
Devera’s find was the discovery of the
Axinolobus type of cephalopod, which
had never been found in Illinois or the
Illinois Basin, a broad geologic structure
that contains 25,000 feet of sedimentary
rocks in Illinois, parts of Indiana and
western Kentucky.

“The lower Pennsylvanian strata was
typically thought to be primarily land,
but these organisms are only found in
seas, so there is more marine influence
in this area than previously thought,”
Devera said.

Since Axinolobus had been
found in Arkansas, its discovery in
Illinois extends the geographic range of
the organism, correlating Illinois and
Arkansas strata. Discovering Organisms
such as the Axizolobus allows geologists
to zero in On specific times so narrower
limits or intervals of time can be tied to
the rocks.

“By establishing that there is marine
strata in the Eddyville area south of

2

Harrisburg in Pope County, it’s possible
to deduce that there won't be any well-
developed coal found locally, or if there
is, it will be high in sulfur because of
the salt water influence during deposi-
tion of the coal content,” Devera said.

That is the key use of paleont logy
in the Cooperative Geok »gic Mapping
Program (COGEOMAP) in southern
Illinois. By determining the z ge of the
rocks and the type, much can be leamed
about coal and oil resources and
reserves.

The southem Illinois area was
selected for the mapping program be-
cause it contains the southern margin
of the Illinois Basin and is rich in
mineral resources. The c« yal-bearing
rocks deposited during the Pennsylvanian
Period are well-exposed in this area and
the older parts of these rocks are a
target of the mapping program.

Efforts by Geological Survey
mappers have located seams of low to
medium sulfur, high-heating value coals,

“The lower Pennsylvanian
Strata was typically
thought to be primarily
land, but these organisms
are only found in seas,
so there is more marine
influence in this area
than previously thought.”

Although generally thinner and less
easily mined than other Illinois cc yals,
these seams will increase estimated re-
sources of coal in Illinois when their
full extent and occurrence have been
mapped. Detailed mapping also is chang-
ing geologic concepts of the region in
ways that could provide new tools for
successful oil and gas exploration. Faults
that parallel the trend of mineralized
faults in the Illinois Fluc spar Mining
District have been located west of the
previously interpreted edge of the
District. If these faults also are mineral.
ized, US. fluorspar resources might be
increased substantially,

At completion in 1990, the
COGEOMA?P program will have pro-
duced 15 7.5-minute quadrangte maps,
provided models for environments of
deposition, and identified quantity and
quality of coal resources, geologic /tetonic
structure, mineral Occurrences, (fluorspar
lead, zinc, rocks, sand, gravel, and clay ),

14

Axinolobus as it appears in the Arkansas
Strald.

and geologic hazards (unstable materials
and faults ).

The paleontologists at the Geok ical
Survey are not unlike private investiga-
tors. Poth gather evidence to determine
what actually happened at a specific
time and place. The difference is private
eyes have fresh clues to follow. Paleon-
tologists’ clues are millions of years old.

Joe Devera is an Assistant reologist IT at

Gastriosceras - also a distant relation Of the present-day chambered nautilus

the Illinois Geological Surt ey He has
Pent his two years at the Sun ey with the
CCGEOMAP program. Joe received his
Bachelor's degree in Geology at Northern
Illinois University at DeKalb, and his
“Master's degree in Geok ey at Southern
Mlinois University at Carbondale. He will
be reporting his Axinolobus findings
lo the scientific c ymmuURiIty at aN up-
coming conference at the Unit ersity of
Minnesota at St. Paul

Very few of us have spent much time
thinking about the quantity of poisons
and hazardous materials we have stored
in our homes. However many of the
products we use and store there are
classified as household hazardous waste.
Oven cleaners, drain and toilet bowl
cleaners, garden herbicides, insecticides,
motor oil, antifreeze — the list goes on
and on. All of these materials can be
hazardous to you and the environment
if they are not used and disposed of
properly.

To many, hazardous waste means
Love Canal and barrels of DDT leaking
into streams. Yes, these do represent
a major portion of the hazardous waste
problem. However, household hazard-
Ous waste may not be a minor part of
the overall problem, as many think it
is, according to Dr David Thomas,
Director of the Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center (HWRIC). “The
problem is largely undocumented since
households fall in an unregulated area
along with other generators of very
small quaniities of hazardous wastes such
as school laboratories, some hospitals,
some small businesses and farms. Since
these hazardous materials are disposed
of with ordinary household garbage, they
end up in the municipal landfills, which
are not designed for hazardous wastes.”
A possible result is leaching into
groundwater supplies.

The federal government defines

hazardous waste as a waste that is:

1) Ignitable (flash point less than 140°F )

2) Corrosive (pH less than 2 or greater
than 12.5)

3) Reactive (explosives, unstable
compounds, compounds that react
with water ), or

4) EP Toxic (wastes that contaminate
groundwater )

HWRIC favors a broad definition of
household hazardous waste, which
reads: “Household hazardous waste is
any substance that poses a threat to
human health and the environment
when improperly handled or disposed
of”

Some materials considered
hazardous by HWRIC do not appear
on the federal governments list of
hazardous wastes, such as antifreeze,
asbestos (shingles, piping insulation,
brake linings in cars ), some pesticides,
and used motor oil.

“Household hazardous waste by
definition is excluded from regulation,”
added Dan Kraybill, Industrial Assistance
Engineer at HWRIC. “It can legally be
thrown in the trash.”

Dangers to Humans

“There are dangers in just having these
materials around the house,” Kraybill
said. “Most toxic cleaning agents give off

fumes, and many materials are explosive
and can burn. Storing them properly is
very important. For example, antifreeze
has a very sweet taste, but is extremely
poisonous. If it is left out, small
children or pets may get into it result-
ing in a real tragedy.”

The nature of some household
hazardous wastes also increases their
potential damage to homeowners over a
period of time. Materials that are used
infrequently are often stored in closets,
basements, or garages for long periods.
Products such as paint thinners, solvents,
fertilizers, and others may corrode con-
tainers over the years, causing the
containers to deteriorate. This further
increases the potential danger to
homeowners.

“When homeowners use hazardous
substances they need to be wary,”
Kraybill said. “Most products carry wam-
ings, such as ‘use in a well-ventilated
area’ or ‘wear protective gloves when
using’, but most people don't read the
directions.”

The average person doesn't think
of refuse collection as being a dangerous
occupation, but people who collect
refuse are also affected by household

hazardous waste. For example, halfempty
aerosol cans containing certain materials
can start fires in packer trucks when
crushed.

A number of injuries are reported
in the US. Environmental Protection
Agency's (EPA) report on household
hazardous wastes:

- Swimming pool chemicals splashed
on a collection worker resulting in the
loss of 50 percent of the use of his
left eye.

- Used motor oil caused severe eye
irritation of three disposal personnel.

- At least three injuries caused by
exploding aerosol cans occur per
month in San Francisco.

- A sealed container of ammonia burst
under compaction and sprayed a refuse
collector's eyes and face in Michigan.

Most of these injuries occurred while

waste was being emptied or compacted.

Personnel at transfer stations, land-

fills, or other disposal sites may also be
injured by household hazardous waste.
The activities of unloading, spreading,
and compacting refuse often cause con-
tainers to rupture and contents to be
sprayed into the air. Some examples
include:

- A collecton vehicle caught fire and was
destroyed in Michigan.

- A resource recovery facility was severely
damaged by a fire from a small con-
tainer of flammable material in
Wisconsin.

- Three persons were hospitalized with
rashes and respiratory problems at a
transfer station in Lexington, Kentucky.

- In Downers Grove, Illinois, chlorine
tablets caused a fire in a truck.

The Effect on the
Environment

What are the dangers once the materials
are in the municipal landfill? According
to the US. EPA study, indirect evidence
indicates that household hazardous
waste may contribute to groundwater
contamination. More than 12 former
municipal waste disposal sites are on
the Superfund list of sites requiring
corrective action. In the past, these sites
received household hazardous waste
and commercial/industrial wastes in
addition to household refuse. The
present groundwater contamination
indicates that industrial or house

hold hazardous waste chemicals are the
source of the problem. However, no
direct proof exists that household
hazardous wastes are the o72/) pollutants.

16

“Solvents can leach out of a landfill,”
Kraybill said. “Even the lining at a land-
fill can be damaged, and a hole no
bigger than the size of a fist is a real
problem.”

As the evidence indicates, there
appears to be an effect on human health
and the environment from household
hazardous waste. It starts with the home-
owner and continues through the refuse
collector and disposer. And, after dis-
posal in a landfill environment, house-
hold hazardous wastes can contribute to
contamination of air, subsurface gas,
groundwater and surface water

What to Do?

What can we do about the hazardous
household materials we have in our
homes? “Well, the best solution is not
to get into a disposal situation,” Kraybill
said. “By that I mean use up the

It is estimated that every
month Chicago residents
(3 million in the 1980
census) dump 120 tons of
toilet bowl cleaner into
the sewers, pour 440 tons
of liquid household
cleaners down the drain,
and dispose of 1100 tons
of recyclable motor oil.

materials completely. If you can get by
without them, don’t buy them again, or
only buy in small quantities. Also, there
are many alternatives available that aren't
hazardous.” (See chart).

It is estimated that every month
Chicago residents (3 million in the 1980
census) dump 120 tons of toilet bowl
cleaner into the sewers, pour 440 tons
of liquid household cleaners down the
drain, and dispose of 1100 tons of re-
cyclable motor oil. Buying and using less
hazardous products can help eliminate
this source of environmental pollution
in general.

To deal with the problems of
household hazardous wastes, over 530
collection events have been held in 33
states.

A major goal of these collection
programs is public education of the
dangers of household hazardous waste.
The programs focus on the following

activities: making the public aware of the
presence of hazardous materials in the
home and consequences of improper
use and disposal; identifying substitutes
that are less hazardous; encouraging
better home management practices, such
as buying only what you need; identi-
fying proper storage and disposal
methods; and promoting participation in
household hazardous waste collection
and recycling programs.

Most locally run programs use the
collection site approach. Participants are
asked to haul their household hazardous
waste to a collection site for centralized
identification, packaging, and shipment
to a permitted hazardous waste facility:
The state programs active now in
Vermont, Connecticut, Florida, Michigan
and Rhode Island basically consist of
grants to local collection efforts and
state-operated collection programs.

“We are really just getting started in
Illinois,’ Thomas said. “The League of
Women Voters, which is probably the
most active organization across the
country in this type of collection pro-
gram, local health officials, and a number
of other interested parties and the
HWRIC, have held several meetings to
discuss the issue. As a result, we are
attempting to start a pilot program in
Champaign/Urbana in conjunction with
the local Solid Waste Group.”

If you would like more information
about household hazardous waste or
about what your community can do to
establish a collection program, contact
Christina Komadina, HWRIC Information
Services Coordinator, (217) 333-8956.

Dr David Thomas joined the Hazardous
Waste Research and Information Center
in Champaign as Director in May 1985.
He received his Bachelor's and Master's
degrees in Ecology from the University of
Illinois and his Doctorate in Ecology from
Cornell University: Prior to his appoint-
ment at HWRIC, he worked for a private
consulting firm performing environmental
studies. Dan Kraybill is the Industrial As-
sistance Engineer with the Industrial and
Technical Assistance Program at HWRIC.
He has Bachelor's and Master's degrees
in engineering from the University of
Illinois and is a registered professional
engineer, He has worked in environ
mental control for over 10 years.
Christina Komadina, HWRIC Informa-
tion Services Coordinator; has been in-
strumental in gathering information con-
cerning household hazardous wastes
and on work done in other states, and in
coordinating collection program efforts.
HWRIC is an administrative unit of the
Illinois Water Survey:

Household Hazardous Waste Family Reference Chart

Pesticides
Herbicides

Insect Repellent

Garden
Herbicides,
Insecticides,
Fungicides, etc.

Toilet Cleaner

Spot Removers

Silver Polishes
Furniture Polishes
Powder Cleaners/

Cleansers

Window Cleaners

Bleach and Liquid
Cleaners

Lethal to humans and pets in minute
quantities.

Poisonous.

Poisonous. Can persist in the environ-
ment. Especially hazardous around
food plants.

Poisonous and capable of causing
serious burns.

Poisonous and capable of causing
serious burns.

Poisonous and capable of causing
serious burns.

Most are solvent-based (in other
words, they contain strong chemical
dissolvers ) and are poisonous.

Poisonous.

Include various poisonous solvents.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.

Wash down drain with lots of water.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.
Wash down drain with lots of water.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.

Cats; traps; chopped bay leaves and
cucumber skins

Screens; protective clothing; or use
creams or lotions.

Strong hosing or handpicking; keep
garden clean; use ‘natural’ insecticides
like rotenone; or predators like
ladybugs/praying mantises.

Boiling water; plunger; metal snake
Baking soda and water; salt; quarter
cup of ammonia overnight.

Baking soda; mild detergent; or small
amounts of bleach.

Club soda; immediate cold water; com
meal and water soak; lemon juice.

Soak silver in water with baking soda,
salt, and small piece of aluminum foil.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.

Mineral oil with lemon oil or
Carnauba wax.

Strong oxidizers, poisonous, can cause
burns.

Harmful chemical compounds.

Poisonous chemical compounds.

Wrap in plastic, place in a box, and
put in garbage.

Wrap in plastic, place in a box, and
put in garbage.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.

Baking soda and mild detergent,
elbow grease.

Rub windows with newspapers;
vinegar and water.

Cedar chips; newspapers.

Strong oxidizers - can cause burns.

Poisonous, espcially with kids; don’t
use cooking utensils when dyeing.

Outdated
Medicines

Transmission/ Brake
Fluid

Car Batteries

Laquer/Varnish
Thinner/Stripper/
Turpentine

Automotive
Paint
Products

Hazardous to others in family.

Poisonous chemical compounds, as
well as lead and other metals.

Poisonous chemical compounds.

Sweet-tasting and poisonous, don't
leave puddles where kids or pets can
get to them.

Highly acidic (can produce serious
burns) and contain lead.

Solvents and other poisonous
chemical compounds.

Solvent-based, some flammable, all
poisonous.

Wash down drain with lots of water.
Wrap in plastic, place in box, and
put in garbage.

Wash down drain with lots of water.
Take to service station or local waste
oil recycling center.

Take to service station or local waste
oil recycling center.

Wash down drain with lots of water

Trade in or take to special recycling
center (See telephone book).

Let evaporate, then wrap residue

and place in garbage.

Use up according to directions or take
to hazardous waste collection site.

*Old, lead-based paints are toxic and should not be used. Take them to a hazardous waste collection

Use powder, not liquid bleach.

Use vegetable dyes; onion skins, teas,
marigolds.

None.

None.

None; use water-based (latex) if
possible; avoid aerosol sprays.

program (or store until one is available ).

Reprinted courtesy of Woodland Marketing.

SURVEYING

ILLINOIS

Field trips coming

Comfortable clothing, walking shoes, bag
lunch and transportation are necessities
for geological science field trips sched-
uled this spring. Designed to acquaint
participants with the geology and mineral
resources Of Illinois, these 8:15 a.m. to
4 p.m. outings will be held at Tunnel
Hill in Johnson County, April 25 and
at Dallas City, Hancock County, May 16.
David L. Reinertsen, Senior Staff
Geologist and head of the Illinois
Geological Survey's Educational Exten-
sion Unit, notes the trips will begin im-
mediately following registration at desig-
nated starting points. At Tunnel Hill,
participants will register at New Simpson
Hill Elementary School, the intersection
of US. 45 and County Highway 12. Dallas
City High School, 203 East 4th Street,
will be the embarking point on May 16.
Open to everyone, these free
expeditions provide frequent stops for
exploration, discussion and collection of
rocks and fossils and are especially help-
ful to teachers planning earth science,
geography and history units. Drivers
should begin the tour with a full tank
of fuel. To ensure safe travel on some
roads and bridges, school buses are
limited to a 12,000-pound capacity, AL-
though everyone is welcome, a respon-
sible adult must accompany each grade

GEOGRAMS

school student, and an adult supervisor
must be present for every 10 high
school students.

For additional information about
these field trips or a tentative fall
schedule, contact the Illinois Geological
Survey, Natural Resources Building, 615
East Peabody Drive, Champaign, Illinois
61820, 217/344-1481.

Loop connection

Joining occupants of the new State of
Illinois Building, 100 West Randolph
Street, Suite 11-600, Chicago, last summer
was the Illinois Geological Survey (IGS).
In this downtown location, the Survey
has re-established a regional office in
northeastern Illinois with a staff of two:
William G. Dixon, Jr, Staff Geologist, and
Terrie P. Adams, Assistant Staff Geologist.

Besides offering public information
and a reference library of survey publi-
cations, the staff is supplying geologic
information to and collecting geologic
data from drillers, large construction
companies, mineral industries, geotech-
nical firms, and waste disposal firms, as
well as state and local governmental
agencies.

Another major thrust for them is
providing liaison and publicity for the
Superconducting Super Collider (SSC),
which Illinois is vying for in national
competition, and hopes to build adjacent
to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
in Batavia. Toward this end, Dixon and
Adams are establishing and maintaining
contacts with local governments, main-
taining close association with field
exploration programs, serving as a source
of technical information on the SSC and
interacting with SSC for Illinois, Inc.

Satellite maps of the state and
northeastern Illinois, priced at $4 each,
are currently sold at that location. The
office also offers visitors a list of IGS
publications from which they can order

Research Project
Focuses on Subsidence

IGS engineering geologists are taking a
lead role in a multi-year research pro-
gram to investigate the effects of coal
mine subsidence on prime Illinois farm-
land. The aim of the program is to
develop guidelines for underground
mining that will promote maximum coal
recovery while minimizing or eliminating
crop damage on land above the mines.

The research is sponsored by the
Illinois Coal Development Board and
the US. Bureau of Mines. Paul Du-
Montelle, Head of the Earth Hazards
and Engineering Geology Section, is the
director of the Illinois Mine Subsidence
Research Program. Robert A. Bauer, Head
of the IGS Rock Mechanics Laboratory;
is technical manager. Other participants
are from the University of Illinois,
Southern Illinois University, and Illinois
Department of Mines and Minerals.

In a current project, monitoring
equipment has been installed at a site
over an active high-extraction retreat
mine in Williamson County where sub-
sidence will occur as part of the mine
plan. Characteristics of the materials over
the mine, mine floors, and soils and
crops are being studied.

Illinois Welcomes the
Grass Carp

Late last year the Illinois Department of
Conservation (IDOC) made importation
of the sterile triploid grass carp legal.
The grass carp is used in lakes to con-
trol nuisance vegetation. All strains of
the carp had been banned because of
fears that the fish would reproduce in
the country’s big rivers and destroy
natural wetlands. Based on research done
by Natural History Survey (NHS) scien-
tists Drs. Wiley, Philipp, Gorden and
Tazik, a sterile genetic strain was identi-
fied and legalization of that strain’s impor
tation quickly followed. This year is the
first year the grass carp can be used in
Illinois to control aquatic vegetation.

The Rose Family

Spring is here and with it a wide variety
of plants are bursting into blossom. A
number of these flowers belong to a
botanical group called the Rose Family
(Rosaceae ), Dr. Kenneth R. Robertson of
the NHS has been studying this plant
family for a number of years. According
to Dr Robertson, the woods in many parts
of Illinois will be dotted with the lovely
small trees known as shadbushes, along
with wild crabapples, hawthorns, plums
and cherries. A wide variety of other
spring flowers belong to the Rose Family,
both in the wild and in cultivation, such
as spireas, cinquefoils, blackberries,
brambles, strawberries, avens, ninebarks
and of course roses.

Most people are familiar with the
large, beautifully shaped and fragrant
flowers of hybrid tea roses, but are un-
aware that six different kinds of roses
occur in Illinois. And incidentally, are
roses really red? No wild species of the
entire Rose Family has red (or blue)
flowers, lacking the ability to produce
such pigments. However, a mutation Oc-
curred in some cultivated roses where a
true red pigment was produced. The first
hybrid tea rose containing this pigment
was introduced in 1951.

Indiana Bats Are
Illinois Bats, Too

The federally endangered species known
popularly as the Indiana Bat dwells

BIORHYTHMS

during the winter in well-protected cave

habitats. In the springtime, the bats estab-

lish maternity or nursery colonies in
trees along rivers and creeks throughout
Illinois. Only one such colony has ever
been found in Illinois until now. Mr.
Gene Gardner and Dr. Joyce Hofmann
of the NHS and Mr Jim Garner of IDOC
spent two years surveying 850 trees with
the help of bat detectors using ultrasonic
sound. One such nursery colony was
found in Pike County, Illinois. The next
step for the researchers was to attach a
transmitter to a female bat. Tracking that
bat led to discovery of a second colony
in September of 1986, where at least 10
juveniles were found. A matemity colony
can include as many as fifty female bats.
A paper on the scientists’ findings will
be presented to the Illinois State Academy
of Science in April of 1987. An article
on their research will be published in
1988 in the Proceedings of the Academy:

The Bald Eagle and
Artificial Perch Trees

Naturally the bald eagle has never had a
large population nesting in Illinois. The
birds do winter in Illinois, but they are
migratory and the ones who do winter in
Illinois generally come from northern
Wisconsin, Minnesota and parts of
Canada. The eagles favor very large,

tall, sturdy trees with open-growth forms
that make perches easily accessible.
Among Illinois trees favored by the bald
eagle are floodplain cottonwoods, syca-
mores and silver maples.

Because of construction work done
by the Illinois Department of Transpor-
tation (IDOT), a new perch tree is now
being experimented with. When IDOT
put in a new bridge at Hamilton,
Illinois and Keokuk, Iowa, several
preferred perch trees for bald eagles
were destroyed. To mitigate the damage
caused by the bridge, IDOT worked with
the Illinois Department of Conservation
to construct artificial perches. From
November, 1986 to March,1987, NHS
scientists Patti Malmborg and Glendy
Vanderah monitored the effectiveness of
the perches. The first year, with two
artificial perches constructed, was a bad
year for large concentrations of eagles

due to warm temperatures and open
water, But even under those conditions,
one adult eagle used one of the perches.

Four more perches were added, this
time resurrecting dead trees and plant-
ing them in the banks of the Mississippi
River. This new concept and branches
laid against the two telephone pole
perches - both designed by Dr Thomas
Dunstan of Western Illinois University -
proved successful as several more eagles
were seen to use the perches in the
second year of the study.

Fishing Along the Hlinois
Shoreline of Lake Michigan

Many Chicago residents may remember
the overpowering smell of beached ale-
wives emanating from the shores of
Lake Michigan during the 1970's. Ale-
wife abundance is markedly down since
then, but there is now concern that
Lake Michigan salmon (which feed on
alewives) have decimated the alewife
population. The alewife population may
be under control, but the growth rate
of salmon is not.

The bright side of the picture is that
a dramatic resurgence in yellow perch is
associated with the decline in alewives.
This may be because the declining ale-
wives are not eating the newly hatched
perch. Perch are now quite abundant,
with Illinois sports fishermen catching
one million per year in the Illinois
waters of Lake Michigan.

NHS scientists, headed by Dr.
William Horns, are involved in three
Lake Michigan fishing studies. The first
is a creel survey, which allows the re-
searchers to get a fix on fish that have
been stocked in the lake. The second
study - showing that yellow perch may
not be growing as fast and as big as
they should - is a collaborative effort
involving scientists in Wisconsin, Indiana
and Michigan. The third study's focus
is on lake trout reproduction in the area
known as Julian's Reef, twelve to four
teen miles east of Fort Sheridan. This
is the area where since 1980 all of the
lake trout stocked by the state of Illinois
have been put. NHS scientists see cause
for optimism in studies that show the
trout may be spawning as they should
and may have staying power

Des Plaines Wetlands
to be Re-Created

The Des Plaines River north of Chicago
was once known for its deep and shady
pools used for fishing, bathing and
swimming. The area was a natural
wooded wetlands. Now oily substances
and trash can be seen floating on the
river's surface. The waters are loaded
with sediment and support only rough
fish, while the river banks are covered
with silt.

The Des Plaines River Wetlands
Project is an attempt to restore a
2.8 mile section of the upper portion
of the river to a natural wetlands state,
while providing a living laboratory for
scientists. The Illinois Water Survey
(IWS) will provide the hydrologic data
used by other disciplines in their pro-
jects. Information on hydraulics, rain-
fall, evaporation, temperature and other
criteria will be used to determine how a
habitat responds to imposed conditions.
Basic data collection by IWS is the
order of the day. Collection of sus-
pended sediment and water quality
data has been ongoing since July,
1986. A baseline survey and analysis
of the hydrology, water quality and
climatology of the area has already
been completed by IWS researchers.

Differences in Water Quality
Can Affect Toxicity

Water quality standards are often set at
the same level for all types of water.
But the toxicity of a substance may

CURRENTS

differ greatly depending on water
characteristics. This has important
ramifications for establishing water
quality criteria for specific toxicants.
Wuncheng Wang, an IWS researcher
doing work for the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, demonstrated the
need for different criteria for

different sites.

Wang’s study was designed to
determine how toxic barium, chromium
and nickel would be to duckweed plants
in water from 18 different water bodies
in Illinois and neighboring states.
Results varied markedly depending on
the water quality of the test samples
used. Wang's findings include a recom-
mendation that researchers measure the
way test organisms respond to a uni-
versal reference toxicant in conducting
biological toxicity tests. No substance
has yet been accepted as a universal
reference toxicant, but the IWS re-
searcher’s study indicates that chromium,
the substance least affected by the water
quality of test samples, may be the
universal reference toxicant for which
scientists have been looking.

Shrinking Water Supplies

IWS researchers plan to estimate the
year in which 102 surface water supply
systems in central and southern Illinois
might become deficient due to future
droughts. Mitigation measures will then
be identified to make the systems ade-
quate for the next 15-20 years. The
research is funded by the Division

of Water Resources of the Illinois
Department of Transportation.

For each of three years - 1995,
2005, and 2015 - IWS researchers
Krishan Singh and Michael Terstriep
will use a computer program to compute
what the reservoir yield for each of

the 102 systems would be under four
different drought scenarios. The

102 surface water supply systems to be
studied serve about 250 small- to
medium-sized towns. Already some of
the systems to be studied have diffi-
culty supplying enough water during
years that are only moderately dry.

Speed Reading in
the Laboratory

A new instrument in the IWS's
Analytical Chemistry laboratory can
detect as many as 40 elements in a
water sample and print out the results
in about 2 to 3 minutes. The instru-
ment - an inductively coupled plasma
(ICP) spectrometer - began operation in
March and will enable IWS laboratory
workers to do five times the number of
sample determinations in a day than
was previously possible.

The ICP spectrometer was pur-
chased with Build Illinois funds, and
under the terms of the purchase agree-
ment will be shared among the Water,
Geological and Natural History Surveys.

Low-Lying Areas Face
High River Flows

Illinois farmers in low-lying areas

along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers —
are facing increasingly severe problems
because of high river flows. Flood peaks,
flooding frequency and the duration of

high flows along these rivers have
increased in recent years. Some farm-
nds are protected from flooding by
ees, but groundwater levels also
e, forcing farmers in levee areas
to pay high power costs to pump the
excess groundwater out of their fields.
Anew IWS study focuses on these
river flows and their impact on
ture. The research project will
_ examine how the magnitude and dura-
tion of high flows in the Illinois and
_ Mississippi Rivers have increased over
f the 2 40 years; how these trends are
affecting farming economics; when high
rive flows will make farming in these
no longer profitable; and what
_ remedial measures might be taken.

increa

| Gettysburg Monuments
Enc ngered by Pollutants

- One of the greatest battles ever fought
on the North American continent was
_ fought during the Civil War at Gettys-
burg, Pennsylvania. To honor the
soldiers who fought there, bronze,
Beene and granite memorials, statues
and plaques were erected and are viewed
i& a million visitors every year.
% of the monuments show signs of
_ surface disfigurement and corrosion
_ caused by natural weathering, possibly
Reccelersted by acid rain and dry deposi-
tion of sulfur dioxide and nitric acid
~ vapors.
‘ IWS researchers are studying air
_ and precipitation chemistry and its
b: _ relationship to monument deterioration
at Gettysburg. The study is funded by
the National Park Service, along with a
similar IWS study on the prehistoric
i cliff dwellings in Colorado.

CENTERING ON WASTE

News from the Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (HWRIC)

Progress on Hazardous
Materials Laboratory

The preliminary design for the Illinois
Department of Energy and Natural
Resources (DENR) $8.7 million
Hazardous Materials Laboratory (HML)
has been completed. The HML will be
a state-of the-art facility specially
designed to safely handle hazardous
wastes and materials. Groundbreaking
at the lab’s site on the University of
Illinois Champaign campus is sched-
uled for this October.

HWRIC Director Addresses
Chemical Industries Council

David Thomas, Director of HWRIC,
addressed the Council's Environmental
and Governmental Affairs Committee
in Chicago on February 18. Closer co-
operation between the two groups
was discussed, as was the new Hazard-
ous Materials Laboratory.

“Small Quantity Generators
Manual” Published

HWRIC Industrial Assistance Engineer
Daniel D. Kraybill compiled this
manual specifically for Illinois busi
nesses that generate small quantities
of hazardous wastes. The manual
contains up-to-date information on
federal and state regulations, waste
management alternatives, how to
choose a waste firm, and lists of
waste management companies. Copies
are free and can be obtained by
calling (217) 333-8940.

Household Hazardous Waste
Plan Submitted to Cities

Christina Komadina, HWRIC
Information Coordinator, has sub
mitted a detailed plan for a house
hold hazardous waste collection pro
gram to the cities of Champaign
Urbana. Approval for the program

could come in early May. If approved,

it will be the first such program in
Illinois.

The Greater Prairie-Chicken
in Illinois

At one time prairies covered some 60
percent of “The Prairie State,” and
the prairie-chicken ( Tympanuchus
cupido pinnatus) was an important part
of that massive ecosystem. Bones of
prairie-chickens have been found in
kitchen middens of the Middle Missis-
sippi prehistoric culture of Cahokia,
indicating that as early as 1200 A.D.
prairie-chickens played an important
part in the human culture of Illinois.
Ceremonial dances and dress of certain
Indian tribes imitated the dance and
display of Illinois’ native grouse.

Tragically, within the last century
the uncounted millions of birds that
inhabited hundreds of thousands of
acres Of Illinois grasslands have
dwindled to only a few hundred. The
greater prairie-chicken is now a state
endangered species. There are now only
1,960 acres comprising Illinois’ prairie-
chicken sanctuaries, all in Jasper and
Marion counties.

What follows is a closer look at
Illinois Prairie Boomers.

Size and Appearance

The prairie-chicken is Illinois’ native
prairie grouse, resembling nothing so
much as a small barnyard hen. The
birds are dark brown and tan with dark
bars over most of their bodies. Males
average between two and two and one-
quarter pounds, while hens weigh about
one pound, ten ounces on the average.
The male prairie-chickens have
bright orange eyebrows and tufts of
feathers (called pinnae) on the sides of
their necks. The pinnae resemble horns

WILDLIFE

when prairie-chickens engage in their
mating displays, called “booming.” The
most fascinating feature of the male
chicken is the inflatable airsacs
(tympani) on its neck. These orange
sacs serve to resonate the “booming”
sound produced by the male in the
mating ritual. On a quiet morning,
this sound can be heard up to three
miles. Females do not have the bright
eyebrows of the males, and their air
sacs are much smaller than those of
the cocks.

Prairie-chickens are closely related
to the sharptail and distantly related
to the pheasant, quail, ruffed grouse,
turkey, and Hungarian partridge. All
of the birds have in common two
characteristics: they walk as much as
they fly even though they are capable
of fast sustained flight, and they nest on
the ground. Mating rituals are also
similar, involving a display that includes
noise, strutting or dancing and feather
display. The prairie-chicken’s mating
display, however, is by far the most
spectacular.

Range and Distribution

According to Illinois Natural History
Survey researchers Ronald Westemeier
and William Edwards, greater prairie-
chickens are still found in four states
in numbers sufficient for hunting:
Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and
Oklahoma. They are found in much
fewer numbers in six other states,
including Illinois. The species no
longer exists in eight other states and
four Canadian provinces.

The number of chickens in Illinois
places them among the most endangered
of all states where the birds still occur
The spring census of 1985 indicated
that only 153 cocks, and thus a total
of no more than 300 birds, still live in
Illinois. There are two flocks still
surviving on 14 tracts jointly managed
by The Nature Conservancy, the Illinois
Department of Conservation, and the
Illinois Natural History Survey. One

flock, in Jasper County, is severely
threatened by one of the prairie-chicken’s
worst rivals, the pheasant. Pheasants are
not present to threaten the second flock,
in Marion County. Acquisition objectives
call for an additional 1,000 acres in
scattered tracts averaging 160 acres each.

Prairie-chickens originally thrived
because of early settlers in Illinois. These
settlers lived mostly in wooded areas and
along waterways because of a need for
lumber and transportation. Prairies
were avoided, and the initial clearing
of forests aided the prairie-chicken in
expanding its range from the prairies
onto woodland soils. However, in the
1860's the steel plow developed by John
Deere made rapid inroads into the
prairie grasslands and the chicken’s
habitat. At first the intermixture of
prairies and fields of grain caused
optimum habitat for the birds. The
American Sportsman of December 27,
1871 stated that 600,000 prairie-chickens
were bought annually by the Chicago
trade.

As late as 1912 prairie-chickens
existed in 92 of Illinois’ 102 counties.
Their populations greatly declined, not
only because of land-use changes, but
also because of large-scale releases of
ringnecked pheasants. Harassment of
prairie-chickens by pheasants on boom-
ing grounds became common. Of even.
greater significance was the innate pro-
clivity of pheasants to parasitize the
nests of the chicken. As Westemeier and
Edwards explain, “Pheasant chicks pro-
duced in prairie-chicken nests represent
a ‘bonus achieved at little expense to
pheasants but at great cost to the
parasitized prairie-chickens.”

Food Habits
Prairie-chickens enjoy a diverse menu,

from insects and greens in summer and
autumn to fleshy fruits, weed seeds and

Illinois’ prairie-chicken

small grains as soon as they ripen and
for as long as they remain available. In
autumn and winter, corn, buds and cat-
kins are added to the bird's diet.

Prairie-chickens eat throughout the
day, although the main feeding periods
seem to be about 2 hours in the morn-
ing, shortly after sunrise, and for an
hour or more before sundown.

Breeding and Social Ecology

The prairie-chicken’s spectacular
mating display begins on clear days in

fall and continues, at lesser frequencies,

through the winter. The peak of the
courtship period occurs in April and

Illinois Natural History Survey

May, when cocks arrive on the booming
grounds approximately 45 minutes be-
fore sunrise and boom and display for
2 or more hours. The cocks resume
their display for about an hour before
sunset. Since the point of the display is
to see and be seen, the cock’s preferred
booming ground is usually on flat or
slightly rolling territory devoid of cover.
Jim Lockart described the ritual in his
pamphlet, “The Last Chance:”

One begins his show with a short
run and a sudden stop. You hear
a drum-like patter as he stamps his
feet, he bows, the pinnae on his
neck are erect like horns and
pointing straight forward as though
he were a bull sizing up a matador,
his air sacs fill, and you hear the
boom.

Fights between cocks defending their
small portion of the booming ground
do occur, but they are more feathers
than blood. Hens appear to ignore all
the show, but in reality may mate with
several cocks. In mid-April, the hens
begin to construct their nests, made of
dead grass, stems and leaves. Clutches
are usually ten to twelve eggs, and incu
bation begins in late April or early May,
with the eggs hatching after some 25
days of incubation, about 40 days after
the first egg is laid. The hens lead

the chicks away from the vulnerable
nest as soon as they can and to areas
Open enough for easy cover and with a
good supply of insect food. Broods
break up after the young are ten weeks
old. In late fall and winter the birds
gather in flocks of 50 or more and roost
in stubble or grass. Winter activities
include roosting, feeding and resting.

Sanctuary

The prairie boomer is an adaptable
species given a reasonable chance.
Acquisition of additional sanctuaries
and federal programs of cropland diver
sion, especially where perennial grasses
and legumes are planted and where
pheasants do not endanger the boomer,
have considerable potential to benefit
the prairie-chicken.

For more information on Illinois
prairie-chicken, INHS researchers
Ronald Westemeier and William Edwards
have written a chapter entitled “Prairie
chickens and Pittman Robertson in the
Midwest: An Historical Perspective,” which
will be published in Restoring America’s
Wildlife, a book reviewing 50 years of
Pittman-Robertson federal aid to wildlife
programs, available from the US. Fish and
Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C.

Nevling named Natural
History Survey Chief

Dr. Lorin I. Nevling, former Director of
the Field Museum, has been named
Chief of the Illinois Natural History
Survey. He assumed head administrator
duties of the 128-year old Survey on
January 2, and succeeds Acting Chief
Lawrence Page.

The Natural History Survey is the
largest biological survey in the nation
and the second oldest. Nevling super.
vises approximately 230 scientitic and

New Director of Illinois
Department of Conservation

Governor James R. Thompson recently
appointed Mark Frech as Director of
the Illinois Department of Conservation.
Frech, of Springfield, replaces Michael
Witte, who resigned the position in

December, 1986 to enter private business.

A native of Carrollton in Greene
County, Frech attended Illinois College
in Jacksonville, where he received a
Bachelor's degree in 1973. Frech, 36,
served as Assistant Director of Admis-
sions at Illinois College from 1973 to
1977, then went into private business in
Jacksonville from 1977 to 1980.

TRANSITIONS

technical staff, including 94 Ph.D.’s.

“The Natural History Survey is the
premier organization of its kind in the
nation,” Nevling said. “This is the
result of a farsighted state administra-
tion, an extended data base, major col-
lection and equipment resources and a
staff of dedicated, productive scientists.
Together, these elements make the Survey
what it is today. The challenge to be met
is to provide significant service to the
citizens of Illinois and increase our
scientific standing during a period of
fiscal austerity, Great organizations find
the will and the way to move ahead
during difficult times. I am confident in
the Survey’s ability to do so.”

As the former Director of the Field
Museum in Chicago, Dr. Nevling is a
seasoned administrator with extensive
experience in the arts, humanities and
science. He left Harvard University in
1973 to become Chairman of the Depart-
ment of Botany at the Museum. He ad-

Frech joined the Governor's Office
in 1980, serving as Assistant Director
of Personnel. He was promoted to
Director of the Governor's Personnel
Office in 1984. He resigned his position
in October, 1985 to serve as the Deputy
Campaign Manager for the re-election
of Governor Thompson.

Frech was appointed to the
Conservation Advisory Board by Gover-
nor Thompson in 1984, a position he
held until his appointment as Director
of Conservation. His interests include
hunting, fishing, camping and other
outdoorrelated activities.

vanced to the position of Assistant
Director for Science and Education, and
in 1980 he became Director of the
Museum.

From 1959 to 1973, Dr Nevling
was at Harvard University, where he
was employed by the Amold Arboretum,
the Gray Herbarium, and the Farlow
Herbarium. Besides conducting exten-
sive research in the United States and
abroad, Dr Nevling has authored more
than 75 scientific articles, serves
on several boards, and holds many
professional appointments.

Dr. Nevling received a Bachelor's
degree in Biology from Saint Mary's
College in Winona, Minnesota. Following
two years of service in the military,
he earned his Master's and Ph.D. degrees
from Washington University in St. Louis.

Dr. Nevling and his wife, Jan, are
the parents of five children. He is a
native of St. Louis.

Dept. of Mines and Minerals
Head Appointed

Governor James Thompson has
appointed Richard Shockley, a former
Inland Steel Company executive, to head
the Illinois Department of Mines and
Minerals. Shockley replaces Bradley
Evilsizer, who served as head of the
department for the past 10 years.

Shockley, 57, of Benton, was
employed by Inland Steel Corporation
for 35 years, serving as Manager of
Administration from 1979 until his
retirement in November, 1986. Since
then, he has been a consultant in the
mining industry. He eamed a Bachelor's
degree in Mining Engineering from Vir-
ginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University in 1952.

Shockley’s nomination must be
confirmed by the state Senate.

Board Profiles

Gaylord Donnelley,
Chairman of the Board

Gaylord Donnelley, Honorary Chairman
of the Board of R-R. Donnelley & Sons
Company, has served as the Society's
Chairman of the Board since 1984. A
resident of Libertyville, he has served
in various capacities with Ducks Un-
limited, Inc., including President. He

is a Trustee of the North American Wild-
life Foundation and an Honorary Director
of the Open Lands Project, as well as

a member of The Nature Conservancy.
Mr Donnelley served as a member of
the advisory board of the Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation from 1978 to 1984.
He is a recipient of the Prairie Chicken
Foundation of Illinois Honor Award in
1969, the Nature Conservancy Oak Leaf
Award in 1976 and the Conservation
Merit Award from the Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation in 1981. He is a
graduate of Yale University.

Edmund B. Thornton,
Vice Chairman

Ed Thornton is the Chairman of Ottawa
Silica Company in Ottawa, Illinois. He
serves as an Advisor to the Illinois
Nature Preserves Commission and the
Illinois Abandoned Mined Lands
Reclamation Council and is Chairman
of the Illinois & Michigan Canal
National Heritage Corridor Commission.
Mr. Thornton is a trustee of the Illinois

Chapter of the Nature Conservancy and
a life member of the National Rifle
Association and Ducks Unlimited. He is
a member of the National Audubon
Society, National Wildlife Federation,
National Oceanographic Association,
American Polar Society and the Arctic
Institute of North America. Mr Thomton
served aboard the Schooner Bowdoin
with Admiral MacMillan on two expedi-
tions to the Arctic in 1949 and 1950.
He is responsible for the concept,
design and construction of Thornton
Park and recreation area in Ottawa and
Mr Thorton conceived and commis-
sioned the unique site sculpture project,
Buffalo Rock Effigy Tumuli, designed by
artist Michael Heizer in 1984 and 1985.
He is a graduate of Yale University.

Walter E. Hanson, Treasurer

Walter Hanson founded the firm of
Hanson Engineers, Inc., (originally known
as WE. Hanson & Associates ) in 1954.
The firm has grown to serve clients and
projects in 50 states and 13 foreign
countries. Mr Hanson, a resident of
Springfield, is a member of the Board

of Natural Resources and Conservation,
and has served as an officer and/or com
mittee member in addition to his
memberships in the American Society of
Civil Engineers, National Society of
Professional Engineers, Illinois Society of
Professional Engineers, Illinois Society of
Professional and American Consulting
Engineers Councils, to mention a few. He
has authored or coauthored a number
of publications in the engineering field,
most significantly, Foundation Engineer
ing, coauthored with Professors R.B
Peck and TH. Thombum. This engineer
ing textbook, in its second edition, is
widely used by practicing engineers and
students throughout the world. He holds
degrees from Kansas State University and
the University of Illinois

James R. Anderson, Jr.

James Anderson is Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer of Chicago Extruded
Metals Company in Hinsdale, Illinois.
He is a Director of the Copper and Brass
Fabricators Council and serves as a
Trustee in both the Berkshire School of
Sheffield, Massachusetts and with the
Illinois Chapter of the Nature Conser
vancy. Mr Anderson received degrees
from Yale University and served as a
marine aviator from 1942 to 1945.

Henry N. Barkhausen

Henry Barkhausen is a former Director
of the Illinois Department of Conserva
tion, having served under Govemor
Ogilvie. He retired as Chief Executive
Officer of Midwest Lime Company in
Batesville, Arkansas in 1980, and now
operates a small hill farm in Union
County in southern Illinois. Mr Bark
hausen serves as a Conservation Repre
sentative on the Advisory Council on
Mine Reclamation to the Department of
Mines and Minerals, and is a Trustee

of the Illinois Chapter of The Nature
Conservancy and Director of the Associa
tion for Great Lakes Maritime History
He also serves as a Director of the
Anna State Bank, and was on Govemot
Thompson's Fiscal Commission in 1980
Mr. Barkhausen is a 1936 Yale
University graduate

George Farnsworth, Jr.

George Farnsworth is a partner in the
engineering firm, Farnsworth & Wylie,
PC., in Bloomington, Illinois. Farnsworth
and Wylie handles the design and con-
struction guidance of wells and surface
water supplies, water treatment plants,
sewer collection systems, municipal and
industrial wastewater treatment plants,
land drainage, bridges and transportation
systems. Mr. Farnsworth is a member of
the following professional groups: Ameti-
can Society of Civil Engineers, American
Concrete Institute, American Waterworks
Association, Water Pollution Control
Federation, Illinois and National Societies
of Professional Engineers and the Illinois
and American Consulting Engineers
Councils. He is a graduate of the
University of Illinois.

Marshall Field V

Marshall Field is Chairman of The

Field Corporation, a company with three
affiliates: Field Publications, Pioneer
Press and Manistique Papers, Inc. Field
Publications markets a wide variety of
published materials to schools, students
and families. Pioneer Press publishes
newspapers and a quarterly magazine in
the suburbs of Chicago. Manistique
Papers, Inc., manufactures newsprint and
specialty papers. Mr. Field is also Chair-
man of Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, a real
estate company. He is Vice Chairman of
the Board of Trustees for the Field
Museum of Natural History and also
serves on the Board of Trustees for the
Museum of Science and Industry. Mr
Field serves as Chairman of the McGraw
Wildlife Foundation and Treasurer of
Restoration of Atlantic Salmon in
America, Inc. He also serves on the
boards of Trout Unlimited, Lincoln Park

26

Zoological Society and the Open Lands
Project. He is a member of the Chicago
Zoological Society, the Brookfield Zoo
Board of Advisors and The Nature Con-
servancy. He is a graduate of Harvard
University.

Clayton R. Gaylord

Clayton Gaylord, of Rockford, Illinois,
was employed at Ingersoll Milling
Machine Company from 1946 until his
retirement in 1984. He still serves as
Director and Chairman of the Finance
Committee. He served as President from

1958 to 1971 and Chairman of the Board

from 1971 to 1972. Mr. Gaylord is a
Trustee of the North American Wildlife
Foundation and also serves on the
group's executive committee. He is
Chairman of the Board of the Rockford
Institute and a Director of the Inger
soll Foundation. Mr Gaylord is a
graduate of Princeton University.

Ralph E. Grim

Dr. Ralph Grim is a Professor Emeritus
in the Department of Geology at the
University of Illinois. He worked at the
Illinois Geological Survey from 1931
to 1948, where he began his detailed
studies of clays. Dr Grim developed a
series of x-ray, thermal and chemical
methods to study the structure and pro-
perties of clays. The papers published
over the next fifty years are a fascinating
blend of pure science at its best and the
application of the results to agriculture
and industry. In 1974, the Mineralogical
Society of America presented the Roeb-
ling Medal to Dr. Grim. The award
recognized Dr Grim as the “Father of
Clay Mineralogy”. He also served as a
Consultant to the Ivory Coast and has

conducted research in many foreign
countries. He holds degrees from Yale
University and the State University

of Iowa.

John E Homeier

John Homeéier is President and Principal
Owner of Bi-Petro, Inc., a company that
buys and sells crude oil, operates pro-
ducing wells and provides various types
of oilfield services. In addition, along
with his three sons, he owns an explor
ation company, Homco Ltd. Over the
years Mr. Homeier has been very active
in various organizations related to the
oil industry. He is currently serving as

a member of the Governor's Advisory
Commission on Oil and Gas Legislation,
and is a Director of the National Pet-
roleum Refiners Association and Inde-
pendent Petroleum Asseciation of
America. He holds memberships in a
number of petroleum associations, in-
cluding the Independent Petroleum
Marketing Association of America. In
1979 the oil industry honored him with
an award for outstanding oil operator in
Illinois. A native of Springfield and a
graduate of the University of Illinois, Mr.
Homeier is active on the boards of many
Springfield community organizations:

Richard A. Lenon

Richard Lenon is Chairman and a
member of the Board of International
Minerals & Chemical Corporation,
located in Northbrook. He served as
Chief Executive Officer from 1971 until
1983 and also served as President from
1970 to 1978. Mr Lenon is a Director of
Allis-Chalmers Corporation; American

Standard Inc.; Bankers Trust Company
and Bankers Trust New York Corpora-
tion; Federal Paper Board Company;
Allied-Signal, Inc.; the American Mining
Congress; Chicago Museum of Science
and Industry; Chicago Museum of Con-
temporary Art; and Evanston Hospital
Corporation. He is a Trustee of the
Illinois Institute of Technology. Mr
Lenon is a graduate of Western
Michigan University.

John Rednour, Sr.

John Rednour, a resident of Du Quoin,
is President of R & H Construction
Company, Inc. He has also served as
President of Rednour Steel Erectors,
Inc., Chairman of the Board of Air
Illinois, Inc., on the Board of Directors
of the Du Quoin State Bank, Chairman
of the Board of Cater-Vend, Inc., Direc-
tor of Perry County Leasing, Inc., on

the Board of Directors of Southern
Illinois Builders Association and the
Board of Directors of the First National
Bank in Altamont. Mr Rednour is a
Director of the Du Quoin Business
Association and serves on the Executive
Council of Southern Illinois, Inc., and
the Board of Directors of the Du Quoin
Boys Club.

William A. Rooney

Bill Rooney is a native of LaCrosse,
Wisconsin. He began his 40-plus year
career in advertising there and continued
it in St. Louis where he worked in adver-
tising at Union Electric and Monsanto
Company. Mr Rooney served as Adver
tising Manager of the Organic Chemi-
cals Division at Monsanto. He moved to
Chicago in 1954 continuing his involve-
ment in advertising, where he became a

Group Vice President of D'Arcy Adver
tising Company. His lifelong interest in
architecture prompted him to author a
book, Architectural Ornamentation in

Chicago, published in 1984. Mr Rooney

wrote the text and took the 675 pictures
appearing in the book. He received the
Distinguished Service Award from the
American Institute of Architects Chicago
Chapter in 1985 for the book and for his
work in architectural preservation. In
retirement, Mr Rooney continues
actively providing communications
consulting services to various clients.

William L. Rutherford

William Rutherford is an attorney in
Peoria who, with his wife Hazel, de-
signed and built Wildlife Prairie Park.
He is a former Director of the Illinois
Department of Conservation. Mr Ruther
ford has served as Administrative Vice
President, Treasurer and Director of the
Forest Park Foundation, and has been
its attorney since incorporation in 1939.
Since 1964 he has spearheaded a drive
which added over 20,000 acres to the
land available for park, recreation and
wildlife purposes in the Peoria area. He
has served on a number of community,
state and national advisory boards and
committees. Mr. Rutherford is a past
member of the Air Pollution Control
Board and past Vice-Chairman of the
State Sanitary Water Board. He is a
member of the board of directors for
both the Illinois Wildlife Federation
and the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.
In 1986, he was named one of the “One
Hundred Heroes in America” by News
week magazine. He is a graduate of

Bradley University and the University of

Chicago.

jeffrey R. Short. Ir

Jeffrey Short, President of J.R. Short
Canadian Mills Limited and J.R. Short
Milling Company, is a resident of
Winnetka. Mr. Short is an Honorary
Trustee of the Chicago Zoological Society
and a Trustee of the L.S.B. Leakey
Foundation. He is a Director of the
Open Lands Project of Chicago, having
served as President from 1963 to 1972;
a Director of the Wildlife Trust, Slim-
bridge, U.K.; and a member of the Presi-
dent's Council, World Wildlife Fund, and
the President's Council of the National
Audubon Society. Mr. Short has received
a number of awards including the Garden
Club of America - Frances K. Hutchison
Medal for Conservation 1983, and the
Oak Leaf Award from The Nature Con-
servancy. He is a graduate of Harvard
University.

osepn 5. Sptve,s

Joe Spivey is President of the Illinois

Coal Association, a trade organization
which represents the coal industry in the
state of Illinois. It is located in Spring
field. Mr. Spivey has been extensively
involved in the energy industry since
1972 and has held his present position
with the Coal Association since 1978. A
native of North Carolina, Mr. Spivey is

a veteran of the U.S. Marine Comps. He
served seven years and four months in
the South Pacific, Atlantic and Mediter
ranean. Mr. Spivey's educational back
ground includes a degree in political
science, education and economics. He
presently resides in Petersburg

Harold B. Steele

Harold Steele, a livestock and grain
farmer in Princeton, is the former
elected President and full-time Execu-
tive Officer of the Illinois Farm Bureau
for 13 successive elections of this
315,000 member family organization. In
addition to his executive role in Farm
Bureau, he also served as President of
the IFB-affiliated group of insurance
companies — Country Life Insurance,
Country Mutual Insurance, Country
Casualty, Mid-America Investors Life
Assurance and Mid-America Preferred
Insurance. He also served as President
of the Farm Bureau-affiliated IAA Trust
Company, Country Capital Growth Fund,
Country Capital Income Fund, Country
Capital Money Market Fund, Country
Capital Management Company, C.C. Ser-
vices, Illinois Agricultural Holding
Company and Illinois Agricultural Ser-
vice Company. Steele served on the
coordinating committee of GROWMARK,
INC., the farm production supply and
service organization affiliated with

the state farm production supply and
service organization affiliated with

the state Farm Bureaus in Illinois,
Iowa, and Wisconsin. Mr. Steele is on
the Board of Directors for the Midwest
Financial Group, Inc., and is a presi-
dential appointee to the National Com-
mission on Agricultural Finance.

Susan C. Stone

Susan Stone has served as a member of
the Illinois Commerce Commission since
1984. Prior to her appointment she was
a Program Planning Consultant to the

28

Central Illinois Economic Development
Corporation, and a Special Assistant to
the State Director and Rural Develop-
ment Coordinator for the Farmers Home
Administration, U.S. Department of Agri-
culture. She has held a variety of posi-
tions involved in federal, state and local
government problem solving. From 1971
to 1984 she was an elected Commissioner
and Vice President of the Urbana Park
District, and from 1983 to 1984 served
on the Board of Directors of the Illinois
Association of Park Districts. Mrs. Stone
is a Founder, Past Chairman and board
member-and sometimes Executive Dir-
ector- of the Champaign County Develop-
ment Council (CCDC). She received the
CCDC Foundation Award in 1984 and in
1981 received an honor award nomina-
tion, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Distinguished Service Award for “Effec-
tive Development, Implementation and
Continued Dedication to a Realistic Plan
for the Preservation of Prime Agricul
tural Lands”. She is a graduate of Mt.
Holyoke College and John Hopkins
University.

Warren T. Trask

Warren Trask is Group Vice President,
Technical Operations, at AE. Staley
Manufacturing Company in Decatur His
responsibilities encompass the areas of
engineering, purchasing, research,
management information systems, en-
vironmental science and corporate trans-
portation. Mr. Trask joined A-E. Staley

in 1977 as Vice President, Industrial
Manufacturing, with responsibility for
corn plant operations. Prior to that he
was employed by Mallinckrodt Chemical
in St. Louis for 20 years. He is a past
President of the Chemical Council of
Greater St. Louis and the Decatur Boys’
Club, a past board member of the
American Institute of Industrial Manage-
ment of Missouri, and a past member
of the Governor's Council on Economic
Development-North Carolina. Mr. Trask
has degrees from Monmouth College
and Iowa State University.

Leo Whalen

Leo Whalen is a resident of Hanover,

in northwestern Illinois. Mr Whalen is
the Founder and President of Whistling
Wings, Inc. Whistling Wings, Inc., is a
family-owned farm and business that
produces wild mallard ducks for world-
wide shipment. The business, established
in 1954, is celebrating its 33rd
anniversary in 1987.

Louise B. Young

Louise Young, author of a number of
nonfiction books, is a resident of
Winnetka. She serves as a Director on
the Board of the Open Lands Project
and has served as a Director with the
Lake Michigan Federation and Citizens
for a Better Environment. Mrs. Young
was a member of the Environmental.
Advisory Committee for the U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy from 1978 to 1981. She
received the Carl Sandburg Literary
Arts Award for The Blue Planet from
Friends of the Chicago Library, for the
best nonfiction of 1982-83. The Blue
Planet was also selected as the best
book of nonfiction in 1983 from the
Society of Midland Authors. Mrs. Young
is also the Author of Best Foot
Forward, a children’s book, and Power
Over People, Earth’s Aura, and

most recently, The Unfinished
Universe, published by Simon &
Schuster, 1986. She is a graduate of
Vassar and the University of Chicago.

Society for the

Illinois Scientific Surveys Non-Profit Org.
607 East Peabody Drive US. Postage Paid
Champaign, IL 61820 Springfield, IL

Permit No. 453

OF ILLINOIS Fall, 1987

. _ ; —o ° a: <
8a oe le he
YS

Published by the Society for the IIlinois Scientific Surveys

OF ILLINOIS

“

Exploring Inner Space

Analogous to a telescope for examining
the stars, the Superconducting Super
Collider will allow scientists to “see” the
subatomic particles that are the building
blocks of the universe.

=

The Erosion of History at Gettysburg
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was the scene
of one of the most fiercely fought
battles of the Civil War Now monuments
marking that battlefield are under siege
from natural and man-made forces.

9

The Reincarnation of the I & M
The Illinois and Michigan Canal has a
chance for a second life. The problem
is water.

ul

Raiders of the Lost Worts

Natural History Survey researchers turn
botanical detectives in an all-out effort
to find — and save — Illinois’
endangered plant species.

B

Farming Fish
As the price of corn drops, Illinois farmers
may be harvesting a new crop — fish.

15

On Stilts

Illinois is overlaid with prime farmland
and underlaid with abundant coal re
sources. Getting at one without disturb
ing the other is the aim of mine sub-
sidence experts at the Geological Survey.

18

Surveying Illinois
Geograms
Biorhythms
Currents

Wildlife

‘Transitions

About the Cover

The collider detector at Fermilab. In this view, two
of the arches making up the central calorimetry
system can be seen at each side of the detector
Also visible is much of the forward calorimetry
The detector stands two stories tall, weighs 4500
tons, and was built by a collaboration of more than
170 physicists from the U.S., Japan and Italy

Published by the Society for the Ilinois
Scientific Surveys

Volume II, Number I
Fall, 1987

Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin

Editor

ComUnigraph

Design and Production

Society Offices

Correspondence about memberships,
magazines deliveries, contributions and
general information should be addressed
to the Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, 1525 South Oth Street, Suite B,
Springfield, IL 62703

The Society encourages readers to submit
letters to the editor of The Nature of
Illinois at the address above

Copyright 1987 by the Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys. All rights

reserved

Society for the Mlinois Scientific Surveys

DI

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman
Ottawa

Walter E. Hanson
Treasurer
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Hinsdale

Henry N. Barkhausen
Jonesboro

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Bloomington

Marshall Field
Chicago

Clayton Gaylord
Rockford

Ralph E. Grim
Urbana

John Homeier
Springfield

Richard A. Lenon
Northbrook

Albert Pyott
Winnetka

John Rednour
DuQuoin

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

William L. Rutherford
Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.
Chicago

Joseph Spivey
Springfield

Harold B. Steele
Princeton

Susan Stone
Champaign

Warren Trask
Decatur

Leo Whalen
Hanover

Louise B. Young
Winnetka

Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director

Estie Karpman
Assistant Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Illinois Scientific Surveys

Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

Supporters*

Corporate and Foundation:

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Bi-Petro; Borg-Warner Foundation, Inc;
Chicago Community Trust; Chicago Title
& Trust; Collins & Rice; Commonwealth
Edison; Crawford, Murphy & Tilly; Dames
& Moore; Donnelley Foundation; Gaylord
Donnelley Trust; Gaylord & Dorothy
Donnelley Foundation; R.R. Donnelley &
Sons; Dow Chemical; Farnsworth &
Wylie; Field Foundation of Illinois;
Jamee & Marshall Field Foundation;
Freeman United Coal Mining Company;
Greeley and Hansen; Hamilton Consult-
ing Engineers; Hanson Engineers;
Henry, Meisenheimer & Gende; Illinois
Bell; Illinois Coal Association; Illinois
Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund; Illinois
Soybean Program Operating Board; Joyce
Foundation; Klingner & Associates;
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Robert R. McCormick Foundation;
Midwest Consulting Engineers; Mobay
Chemical; Peabody Coal Company; Abbie
Norman Prince Trust; Rhutasel &
Associates; Sahara Coal Company; Sargent
& Lundy Engineers; J.R. Short Milling
Company; A.E. Staley Continental;
Tornrose, Campbell & Associates; Union
Carbide; Whistling Wings.

Individuals: James Anderson,

E. Armbrust, Henry Barkhausen,

Jane Bolin, Gaylord Donnelley, Clayton
Gaylord, Dr. Michael Jeffords, Dr Morris
Leighton, Richard Lenon, Edmund
Thornton, William Rutherford, Michael
Scully, Leo Whalen, Louise Young.

® Contributions of $200 or more

The Society Page

The fourth issue of The Nature of
Illinois brings you more information
on what the Surveys are and what they
are doing to make Illinois a better state
for us all.

For four years, the scientists of the
three Surveys have been laboring to
make the Superconducting Super
Collider (SSC) a reality for Illinois.
This $4.4 billion project will mean
thousands of jobs for Illinois, will
create approximately $1.5 billion for the
local economy and other businesses
throughout the state, and will bring an
additional $115 to $140 million in state
tax revenue.

The Natural History Survey has also
been working on new business for
Illinois — a new industry called aqua-
culture. Growing fish in Illinois may
seem exotic, but several small farmers
have already turned this unusual crop
into a profitable venture.

Renovation of the Illinois and
Michigan Canal is a project close to
my heart. Much of the Canal’s future
depends on devising a water flow con-
trol system, and Survey scientists are
working with the Illinois Department
of Conservation to bring this early
part of Illinois’ history back to life.

The Surveys efforts in preserving
our natural — and national — heritage
are not restricted to work in Illinois.

At the Gettysburg National Military
Park, the Water Survey's staff is
investigating ways to save that well-
known battlefield’s famous monuments
from the effects of airborne acidic
pollutants.

Protection of the environment is
one of the most important missions of
the Surveys. In this issue you will find
two good examples of their work in
that area: research by the National
History Survey on endangered plant
species and the work of the Geological
Survey in preventing expensive damage
from mine subsidence.

The Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, a group of lay friends of the
Surveys, brings you this magazine as one
way of telling Illinois citizens about the
wealth of expertise they have in their
three Scientific Surveys.

Please join me in becoming a
member of the Society, a 501(c)3 tax
exempt organization. Take a little time
now to fill out the membership card in
this issue and join me in becoming a
“friend” of our invaluable, hardworking
Survey scientists.

Sincerely,

Aa dt Shwe ey

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

The Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys

Scale of Contributions

Personal Memberships
Founding
Contributing

Family
Individual

$1,000 per year
100 per year
50 per year
25 per yeat

Corporate/Business
Memberships

Founding
Benefactor
Associate
Sponsor

$10,000 per yeat
5,000 per yeat
1,000 per year
500 per year

Patron 250 per yeat

Exploring Inner Space

‘

The Superconducting Super Collider
(SSC), recently approved by the White
House and now under scrutiny in Con-
gress, will be the world’s most powerful
particle accelerator, a scientific instru-
ment for exploring the basic structure
of nature. Analogous to a telescope for
examining stars, the SSC will allow
scientists to “see” inner space — the
subatomic particles (quarks, gluons and
bosons) — that hold the universe
together.

Simply put, the SSC will be an atom
smasher unlike any other atom smasher
that exists today. Fermilab’s Tevatron in
northern Illinois is now the most power
ful accelerator in the world. The Tevatron
accelerates proton and antiproton beams
to one willion electron volts (1TeV) and
then smashes them together, creating
energy and subatomic debris used by
scientists to examine subatomic particle
structure,

When constructed, the SSC will
accelerate protons to 20 trillion
electron volts (20 TeV), colliding these
beams at nearly the speed of light. As
the beams collide and the protons smash
together, they release huge amounts of
energy and reveal new particles to
waiting physicists. The higher the
energy of the beams, the greater the
force of collision, the more likely new
particles will reveal themselves. Giving
physicists a larger machine will allow
them to study smaller and smaller
particles.

Many states are vying for the $4.4
billion SSC, Illinois among them, with
Fermilab as the proposed site. Illinois is
proposing an oval-shaped ring 53 miles in
circumference buried below northern
Illinois cornfields. The main tunnel,
about 10 feet in diameter, would be
carved from bedrock 300-500 feet under
ground. Three smaller accelerators at

4

Fermilab would be uSed.fo boost the
energy Of the-particlesbefore they

are injected into the main ring, a

system that could result in construction
savings of up to $500 million. Inside the
main tunnel 6,000 to 8,000 supercooled
electromagnets will bend and focus the
proton beams, keeping them in a cir-
cular orbit. Along the ring, six experi-
mental halls will house huge electronic
detectors designed to measure the effects
of the colliding beams.

Technology associated
with accelerators has
already yielded some
notable economic
successes. Most homes
already have a number
of accelerators.

The SSC is a collider, not a fixed-
target accelerator. In a collider, two
counter-rotating beams collide head-on
in intersecting regions located along
their path. A collider allows virtually all
the combined energy from the colliding
particles to be available for creation of
new matter This is hot the case with a
fixed-target machine, where most of the
energy from the projectile particle is
wasted in forward motion of the collision
products.

Why an SSC?

The first blow came in 1982. American
scientists scoffed at the European physics
consortiun’’s (CERN ) decision to ram

protons and antiprotons together in their
Super Proton Synchroton. But the
experiment succeeded. In 1983 Carlo
Rubbia and Simon Van der Meer and
their CERN colleagues discovered

three new particles, positive and
negative bosons called the W's and a
neutral boson known as the Z-zero. In
1984 Rubbia and his associates brought
home the Nobel Prize for physics. The
American scientific community had lost
its preeminence in high energy physics.

Beyond the somewhat parochial goal
of recouping America’s high energy
physics prestige, the SSC will help
scientists to discover the fundamental
laws of nature. What are the basic forms
of matter? What is energy? How can they
be changed from one to another? The
high energy densities in the SSC’s
collisions cannot be found anywhere
else in the universe. In the context of-
the Big Bang theory, such temperatures
only existed in the birth pangs of the
universe. In a very real sense, the SSC
brings us back to our “roots.”

New technologies are a third and
compelling reason for constructing tie
SSC. Technology associated with accelera
tors has already yielded some notable
economic successes. Most homes already
have a number of accelerators. A tele-
vision is an electron accelerator A micro
wave oven contains a khystron (a special
kind of electron accelerator) which
makes the microwaves which do the
heating. The basic indusuy of manufactur
ing superconducting wire catalyzed a new
medical industry and diagnostic tool that
complements the use of X-rays. Magnetic
resonance imagers study the body when
a patient is placed in a magnetic field
using a superconducting magnet.

Superconductivity in general is
especially promising because it conducts
electricity with zero resistance. Motors

and generators using superconducting
components would be smaller and more
efficient, losing less electrical energy

as waste heat. Other possible by-products
of superconducting energy include:

Magnetically-levitated trains using
superconducting magnets to support the
rain and to serve as a prc pulsic MM SOUICE.
Japan is even now working on a model.

Fusion energy experiments using
superconducting magnets are underway
at Oak Ridge and Livemore labs.

Superconducting transmission lines
could help in locating power facilities
away from densely populated areas.

Water purification, magnetic ore
separation, and more.

‘Two other practical applications from
accelerator technology include parallel
processing in computer design,
enabling the manipulation of large
quantities of needed data; and the large
scale production of antimatter thought of
as critical to rocket engines for
interstellar travel.

The Bottom Line

There are good reasons why Illinois and
upwards of 28 other states are submitting
bids to the U.S. Department of Energy to

host the SSC: 8,000 construction and
related local jobs annually, 3,000
permanent positions at the site, $1.5
billion in additional real disposable
personal income, between $115 and
$140 million annually in state tax
revenues, and international prestige.

Each state is trying to make its
package as attractive as possible. Because
it already hosts Fermilab and the Tevatron,
Illinois can offer federal officials up to
$1, 2 billion in savings by using the Teva
tron as an injection system. Widely

Illinois Geological Survey

acknowledged as one of the leading
states in the SSC race, Illinois has
already spent $4.5 million on feasibility
studies, and additional Build Illinois
funds are available. Illinois’ three
Scientific Surveys and the State Museum,
under the Department of Energy and
Natural Resources, have conducted
extensive preliminary siting studies
Private support has come from SSC For
Illinois, a not-for-profit foundation

The other leaders in the SSC race are:

¢ Arizona: two sites and significant
private support
¢ California: two sites proposed, a
strong lobbying effort, a press report
of a $2 billion incentive package, and
Opposition from agricultural interests
Colorado: two sites proposed,
good tunneling formation, and talk of
a coalition with other western states.
Idaho: one site at the National
Engineering Laboratory, the advantages
of a large block of federal land and the
disadvantage of a remote location.
New York: several sites mentioned
and the advantage of cheap hydro
electric power from Canada
North Carolina: one site north
of Durham, a good track record in
high tech with Research Triangle Park
nearby, but some controversy about
vibrations from

micro-seismic Noise
the coastline.
Ohio: one site near Columbus, $1!
million in studies, and a substantial
effort by the Ohio Geological Survey
Texas: probably two sites, a

strong lobbying effort and a reported
$1 billion in incentives

Schematic of a possible layout for the SSC
injection system ts drawn to scale, the six experimental halls and other componen nN
are not In the detail of the detector, the beam pipe and its magn

which will

be rouvhly 100 kilometers ti circunitlerence

18 AVE SPOT OLVCTSTZ

¢ Utah: two sites and a proposed
cut-and-fill construction technique.

« Washington: one site west of
Spokane, cheap power and talk of a
coalition with Oregon and Idaho.

Siting It Safely

Illinois’ three Scientific Surveys — the
Geological, Natural History and Water
Surveys — along with the State Museum
have been involved in intensive investi-
gations into the environmental and geo-
logical feasibility of the proposed
Fermilab site for the SSC. This work
becomes even more valuable as the
states receive clear signals from the
federal government that a full environ-
mental impact statement will be required.

Scientists at the Hlinois Geological
Survey (IGS) found that the bedrock
in northeastern Illinois looked promising
for the SSC ring. Seismic activity in the
area is minimal. Only seven earthquakes
have been centered in northern Illinois
since 1804, and none was large enough
to do damage to manmade structures.
Radiation from a tunnel constructed
in bedrock 300 to 500 feet below land
surface would be virtually non-existent.
Projected groundwater inflow into the
tunnel would be very low.

The first part of a test drilling
program was conducted by a team of
IGS scientists headed by Dr John
Kempton in the fall of 1984 to determine
the type, depth and engineering
properties of the bedrock and overlying
glacial materials. 17 holes were drilled
to a depth of 50 feet below the proposed
tunnel on a regional basis since the exact
dimensions of the SSC ring had not yet
been determined by the SSC Design
Group. Results confirmed previously
available data: sound geology and
excellent conditions for tunneling.

Test holes 18 to 30 feet were drilled
from last spring to December, 1986,
based upon the now confirmed 53-mile
ring size. Three larger, eight-inch
diameter holes were also drilled to
depths of 900 to 1100 feet. These holes
gave IGS scientists data on the strength
of the rock, natural radioactivity back-
ground, groundwater levels and flow,
vibration velocity and very precise
information on where the rock changes.
These studies were augmented by
seismic refraction and reflection sur
veys. 200 miles of refraction surveys in
the SSC corridor verified the depth to
bedrock. A test line reflection profile
of 3!2 miles allowed the scientists to
see the surface changes in the bedrock.

Overall the results confirmed that
the project area is underlain with thick,

(6)

homogenous rock that allows safe, cost-
effective tunneling. Water seepage into
the tunnel area and impact on aquifers
and water resources will be minimal.

Other potential environmental
impacts were investigated by a team of
Survey and State Museum scientists under
the leadership of Dr. David Gross of
the Geological Survey.

The State Museum looked at
archaeological and paleontological
resources in the area, generating maps
of site location probability. Most sites
can be avoided, and if that is not
possible, excavated and properly
recorded.

The Natural History Survey
examined soil maps, identified
endangered or threatened species and
inventoried natural areas. The largest
natural area near the site, of course, is
the one located in the center of the
Fermilab ring.

Flood hazard areas were examined
by the Water Survey. Maps delineating
100 year floodplains will facilitate the

The SSC Timetable

best siting of access shafts and buildings
in the ring.

Armed with this data, the
Geological Survey recently published
“The SSC Environmental Screening
Atlas,” a color atlas that describes
what the scientists know about the
proposed SSC site.

Dr. David Gross summed up the
state of the State of Illinois
knowledge: “The SSC landscape is
well-known. We have the data needed
and the Department of Energy and
Natural Resources has the expertise
to use it.”

Dr: John Kempton is Senior Geologist

at the Illinois Geological Survey and is
leader of the SSC Geological Task Force.
Dr, David Gross is Geologist and Head
of the Environmental Studies and Assess-
ment Section at the Illinois Geological
Survey and leader of the SSC Environ-
mental Screening Task Force. They have
been working on the SSC project for
Jour years.

SSC proposals from states due to U.S. DOE

US. DOE review of proposals to see
which are “responsive”

September, 1987

September, 1987

DOE sends responsive proposals to independent
panel of the National Academy of Sciences, National

Academy of Engineers

October, 1987

NAS NAE panel reviews proposals and returns “short

December 1, 1987

list” of qualified state sites (possibly 6) to DOE

DOE announces 6 finalists and asks for additional

data, especially environmental data

December, 1987

Site winner is announced pending satisfactory

environmental impact statement (EIS)

Single EIS should be completed with state's reasonable

alternatives, public hearings held

Confirmation of site winner

July 1, 1988

August 1, 1988

January, 1989,

Collider construction

February, 1989 —

Project completion

1996

The Erosion of History
at Gettysburg

by William A Rooney

The torrent of battle washed over the
small town of Gettysburg on the first
three days of July, 1863, leaving 6,000
dead and 21,000 wounded and dying.

Now the scene is a gentle green country-

side that would certainly have been
endorsed by Illinois poet Carl Sandburg’s
poem Grass: “Shovel them under and
let me work.” The soft green hills

are dotted with markers of every kind —
brigade markers, memorials, and monu-
ments to the Civil War heroes who
fought there. Unhappily, these
monuments are suffering.

On the 3,500 acres of the
Gettysburg National Military Park, there
are 1,320 monuments, plaques, markers,
statues and memorials. They are bronze,
marble and various types of stone. Some
of them were erected on this historic
battlefield almost immediately after the
battle ended on July 3, 1863. Others have
been installed as recently as this year.
All are subject to deterioration from wet
and dry deposition of airborne acidic
pollutants.

Donald A. Dolske of the
Atmospheric Chemistry Section of the
Illinois Water (IWS) has undertaken a
study for the National Park Service to
provide detailed information on the
chemistry of the rainfall and its effects
on Park monuments. The study also is
looking at pollutant deposits that
accumulate on monuments during the
periods between rains. Dolske is
seeking an answer to the question
of what these pollutant accumula
tions do to marble and bronze when
combined with acidic rain. This is
particularly critical since the

Gettysburg battlefield is located in
southeastern Pennsylvania, an area
which receives the most acidic rainfall
in the country.

Deterioration of the stone and
metal of the Gettysburg monuments is
not new. The burning of coal and wood
produced pollutants which damaged
monuments soon after they were first
set in place shortly after the battle.

In charge of the site in the 1880's, US

North Carolina monument to ber
Confederate soldiers. This is on
Confederate line on Seminary Ridge at
Gettysburg Monument ts by noted
sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who with his
son sculpted figures on Mount
Rushmore.

|

Runoff collector on Gettyshire
monwunent

Tom Rice

Iinois Water Survey

Army authorities noted the deterioration
of the marble, and an order was issued
stating that future monuments had to
be made of granite.

Dolske has designed a research
project to study eight of the battle
field's monuments. Four of the monu
ments are bronze — three brigade
markers of “U.S. Standard Bronze” and
a bust of General C.T. Collins. Four
marble monuments are also being
studied. Two are obelisks and two are
figures on the Soldiers National
Monument. More monument samples
will be selected for study as the
research continues. As might be
expected, because of the swirling
nature of the battle, monuments are
at many elevations and face virtually
every point of the compass, giving them
a host of different exposures to wind,
sun and rain.

The IWS researcher has designed
runoff collectors which channel rain
that has reacted with the surface of the
monuments. Each collection bottle is
cleaned and flushed before it is in
stalled. Classic sculpture almost always
incorporates some unnoticed pathways
for water to run off Very few such
sculptures are designed in a way that
allows water to pool unless so intended
Accordingly, water flows off garment folds
and body parts. This simplifies the place
ment of some runoff collectors. As a
control, additional rain collectors are
set up to catch ambient precipitation

All of the collectors are in place
during a rain event. Immediately alter
rainfall, samples are removed, sealed
and shipped to the Water Survey in
Champaign for processing and analysis
Once the samples have been collecte

the collection bottles are removed,
cleaned and stored until the next
rainstorm appears on the horizon. When
the forecast is for rain, the instru-
ments are brought out and put in place
on the study monuments. If the rain
does not begin within twelve hours,
the cleaning process is repeated.

Up to December 1986, seven sets
of runoff samples, only about half
the number expected, had been col-
lected and sent to IWS labs for pro-
cessing. An extended dry period at the
battlefield during the summer contti-
buted to the small number of samples.
Although extensive analysis of these
samples has been undertaken and some
interesting results recorded, final
conclusions have not been reached
because of the relatively small data
base. Refinement of rainwater collection
methods continues.

IWS has been aided in this project
by the National Atmospheric Deposition
Program network, which has several sites
in southeastern Pennsylvania. Penn State
University operates an acid rain monitor.
ing station at the Eisenhower National
Historic Site adjacent to the Park.
National Park staff and volunteer site
operators have also contributed to the
study.

The ultimate findings of the research
will contribute to a greater worldwide

Gethsburg National Military Park,
December 1986

understanding of what is happening to
outdoor works of art. The National Park
Service staff at Gettysburg, in its

visual assessment of the monuments
deterioration, says that damage has
become much worse recently. An assess-
ment like this may be inaccurate,
however, for several reasons. One is

that deterioration may have been going
on in ways unnoticeable to the human

Rain falling from the
trees themselves may be
a contributing factor to
the deterioration of
the monuments.

eye for many years. Then the damage
bursts into the open and becomes
clearly visible.

Consideration must also be given to
the change in foliage that has occurred
in the Park since the days of the battle
124 years ago. The trees and shrubs
that grew on the battlefield then are in
no way comparable in size to the flora
growing on the site now. The careful
nurturing of the trees on the battlefield
is a tribute to the care that has been
given to “this hallowed ground” in the
last century and a quarter. Now those
trees may have something else to say
about the condition of the monuments.

Rain falling from the trees
themselves may be a contributing factor
to the deterioration of the monuments.
Acid rain leaches organic materials from
battlefield foliage. These organic
materials provide nutrients for micro-
organisms which grow upon the surfaces
of the monuments and discolor their
surface. This is particularly a problem
with monuments made of stone.

Finally, the sad fact is that in recent
years vandalism is causing as much or
more damage to the battlefield’s monu-
ments as acid rain or other natural
forces. So extensive has vandalism
become that the National Park Service
in Gettysburg is launching an educa-
tional program to combat this form of
damage.

Donald A. Dolske is a research scientist
with the Atmostpheric Chemistry section
of the Illinois Water Survey and has been
with the Survey for six years.

William Rooney is a former advertising
executive and communications con-
sultant. His lifelong interest in
architecture prompted him to author a
book, Architectural Ornamentation
in Chicago, which was published in
1984.

Don Dolske

The Reincarnation
of the I & M

by James Krobe, Jr:

In its heyday in the mid-1800s, it ranked

second in importance only to the Erie
Canal among commercial waterways in
the US. But the heyday of the Illinois
and Michigan Canal, which connected
the bustling docks of Chicago with
river ports along the Illinois and
Mississippi, didn’t last long. The rail-
roads quickly took over much of the
canal traffic in both freight and pas-
sengers. Commercial operations were
halted altogether in 1933, and the
canal — 60 feet wide at the surface
along most of its length, flanked on
both sides by levees and towpaths
built in its 270-foot rightofway —
was abandoned.

The I & M Canal has lain largely
derelict in the half-century since its
official closing. Most of the upstream
reach of the canal, between its original
terminus in the Bridgeport district of
Chicago and the suburb of Summit, has
carried commuters rather than canal
boats since the Stevenson Expressway
(1-55) was built on its right-of-way, The

The problem is that parts

of the canal sometimes
have no water in them
at all. Land use and

drainage patterns along
the canal have been

permanently altered.

rest of the canal’s more than 96-mile
length — from Lockport past Ottawa and

Joliet to its western terminus at LaSalle —

is a canal in name only.

Today, the canal has a chance for a
second life. The recreational potential
of the canal, with its many miles of
water and shaded towpaths so near the
state's metropolitan center, was recog
nized in the 1940s. In the early 1970s,
the Illinois Department of Conservation
prepared a master plan for the revitali
zation of various downstream reaches of
the canal as sites for hiking, biking,
camping, and tourism; more recently, the

federal government designated the sur
viving stretches of the canal as a unique
Natural Heritage Corridor. Public parks
and trails which already dot the canal
have been augmented by private restora-
tion projects. Chief among these is the
restoration of the supply depot and
warehouse near the old Lock #1 in
Lockport. Dedicated in the spring of
1987, the Gaylord building houses a
restaurant, a DOC visitors center, and
a gallery of the Illinois State Museum.
Much of the revitalized canal’s
future, like its past, depends on boating,
albeit of a kind different from the old
cargo craft. The use of all or parts of
the canal as a recreational waterway
capable of carrying canoes or small
motorcraft has been a dream of canal
boosters for years. With that end in
mind, DOC in 1986 proposed a co
operative study with the Illinois
State Water Survey which would examine
the present hydrology of the basin, more
specifically, the hydraulics of the flow
within the reach between Locks 1 and 2
near Lockport. The aim of the study is
to find ways to maintain a minimum of

water level there for recreational use,
at least during the warmer months.
That study has not yet been funded.
But previous studies by SWS experts on
other reaches of the canal suggest some
of the problems such a project might
face. When it was completed in 1848, the
canal carried six feet of water. Nani
Bhowmik, a public engineer with the
SWS Surface Water Section who has made
preliminary investigations of the canal’s
hydrology, explains. “The old barges
needed 4 to 6 feet of water, but now
we probably wouldn't need that much.”
The problem is that parts of the
canal sometimes have no water in them
at all. Land use and drainage patterns
along the canal have been permanently
altered. “There used to be surface
drainage into the canal which helped

maintain its water level,” explains
Bhowmik. That water was delivered in
part via feeder canals which drew upon
the nearby Fox, Calumet, and Kankakee
rivers. That system was far from perfect
even when it was new. (An extended
drought in 1853 nearly shut down
traffic. ) Today it works hardly at all.
Intensive farming has boosted the flow
of sediments into the canal, for
example. “I suspect that 75 percent of
the original inlets are full of sand and
sediments,” Bhowmik says. “Water is
not coming into the canal like it used
to.” The result is standing, stagnant
water in some places, and no water at
all in others.

Restoring water to the canal would
be fairly simple. Bhowmik suggests the

possibility of pumping water from under

Gaylord Building in Lockport under reconstruction.

10

By
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Illinois Water Survey

ground reservoirs along the Illinois
River, “induced infiltration, in effect.”
Restoring the canal’s water-carrying
capacity will be harder The same inflows
of silt which clogged canal inlets have
clogged the canal itself Sedimentation
is especially troublesome, since these
days the canal’s main cargo is water.
The canal serves as a storm water
drainage system. The old system of 17
locks retarded the flow of canal water,
creating a series of stepladderlike pools
descending to the Illinois. Those locks
are dilapidated or destroyed. “Basically,
there's a creek running through the
canal,” explains John Comerio of DOC’s
planning staff. Sedimentation of the canal
bottom and the poor repair of canal
walls in some reaches (near the town
of Seneca, for example) have meant that
storm water quickly fills, then spills over
the canal banks, flooding adjacent
property.

Dredging clogged canal sections and
repairing breached banks would increase
the flow of flood water through the
canal. Damming the canal to create a
stable water pool for boating would
obstruct that flow. Instead of being
clogged with mud, such a pool would
be in effect clogged with water. Its
capacity to accommodate additional
water thus reduced, such sections
would also quickly overtop their banks
during storms. Releasing excess water
would protect property adjacent to the
pool from flooding, but only by increas-
ing the risk of flooding vulnerable areas
downstream.

A flow control system capable of
serving both boating and flood protec
tion will require some complex engineer
ing. Says DOC’s Comerio, “It’s going to
be tricky and it’s going to be costh:

But we don't want to do something on
the state-owned part of the canal which
might impact local communities.”

Detailed answers to this engineering
dilemma must await further study.
Bhowmik is confident those answers
can be found. He foresees a revitalized
Illinois and Michigan Canal which will
rival the canals of Europe. “There's a
tremendous amount of work to be
done,’ Bhowmik concedes. “But if it
is done properly, it will be a very
natural looking canal.”

Nani Bhowmik, Principal Scientist with
the Surface Water Section of the State
Water Survey; bolds a Ph.D. in civil
engineering. An 18-year veteran of the
Survey; be specializes in the impact of
sedimentation on lakes and rivers

Raiders of the Lost Worts

“Botanical detective work,” is the
phrase Mary Kay Solecki uses to describe
the work now underway by her and five
fellow scientists of the Natural History
Survey (NHS) to find out whether more
than 80 species of rare plants recognized
as rare in Illinois a decade ago still
survive. 4
The search takes plant hun- ~~~
ters from the tops of river bluffs to the
bottoms of smelly bogs, and along the
way they must contend with chiggers,
mud, and the sometimes vague geo-
graphical references left by their prede
cessors. Time is a factor too. The project
began in January, 1987 and will continue

only through the current growing season.

Researchers typically have only two or
three days to locate each plant popula-
tion on their list, a process which often
is like finding a needle in a hayfield.
The hunt has been undertaken as
part of an effort to update the official
list of plant species which are endangered
and threatened in Illinois, first published
in 1980. The rare plants which survived
to be included on that first list often
did so because they thrive in out-ofthe
way comers of the state, which makes
finding them difficult. A typical search
begins not in the field but in the herb
arium. The locations of past collections
of each species are noted, and sub
sequent field explorations are made to
confirm their continued presence.
Extant populations of the rarer species
may consist of as few as a dozen
individual plants, although Solecki
found a thriving population of some
7,000 Tradescantia bracteata, or
prairie spiderwort, along one old railroad
track in Greene County. Thriving but
still endangered; the site is unsecured,
and those plants could be destroyed by

Dog-eared violet

(Erythronium mesochoreum )

a bulldozer weed killer in minutes.

Many Illinoisans might find it odd
that the counties which harbor the
highest number of endangered and
threatened species are among the most
heavily urbanized in the state. Cook
County, for instance, is home to 135
species on the Illinois list, and Lake
County 116. The reason is that the
northeastern counties (and to some
extent counties of the far southern
reaches of the state ) boasted a richer
than-average number of species to begin
with. “Diversity of habitat is the
reason,” explains Kenneth Robertson,
botanist with the NHS Section on Botany
and Plant Pathology.

“In the northeastern counties you've

got sand prairies and beach areas,
alkaline fens and acid bogs, exposed
glacial moraines, gravel prairies, and
savannah. In the southern part of the
state you've got sandstone outcrops

Ken Robertson

along the Mississippi, for example, and

southern-type c yastal cypress swamps.

Most of the rest of the state was

prairie, and while prairies are very

interesting, they dont have that many

species.”

Those former prairies have

also been especially vulnerable
to the destructive impact of agriculture.
Plowing, grazing, and herbicide use
has meant that many farm counties
count as few as five endangered or
threatened plant species within their
borders. Indeed, in terms of their
botanical integrity at any rate, many

© of Illinois rural counties are more
“developed” than its urban and
suburban ones.

The comprehensiveness of any such
listing depends on the intensity of the
collection efforts by field botanists. Even
the 128 years the NHS scientists have
spent trudging the fields and forests of
Illinois has not been time enough to
visit every one of its nearly 36 million
acres. “The conventional wisdom is that
Illinois has been heavily botanized,” says
Solecki, an Assistant Research Biologist
with the Section of Faunistics and
Insect Identification. But rare plant
species are being discovered — and
rediscovered — all the time, at a rate
of roughly ten a year. Some of these
species were not known to occur in
Illinois. (Enthromitn meso
chorewm, or dog-eared violet, first
discovered by Robertson in Macoupin
County in 1981, is one such plant. )
Others were found in new locales after
having been thought extirpated; the
Paspalum dissectum, or bead grass,
found by NHS botanist Eric Ulaszek in
Williamson County, was last collected in
the state in 1893

Given the hopelessness of botaniz-
ing a state the size of Illinois, compilers
of the endangered plant list relied on
herbarium records for information about
the incidence of many rare plants. The
method has its uncertainties, as Susan
Lauzon, Endangered Species Praogram
Coordinator for the Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation explains. “Ifa
plant hasn't been reported recently, is
it because it has suffered a decline in
population? Or is it just that people are
not collecting it?” The field >».
investigations required by the
updating will help answer such
questions.

The state’s list of endangered and
threatened plant species is more than a
botanical curiosity. Both state and
federal laws (there is a federal
endangered list as well) authorize the
redesign, even the cancellation of
certain construction projects which
might imperil populations of recognized
rare species. The Illinois list was com-
piled under the requirements of the
state’s 1972 Endangered Species
Protection Act, and included 312
endangered species and another
52 thought to be threatened. The up-
dating now underway is the first re-
quired under a 1986 amendment to that
act which requires review and revision
of the list every five years.

Armed with official endangered
status, even a tiny plant such as
the purple fringed orchid (Habernaria
psychodes ) can stop a bulldozer. With
projects costing millions of dollars
potentially at stake, says Robertson, “It's
not good to have names on the list that
we can't legally justify”

Recommendations about additions
to or deletions from the state's
official endangered plant species list
are made by the advisory committee on
plants to the Illinois Endangered
Species Protection Board, which makes
the final decision. Robertson is a
member of that advisory committee.
“Things we can't find this year,” he
says of the short list of species to be
confirmed, “the committee will have to
decide on a species-by-species basis.”

Given the pace of habitat destruc-
tion, plant species are less likely to be
taken off the list because they are no
longer endangered than because they

are no longer there. Robertson estimates
that as few as one-fourth of the species
being sought during this season's up-
dating will be found to be still present
in the state. “If we don't find them at
their historical locations,” notes Solecki,
“there's a good chance that they must
be considered extirpated in Illinois.”
Robertson offers an example: “Say a plant
has been found in the past only in the

Purple fringed orchid

wet prairie of Champaign County, and
we know that all the natural wet prairie
in Champaign County has been des-
troyed. We would have to assume that
the plant has probably been destroyed
too.”

Other populations of species
thought lost might persist unobserved
at other Illinois sites. Solecki offers
the example of a cinquetfoil which was
collected by Survey staff in the early

Armed with official
endangered status, even
a tiny plant such as the
purple fringed orchid
can stop a bulldozer.

1970s from a half-mile stretch of the
Mississippi in Union County. A recent
return trip failed to find it. “T could

have expanded my search up and down
the whole Illinois shore of the Missis
sippi, -says Solecki, explaining that
similar habitat tend to harbor similar
communities of plants. “But I just don't
have the time.”

Elvin Warrick

(Habenaria psychodes)

Why bother protecting such species
at all? Species which are rare in Illinois
are (with few exceptions ) not rare in
other parts of the US. As John Taft,
Assistant Research Biologist with the
Section on Botany and Plant Pathology,
explains, “Most endangered species in
Illinois are plentiful elsewhere. We have
just a handful of near-endemics.” At
issue is not their extinction, in short, but
their extirpation from that part of their
natural ranges which includes Illinois.

However, Taft and his colleagues
agree that while nature as a whole
might not lose from such disappear
ances, Illinois certainly would. The
beauty of many endangered plants (the
Illinois list included no fewer than 17
members of the orchid family, for
example ) is one argument for their
preservation. So is the fact that such
plants still have much to teach us. The
native plant communities of which they
are a part provide ecological bench-
marks by which environmental change
may be measured. And the plants them-
selves could provide everything from
new medicines to genes capable of
improving the disease resistance of
crops.

Recording the existence of
endangered species is a nécessary first
step toward not only their preservation
but ours. “In terms of ecology,” warms
Taft, “we're leaving a far more sterile
environment for the future to exist in.”

Dr Kenneth Rk. Robertson is a Botanist
and Professional Scientist in the Botany
and Plant Pathology Section at the
Illinois Natural History Survey and
holds an affiliate appointment with the
Department of Plant Biology at the
University of Illinois.

Mary Kay Solecki is Assistant Research
Biologist with the Section of Faunistics
and Insect Indenification. John Taft is
Assistant Research Biologist with the
Section of Botany and Plant Pathology:
Other investigators on the project are
Philip Burton, Technical Research
biologist, and David Ketzner, Assistant
Research Biologist, both with the
botany section, and Eric Ulaszek,
Assistant Research Biologist with the

faunistics section.

@

HA

Farming Fish

by James Krohbe Jr;

If predictions by scientists of the Natural
History Survey's Aquatic Biology Section
prove correct, the term “farm pond”
will have a new and profitable meaning
as Illinois agriculture enters its third
century. Aquaculture is the production
of food animals such as fish and crusta-
ceans in ponds. In parts of the country
aquaculture already is a sizeable industry
supplying restaurants with such staples
of the menu as catfish and rainbow trout.
[llinoisans eat a lot of fish and have a lot
of ponds - more than 85,000 of them on
farms alone. Why not use one to produce
the other?

That question was asked more than
a decade ago by researchers such as Dr.
Homer Buck (recently retired) at the
Sam A. Parr Fisheries Research Center,
an NHS field station near Kinmundy. The
idea of fish polyculture was then new to
Illinois, but the Chinese had been doing
it for centuries. The technique requires
creation of a balanced food chain in the
pond, with organic matter such as manure
supplied as food for the bottom of the

chain and food fish such as carp
harvested from the top.

The carp family is especially valuable
in such systems because of the versatility
of their appetites. Some species feed on
phytoplankton, others on algae, others
on aquatic plants. “The Chinese may use
eight different kinds of carp,” explains
Robert Gorden, head of the Aquatic
Biology section, “each feeding at a
different trophic level of the food chain:
Early experiments in Illinois also grew
carp, in combination with Malaysian
prawns, using raw manure as the feed
source. (Illinois hogs are walking

Illinoisans eat a lot of fish
and have a lot of ponds -
more than 85,000 of them
on farms alone. Why not
use one to produce the
other?

aquaculture feed factories. )

Says Gorden, “We're encouraged
that this type of aquaculture is feasible
in terms of productivity and safety. We can
produce 3-4,000 pounds of carp per acre
of pond per year in Illinois” - good yields
considering that Illinois winters make
the fish-growing season shorter than in
the South. However, adds Gorden, “We
are not encouraged in terms of markets
and economic feasibility.” Carp and prawn
are popular foods in the Orient, but they
are not to the taste of the typical Mid
westerner, who associates the former
with the common carp which infests the
region's streams and lakes. (There is a
growing market for fresh carp among
Illinois Asian population, especially in
Chicago; for the moment that demand is
being met by carp taken from rivers by
commercial fishermen. ) Soybeans are
another nutritious food which in their
original form leave a bad taste in most
people's mouths; as was the case with
the soybean, the commercial future of
carp may depend on finding ways to use
it as an ingredient in processed tood
products such as generic “fish sticks

Collecting fish in the weir:

Can species more appealing to the
US. palate also be raised by Illinois
aquaculturists? Catfish is the nation’s top
aquaculture product, but cool-water fish
such as bass and crappie have com-
mercial potential as well; unlike the
common carp they enjoy what one
Kinmundy staffer politely describes as
“a good reputation” among consumers.
So do crayfish, at least among consumers
who've tried them. “Crayfish are just as
good tasting as shrimp,” Gorden says.
“They offer a much better market than
carp,” both as a table delicacy (which
sells fresh for as much as $9 a pound)
and as fish bait. Proof can be seen in
Louisiana and Texas, where commercial
crayfish ponds cover tens of thousands
of acres.

Crayfish in the South are typically
grown in monoculture systems from
which they are the sole food animal
harvested. “In a small setting such as a
farm, polyculture has many advantages,”
explains Paul Brown, a Texan who
recently brought knowledge of the
commercial catfish industry to the staff
at Kinmundy. “But for production on an
industry scale, I'm a proponent of
monoculture: Catfish are raised in
monoculture ponds. However, it is widely
assumed that Illinois weather makes cat
fish production uneconomical because
of shorter growing seasons and problems
with oxygen depletion in iced-over

14

ponds. Coolwater species are naturally
more suited to the local climate. Hybrids
of both the striped bass and the crappie
are especially promising. Both have been
raised in test ponds at Kinmundy as game
fish; Brown plans to test their suitability
for more intensive production as food
fish.

For the moment, what people eat is
less interesting a question for Survey
researchers than what fish and crusta-
ceans eat. As Brown explains, “Feed costs
in pond culture comprise at least 50
percent of production costs.’ Finding a
high-efficiency low-cost feed for each
animal is crucial to the economics of any
future Illinois aquaculture industry. Carp,
for instance, do well in manure-fed
polyculture ponds, but as Gorden
explains, “Not all animals are going to
eat manures.’ Catfish thrive on relatively
inexpensive commercial feeds made from
plants (chiefly corn and soybeans ) but
such feeds do not provide other species
with enough digestible protein. What
feeds might? That isn't clear. Brown is
preparing feeding trials of the new bass
and crappie hybrids to find out, because,
“We don't know the optimum feed for
the critters yet”

Crayfish are less finicky, and indeed
in southern ponds often are left to feed
on naturally occurring aquatic plants such
as alligator weed. Gorden is conducting
tests Of an innovative process which

Natural History Survey

converts wheat straw from a low-protein
waste into a high-protein feed source.
Straw is treated with a solution of
hydrogen peroxide and sodium peroxide,
then inoculated with different consortia
of bacteria.

The process breaks down the tough,
fibrous cellulosic fibers, making the the
straw more digestible. Tests on ruminant
animals such as beef cattle have had
promising results. The first phase of tests
of such processed straw as aquaculture
feeds monitored changes over a 7-day
period in caloric value and carbohydrate
and protein content of various batches
of straw. The next phase will be actual
feeding trials, beginning with test animals
in aquariums, followed by experiments
in largers tanks and ultimately full-sized
ponds.

Gorden has proposed a novel pilot
project in which two or more of the
more than sixty “borrow pits’ or road-
side ponds owned by the Illinois Depart
ment of Transportation might be used
to demonstrate the pond culture of
various species. In one proposed test,
stripe bass hybrids, crayfish, and grass
carp (which feed on algae and other
small aquatic plants ) would be raised in
polyculture systems; in another, bass
would be raised with monoculture
methods, including confinement of fish
in suspended cages - fish corrals - to
make sampling and harvest easier.
Experts in meat processing and farm
marketing and farm management from
the University of Illinois’ College of
Agriculture would assist Survey staff in
testing production techniques, identifying
parts of the state where aquaculture
might be economically optimum, devising
end products with maximum commercial
potential, and so on.

Much remains to be learned. But
Gorden enthusiastically describes aqua-
culture as an “industry ready for growth”
in Illinois. Brown agrees. “It's up to the
people of this state.” he says. “If they
want to raise fish up here, they can.”

Robert W. Gorden is Aquatic Biologist and
Head of the Section of Aquatic Biology
of the Natural History Survey: Holder of
a PhD. in Microbial Ecology; his principal
interest is in the function of heterotrophic
bacteria in aquatic ecologies. Paul
Brown is an Assistant Professional Scien-
list with the Survey; working at the Sam
A. Parr fish nursery: Trained at Texas
A&M University bis principal area of
interest is the nutrition of aquatic
animals. Other staff members contributing
lo the Survey's aquaculture research are
Dr Sherry Lewis and Di; Homer Buck.

It was a cruel fate that wrapped one of
geology’s greatest gifts to Illinois - its rich

beds of coal - in its equally rich farm soils.

The mining of coal from deposits near
the surface has effects (in the short term
at least) on farmland. But underground
mining affects the surface too. The
sinking, or subsidence, of the surface
which occurs when a coal seam which
once helped support it is removed can
be as much as three to five feet, more

_- tre o@ .

On Stilts

than enough to disrupt surface drainage
or destroy a house foundation.

Since most of Illinois’ coal lies
beneath farmable land, the potential
impact of subsidence from both past and
future mining on agricultural productivity
is worrisome. More than 700,000 acres of
Illinois have already been undermined,
and the total grows daily. Farmers have
an obvious interest in the problem. So
does the coal industry, which must

Ponds caused by longwall mining will be filled in and the farm land restored

to original production.

Paul DuMon

comply with stringent state and federal
regulations mandating the reclamation
of prime farmland disturbed by mining,
and the Illinois Department of Mines and
Minerals, which has major responsibility
for enforcing those regulations.

To learn more about subsidence
how it happens and where, as well as
how to predict it - the Illinois Mine
Subsidence Research Program, or IMSRP.,
was established in 1985. Funded jointly

More than a thousand
square miles of Illinois,
in effect, is standing on

stilts.

by the U.S. Bureau of Mines and the
Illinois Coal Development Board, the
program is a multiyear research effort
directed by Geological Survey staff in
collaboration with fellow scientists from
Southern Illinois University and the
University of Illinois, acting under the
guidance of technical and policy com
mittees drawn from the state's industry,
agriculture, and regulatory communities.
Paul B. DuMontelle, Illinois Geo
logical Survey (IGS) engineering geolo
gist, is director of the program
DuMontelle points out that much is
already known about mine subsidence
(A computerized bibliography assembled
in the early stages of the project contains
2,500 entries). The problem is that much
of that knowledge concerms states whos«

geologic conditions are very different
from Illinois’. The way coal is mined is
just as crucial as where it is mined. Until
very recently most underground mining
in Illinois was done using “room and
pillar” methods, in which substantial
amounts of the coal seam are left intact
in the form of bulky pillars. These pillars
support the mine roof and thus the over
burden of bedrock, glacial till, loess,
clays, and shale which lie in layers atop
that roof in depths from a few dozen to
several hundred feet. More than a
thousand square miles of Illinois, in
effect, is standing on stilts.

Done carefully, room and pillar
methods leave behind a relatively stable
support for the surface above. “Very little
subsidence would be expected to take
place,” says DuMontelle. Indeed, many
abandoned underground works haven't
budged in a century. But even well-built
mine works can and do give way in
places. Mining alters a subsurface geology
which has been intact for millions of
years. Materials which comprise the floors
of many mines, for example, derive their
strength from being stressed under the
confinement of material arrayed above
them; removing that material relieves that
stress and floors are thus weakened
along the edges of supporting coal
pillars. As the IGS staff put it in a 1981
“Environmental Geology Notes” about
subsidence, “If any coal has been
removed, subsidence will always be a
possibility.”

DuMontelle notes that there is yet
no standard system by which the collaspe
of room and pillar works can be pre-
dicted. “The characteristics of the floor
and the roof, even the coal itself, may
change within a few hundred yards”
Interestingly, sizeable subsidence usually
follows the collapse of a mine floor, not
its roof. Illinois mines tend to have solid
“tops” of limestone. But mine pillars
typically rest on an underclay whose
deformability under the effects of
moisture or stress allows the roof to sink,
intact, into the floor.

Chemical reactions (water is a
destructive force in an abandoned mine),
vibrations from blasting, the geometry of
the pillar, even imperfections in the coal
itself also affect the strength of the
support system. One of the aims of the
program is to collect data on the struc
tural qualities of floor materials from
actual mines so as to assemble a predic-
tive model for limited extraction mines
which takes into account relationships
between material, moisture, and other
factors. Data collection of this sort can

16

be dangerous; many old mines are
flooded, or filled with poisonous and
explosive gases, so researchers resort to
poking TV cameras down drill holes to
get a peek.

The stability of a room and pillar
system is purchased at a high price in
wasted coal. Roughly 50 percent of the
coal in the actual excavated areas or
panels is left behind in a room and
pillar mine, and recovery rates from the
mine as a whole may be as low as 35
percent. Using more modern high extrac-
tion techniques such as longwall mining,
all the coal in a panel can be removed.

Such methods make possible a more
complete recovery of an exploitable
resource, which is a boost for conser-
vation. “The more coal you can get from
one acre,’ DuMontelle explains, “the
fewer acres you need to mine’ And the

“Coal companies are
doing some amazing
things,” explains
DuMontelle. In places in
Southern Illinois one can
see houses sitting on
jacks, waiting until they
can be repositioned on
new foundations after an
expected subsidence
occurs.

fewer acres of surface land which need
to be exposed to subsidence damage.
The unsupported roof of a fully excavated
longwall panel is allowed to collapse as
part of what amounts to a planned
subsidence. (The process begins within
hours after the coal seam is removed,
and usually ends in a few weeks, although
it can take as long as two years. )

While subsidence from room and
pillar mining is unintended and thus
unpredictable, that from high extraction
methods is deliberate and predictable.
“You know you're going to affect the
surface,” explains DuMontelle of longwall
mining and its kin. “The question is,
how much?”

The whether and the when of subsi-
dence are functions of mining method
and underground geology, but the how
is largely a matter of distance between
mine and surface. The failure of the roofs
of shallow mines (less than 200 feet)

usually creates pit subsidence. Pits are
straight sided holes which appear
suddenly, sometimes as wide as 40 feet
(although most are barely half that) and
6 to 8 feet deep.

The collapse or sinkage of pillars in
deeper mines causes sag subsidence. A
sag is typically shallower than a pit
subsidence but affects a much wider area,
often an entire panel covering several
acres. The ground separates at the edges
of the sag and compresses in the middle
from the pressure of slumping soil. Sags
thus create both tensile and compression
forces at the surface which subject
structures to complex shearing and
bending strains.

The potential subsidence damage
to structures, including not just buildings
but roads and utility systems, are obvious.
Subsidence poses threats to the land itself
which are less vivid but still quite real.
The depressions formed by sags in farm
fields, for instance, collect water and
form shallow ponds after rains which
hamper crops. Agronomists working with
the IMSRP are studying the effects of such
wetting on corn yields affected by
previous high extraction mining. The
preliminary results show average annual
per acre yield reductions using the long-
wall method of roughly 4 percent, with
losses of 9 percent for the longwall
method in wetter years. Subsurface
drainage can be disturbed too; a common
effect of subsidence in Eastern coal states
is drought, as shallow aquifers are drained
away.

Some major Central Illinois aquifers,
such as the Mahomet Valley aquifer, lie
above mineable coal seams. DuMontelle
confesses, “Frankly, we don't know what
happens when an aquifer is subsided”
It could be contaminated by silts released
by ground movement; if such movements
Open pore spaces in the water-bearing
formations, aquifers might actually be
improved by increasing their capacity
and pumpability.

To some extent, the surface effects
of subsidence can be mitigated in
advance. “Coal companies are doing
some amazing things, explains
DuMontelle. In places in Southern Illinois
one can see houses sitting on jacks,
waiting until they can be repositioned
on new foundations after an expected
subisdence occurs. One major oil pipe-
line has been subsided three times with
out spilling a drop.

The predictability of subsidence
from high extraction mining makes the
planning of such mitigative efforts easier.
Mitigating subsidence impacts over farm
fields stretching across many acres, how
ever, is easier to plan than to pull off.
Surface property boundaries seldom
coincide with the boundaries of mines
below them. And if barrier pillars which
separate underground panels are left
standing, subsidence can leave the
surface crisscrossed with small dikes.
DuMontelle suggests that the way to
minimize the surface effects of subsi-

Block diagram of a typical

sag subsidence event:

dence is to do more of it rather than
less - by removing barrier pillars, for
example, so that subsidence is uniform
over a larger area.

The answers to the questions being
asked by the subsidence research
program are crucial to the economic
health of the Illinois coal industry “Tllinois
companies are shifting rapidly to longwall
methods to compete,” says the IMSRP
director. “If coal is to continue to be an
economically viable commodity in Illinois,
it will have to come from longwvall
mines.’

Paul DuMontelle, Geologist, is head of the
Earth Hazards and Engineering Geology
Section; his research interests include
mine subsidence, earthquakes, and
landslides. Technical Manager of the
Mine Subsidence Research Program its
kobert A: Bauer An Engineering Geologist
in the same section, Bauer is a specialist
in rock mechanics

Depth
(ft) (m)
@ @)
50 15
100 30
150 45

Compression zone

= = HA
ae ground surface B.

ISGS 1981

A. Wooden frame house in tension zone. Foundation has pulled apart and dropped
away from the superstructure in one corner.

B. Road in compression zone. Asphalt has buckled.

C. Brick house in tension zone. Walls, ceilings, and floors have cracked.

SURVEYING

ILLINOIS

GEOGRAMS

Earthquake Does Not Affect
SSC Site

The earthquake that occurred June 10,
1987, centered near Lawrenceville in
southern Illinois, does not affect the
State of Illinois’ bid for the Super-
conducting Super Collider (SSC). In
northeastern Illinois, the proposed site for
the SSC, the earthquake registered
between III (slight) and IV (moderate )

on the Modified Mercalli (MM) Intensity

Scale, according to Dr. Paul C. Heigold,
Illinois State Geological Survey lead
geophysicist. This seismic event equates
to 5.0 on the Richter Scale.

Unlike most other states, Illinois is
proposing to build the SSC tunnel in
solid bedrock, 300 to 500 feet below the
surface. Tunnels are far less susceptible
to damage from shaking than above-
ground structures. In a study of 71 case
histories, Dr. Charles Dowding of North-
western University found no damage
(defined as cracking or falling of rocks)
in tunnels below the ground surface
where Modified Mercalli intensities
reached as high as VIII.

Map Series Completed

Plans are being made by the Illinois State
Geological Survey (ISGS) and the Hlinois
Mapping Advisory Committee (IMAC) to

commemorate the completion of 7.5-
minute, 1:24,000-scale map coverage of
Illinois. Twenty-four recently published
topographic maps of an area in east-
central Illinos round out the 1,071-map
series, a cooperative effort of the ISGS
and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Features include drainage and an
accurate depiction of surface relief by
means of contour lines and all major
cultural entities, such as cities, towns,
villages, or other incorporated areas;
farmsteads; railroads, highways, roads
and trails; power-transmission lines;
pipelines; oil wells; oil tanks; water tanks;
streams and lakes, dams, bridges, mines,
quarries and gravel pits; campgrounds;
woodland areas; named natural features;
township and country homesteaders in
the 1800s. For orientation, latitude and
longitude expressed in degrees, minutes
and seconds, as well as grid systems in
both meters and feet are presented.

Priced at $3.20 each, including
shipping and handling charges for Fourth
Class mail or $6.20 for First Class mail/
United Parcel Service, these maps can be
ordered by writing the ISGS Information
Office, 615 E. Peabody Dr, Champaign,
IL 61820, specifying the names and series
of maps desired. That information can be
obtained from the Index to Topographic
Maps of Illinois, a publication of ISGS,
which will be supplied free of charge.

New Maps Show
Geologic Framework

The Illinois Geological Survey has
published multicolored, 7.5-minute
geologic maps of the Shawneetown,

Equality and Rudement Quadrangles.
These are the first quadrangle maps the
ISGS has published since 1965, and the
first of a planned sequence of 15 such
maps.

The sequence, which will provide
basic information on the geologic frame-
work of southern Illinois, is being
produced by the Survey in cooperation
with the U.S. Geological Survey, under
the auspices of the Cooperative Geologic
Mapping Program (COGEOMAP). The
maps provide a detailed portrayal of the
Shawneetown Fault Zone, a major east-
west trending geologic fault zone that
extends from just south of Old
Shawneetown, Illinois, westward through
all three quadrangles.

Geology of the region is revealed
in new detail, useful in mineral-resource
exploration and land-use planning. Each
map is presented with a stratigraphic
column showing geologic formations, a
geologic cross-section and descriptive
material on the structural and economic
geology of each quadrangle.

Maps are priced at $5.95 each,
including shipping and handling charges
for Fourth Class mail or $8.95 for First
Class mail/ United Parcel Service. Pre-
payment is required. To order, write
ISGS Information Office, 615 E. Peabody
Dr, Champaign, IL 61820 and specify
the map desired.

BIORHYTHMS

Gypsy Moth Project
Receives Grant

Michael Jeffords, Joe Maddox and Karen

OHayer of the Natural History Survey

(NHS) have received notice that their

grant “European microsporidia as

biological control agents of the gypsy

moth in North America” has been funded
by the United States Department of
Agriculture competitive grants program.
The award is for $150,000 over a 3-year
period.

Injured Soybeans Become
More Resistant

It may seem paradoxical, but some leaf
injury to soybeans early in the season
may render plants more resistant to
insect pests later on. Research at the
Section of Economic Entomology, NHS,
shows that feeding by caterpillars on
soybean foliage induces a chemical
response in the plants that makes them
less susceptible to subsequent attacks.

Researchers are focusing on the
chemical nature of this response that
may involve well known soybean
phytoalexins - compounds produced by
the plant following pathogen infection
or certain types of mechanical injury.
These phytoalexins may represent a sort
of plant “immune” response to pests and
may have significance in future directions
of breeding programs for soybean
varieties.

Henebry and Ross Take
Prize In Spain

Mike Henebry and Phil Ross of the
Natural History Survey attended toxicology
symposia in Spain and France and visited
several laboratories in these countries.
Henebry presented a paper entitled “Use
of protozoan community tests for esti-
mating ecotoxicological hazard” and Ross
presented a paper on “A comparative
study of four microbiological tests for
evaluating sediment toxicity” at the
Toxicity Testing Using Microbial Systems
Third International Symposium held in
Valencia, Spain from May 11 to 15.

At the same symposium Henebry
and Ross coauthored a poster “Assess:
ment of the ecotoxicological hazard of
contaminated sediments using protozoan
communities” which won the prize for
best poster. Lloyd LeMere did the artwork
for the poster. The prize, a unique statue

of a loon carved by a Canadian Inuit
Indian, will be placed in the NHS display
case.

Eleventh Bird Book Published

The eleventh in a series of publications
on the birds of Illinois by Jean Graber,
Richard Graber and Ethelyn Kirk has
been published recently by the Natural
History Survey. Its title is inois Birds:
Corvidae, and it is Biolocial Notes

No. 126.

Copies of this recent publication
may be obtained by writing to Chief Lorin
I. Nevling, 172 Natural Resources Building,
607 East Peabody Drive, Champaign,
Illinois, 61820.

The Illinois Natural Resources
Information System

The Natural History, Geology and Water
Surveys are pooling their wealth of auto-
mated information on various natural
resources and environmental data sets,
bibliographies, zoological collections,
simulation models, reports and other
information to form INRIS, the Illinois
Natural Resources Information System.

INRIS is a computerized information
system which will allow many persons to
have the benefit of cooperative access to
a large part of the natural resources data
of Illinois. INRIS is designed to enable
selected users within educational insti-
tutions, local, state and federal agencies,
businesses and the public to access this
information. In addition to making
information available to the public, INRIS
should help foster a public understanding
of the type of work performed by the
Surveys.

Although several of the ideas upon
which INRIS is based have been contri-
buted by a number of persons, the
current version of the system was devel
oped primarily by Annette Holloway and
managed by Ed Armbrust. Those who
would like to use or to contribute data
to INRIS are encouraged to contact Mark
McReynolds, INRIS Director, at
(217 ) 333-0006, or by mail at 172 Natural
Resources Building, 607 East Peabody
Drive, Champaign, IL 61820.

World Bibliography of
Soybean Insects

A monumental bibliography of the world
literature of insects associated with soy

beans is being readied for publication by
SIRIC (Soybean Insect Research Infor
mation Center ) of the Section of
Economic Entomology, NHS, and the
College of Agriculture, UIUC. SIRIC is a
computerized database for soybean
entomological literature.

The bibliography represents over 15
years of effort to compile and analyze this
literature and will contain over 5,000
references. It will be published later this
year in two volumes. The project is
sponsored by the American Soybean
Association, The UIUC Agricultural
Experiment Station and the NHS.

Illinois Lepidoptera

A 50-person moth and butterfly survey
team consisting of institutional-based
lepidopterists and a cross-section of
Illinois’ private citizenry has been
assembled by George L. Godfrey of the
Illinois Natural History Survey and Everett
D. Cashatt from the Illinois State Museum.
The team will develop a state-wide data
base on Illinois’ estimated 2,000+ species
of moths, butterflies and skippers. Plans
ultimately call for an Illinois Lepidoptera
Atlas which will address each species
known distribution, seasonal occurrence
(adult and caterpillar), host(s) (cater
pillar), and in certain cases, basic habitat
requirements (adult and caterpillar).

Natural Resources Book
Ready for Distribution

The Natural History Survey recently
published The Natural Resources of
Illinois: Introduction and Guide,
beautifully designed and illustrated with
more than 200 colorful maps, tables and
graphs. Familiar scenes of the Illinois
landscape introduce each of the six
sections of the 224-page book: General
Characteristics, Agriculture, Fish and
Wildlife, Climate, Water Resources,
Geological Resources.

The Natural Resources of Illinois
is available from the Illinois Natural
History Survey, Room 172, 607 East
Peabody Drive, Champaign, IL 61820
The cost is $10 per copy, and checks
or money orders should be made payable
to the Illinois Natural History Survey
Out-of state buyers must add the sales
tax of their respective states

Added Salt Protects Fish

Although most fish die or fail to repro-
duce in acidic waters, a pond in
Connecticut and clearwater lakes in
Florida and Scandinavia - all highly acidic
- do support fish populations.

The high acidity and aluminum
contents of these waters, combined with
very low concentrations of humic sub-
stances (which color water) and calcium
- factors recognized as offsetting the
toxic effects of acid and aluminum -
should make these waters biological
deserts.

The waters, however, have a
common trait that enables fish to resist
physiological stress related to acidity -
elevated levels of sodium chloride
(common salt).

According to Edward Krug of the
Water Survey's Atmospheric Chemistry
Section, there is a significant correlation
between sodium chloride and fish status.
Sodium chloride in water apparently
reduces acid stress by mitigating the
leaching of sodium chloride out of fish
and other organisms. The leaching
process is the principal toxic effect of
acidic water.

Less Lead into Lakes

It may be that less lead, and perhaps
less of other unwanted constituents, is
being deposited in the Great Lakes than
was the case several years ago. This
encouraging news comes from an
analysis of atmospheric deposition data
collected from a network of sites in the
Great Lakes region during 1982 and
1983.

Water Survey atmospheric scientists
Van Bowersox, Don Gatz and Jack Su
analyzed two years of wet deposition data
collected from the GLAD (Great Lakes
Atmospheric Deposition ) network. This
network was funded and operated by the
US. Environmental Protection Agency's
Great Lakes National Program Office and
was designed to measure the amount of
chemical deposition to the Great Lakes
from the atmosphere. The EPA also
funded the data analysis performed by
the Water Survey;

20

CURRENTS

U.S. EPA had two primary interests
in the data analysis: assessing the quality
of the data collected from this network
and computing the loadings to the lakes,
especially of metals like lead and
cadmium.

According to Gatz, there is much less
lead being deposited into the lakes than
there was several years ago, perhaps up
to 60% less.

Irrigating Illinois

In 1950, irrigation in Illinois was limited
almost entirely to flower fields in
Kankakee County. Although irrigation has
erown dramatically since then, only
about one percent of the state's crop-
land is irrigated today. With sufficient
rain and humidity, most growers in
Illinois simply do not need water that
irrigation must provide in arid states.

Still, attempts to offset the effects of
drought and to increase productivity on
sandy soils in some parts of Illinois have
led to the spread of irrigation to an
estimated 200,000 acres in several
counties. As part of a 3-year groundwater
management needs study, Water Survey
researchers Jean Bowman and Mark
Collins have completed a project to
evaluate the effects of increased irrigation
and drought on groundwater resources
in Illinois.

Bowman and Collins concluded that
the use of irrigation in Illinois does not
appear to have a lasting effect on ground-
water resources despite a substantial

-growing-season demand for irrigation.

The effects of irrigation pumpage
are localized and depend heavily on
weather conditions. An extended drought
or increased irrigation could more
seriously impact groundwater supplies,
but even this would probably be a
seasonal and localized problem.

MOPP Will Clean Up

A Mobile Oxidation Pilot Plant (MOPP )
being developed and assembled by
scientists in the Water Survey's Aquatic
Chemistry Section will take water treat-
ment processes Out of the laboratory and
into the field.

The treatment processes convert
organic water contaminants to harmless
products such as carbon dioxide, water
and oxygen. Although the laboratory

studies indicate the possibility of using
such processes for cleanup of contami-
nated groundwater and treatment of
industrial wastewater, engineers are
reluctant to adopt these environmentally
clean processes because of a lack of
field-scale data, design criteria and
reliable cost estimates.

The MOPP can be moved around
and adapted for use at selected
industries with hazardous wastewater
and at groundwater contamination sites.
It will consist of a large moving van tailer
which will house equipment for carrying
Out a process known as Photolytic
Ozonation/Peroxidation. During this
process ozone is bubbled into water
while ultraviolet light is shined through
it. The ultraviolet light causes a photo-
chemical reaction of ozone which leads
to production of hydroxyl radicals. These
radicals are capable of destroying virtually
any organic compound.

Testing of the assembled MOPP unit
should begin this December. Actual field
use may begin by the summer of 1988.

Old Tires for New Habitats

Over 2000 old tires are expected to put
the brakes on damaging wave action in
a portion of Peoria Lake on the Illinois
River, resulting in an improved habitat
for gamefish and watertowl in this
troubled area.

The tires were assembled into a
25-ton artifical reef 710 feet long by-five
feet wide and about 2! feet high. The
reef was then towed out to the shallow
waters of a bay in Peoria Lake during the
last week of May.

The rubbery reef rests on the lake's
muddy bottom and will replace a natural
structure - fallen trees and rocks - which
is now buried under a deep layer of
sediment. The breakwater will reduce the
force of waves in the shallow water by
absorbing the wave energy. This will
reduce the resuspension of bottom
sediments and allow them to settle out
of the water.

Scientists in the Water Survey's Water
Quality Section hope that before long it
will serve as a home to increased bass,
bluegill and channel catfish populations
by providing in-lake structure and by
reducing the amount of suspended
sediment in the water

Major Waste
Reduction Conference

The Hazardous Waste Research and
Information Center (HWRIC) is
cosponsoring a major conference on
hazardous waste reduction to be held
on Sept. 22 and 23 in Chicago. The
conference will focus on what Illinois
industries and government are doing
to reduce the amount and toxicity of
hazardous wastes produced at the
source and also present an overview
of waste reduction efforts nationally.

Presentation of Illinois’ annual
“Governor's Innovative Waste Reduc-
tion Awards” will be made at the
conference. These awards were
created to recognize and further
encourage the efforts Illinois industries
are making to minimize the volume
and toxicity of hazardous wastes they
generate.

Most of Rockford Aquifer
Remains Clean

Although some of the wells in or
around Rockford, Illinois, may be
contaminated, there is evidence that
most of the aquifer is not polluted.

These are the findings of a recent
HWRIC-sponsored study by H. Allen
Wehrmann and Thomas R. Holm of
the Illinois State Water Survey and
Richard C. Berg of the Illinois State
Geological Survey.

The research team used existing
data on the geology and hydrology of
the area and sampled 69 private
domestic and industrial wells. The
samples were checked for contam
ination by volatile organic compounds.
Public water supply wells were not

CENTERING ON WASTE

sampled because extensive sampling
of these wells had already been done
by state and local agencies.
According to Wehrmann, nine
contaminated areas were found, but
they appeared to be related to other
known instances of pollution. How-
ever, the researchers did conclude
that more investigation was needed
in the southeast Rockford area. It
is there that a 2-mile portion of the
aquifer has been contaminated. The
extent of contamination and its source
must be.determined before cleanup
is possible.

Household Hazardous Waste

HWRIC is sponsoring a survey research
project to assess the public's level of
knowledge about household haz-
ardous waste. The survey will be
conducted in Champaign-Urbana in
conjunction with a household hazardous

aste collection drive to be held
September 13, 1987. The collection
drive, which is being sponsored by
the Champaign-Urbana Intergovern-
mental Solid Waste Disposal Assoc-
iation, will be the first one of its kind
in Illinois. Hazardous wastes from
farms will also be collected in the day-
long event.

Researchers will survey a random
sample of Champaign-Urbana residents
once in July before the public edu
cation and publicity for the collection
program begins. Researchers hope to
assess residents awareness of which
household products may threaten
human health and the environment if
not disposed of properly. Residents
will also be asked how they usually
dispose of such products. Other

surveys will be conducted during and
after the collection drive to assess the
effectiveness of the education and
publicity. The results of this survey will
be used to guide education and
publicity efforts for other collection
drives.

HWRIC was appropriated
$500,000 from the state’s Solid Waste
Management Fund for financial assis-
tance to local governments for house
hold waste collection and disposal. If
this money is released, HWRIC will
solicit proposals from local govern-
ments and help coordinate additional
household hazardous waste collection
drives.

Air Toxics Montitoring

Interim results of an ongoing HWRIC
funded research project indicate that
the levels of toxic trace elements in
the air in southeast Chicago and East
St. Louis generally are not any higher
than most other major U.S. urban
areas. The three exceptions are
slightly higher concentrations of cadmium
in East St. Louis and higher levels of
manganese and chromium in southeast
Chicago.

However, according to principal
investigator Clyde Sweet of the Illinois
State Water Survey, the fact that the
concentraion levels are similar to other
cities does not mean they are not
harmful. Because health standards for
most of these elements have not been
set by the federal government, it is
not known whether the concentration
levels found in this study are poten
tially harmful. Lead is the only toxic
trace element for which ambient air
quality standards have been set.

The Shrew...

“Tt is a ravaging beast, feigning itself
gentle and tame, but, being touched, it
biteth deep, and poysoneth deadly.”

The smallest of all living mammals - the
shrew - was also the most feared in
Europe during the 16th and 17th
centuries. Reverend Topsell’s observation,
above, made in 1658 in his book,
“History of the Four-footed Beasts and
Serpents,” was common knowledge to all,
including William Shakespeare whose
most famous shrew, Kate, was finally
tamed. How the shrew came by such a
bad reputation in England and the
Continent is a mystery, since the shrew
that does dispense poison is not found
in Europe but in America.

...is small...

Shrews and moles, of the Order
INSECTIVORA, are the most primitive of
the known living placental mammals, and
all Illinois mammals except the opossum
are placental. Shrews, roughly the size
of mice, occur worldwide except for
Australia, Greenland and most of South
America. There are five genera of the
shrew family in Illinois: the masked
shrew, the southeastern shrew, the pigmy
shrew, the short-tailed shrew and the
least shrew. All are burrowing, thick furred
animals.

Shrews come in two sizes, small and
smaller. The masked shrew (Sorex
cinereus ) is frequently mistaken for a
mouse. Its body length is 3 to 4-1/4
inches and it weighs about 1/8 to 1/4
ounce. Unlike the mouse, it has fine
velvety fur, a sharp conical muzzle, and
pincer-like teeth that are tipped with red.
Its upper parts are brown, its under parts
smoky gray. “Masked shrew” comes from
its eyes and ears which are masked or
covered with short hair. In Illinois the
masked shrew is uncommon and is
found only in the northern fourth of the
State.

The southeastern shrew (Sorex
longirostris ) is about the same size
and proportions of the masked shrew
except for its skull characteristics and its
fur, which is reddish-brown. It is also

close in size and appearance to the pigmy

WILDLIFE

shrew, and differs from this genus only
in dentition pattern. The southeastern
shrew is one of the least-seen mammals
in Illinois, found only in Alexander, Coles,
Fayette and Johnson counties.

The smallest of all American
mammals is the pigmy shrew (Micro-
sorex hoyi), now very rare in Illinois
with the last known specimen taken in
the middle of winter in a garage in Cook
County. The adult pigmy shrew weighs
in at less than 1/8 of an ounce; it would
take 8 of these shrews to make up the
weight of a white-footed mouse, 400 to
equal the weight of a fox squirrel, and
several thousand to equal the weight of
a bobcat. The pigmy shrew is a uniform
light brown on the upper parts and
slightly paler brown on the lower parts.
Its appearance is very similar to that of
of the masked and southeastern shrews,
differing only in size - smaller - and
dental formula.

Easily mistaken for a mouse or
young mole, the short-tailed shrew
(Blarina brevicauda ) has some features
of both and is sometimes referred to as
the mole shrew. This shrew is about the
size of a mouse, weighing 1/2 to 1 ounce
with an overall body size of 3-3/4 to 5
inches. It can be distinguished from the
mouse by its plush, black velvety fur,
sharp-pointed nose, short tail and
seeming absence of ears which are
hidden in the fur. Unlike the mole, this
shrew has eyes that are functional and
front teeth that are not broad and spade-
like. The short-tailed shrew is common
throughout Illinois.

Picture a miniature short-tailed shrew
and you have the general appearance of
the least shrew or old-fiend shrew
( Cryptotis parva ). It can be distinguished
from the masked and southeastern shrew
by its shorter tail, and from the short-
tailed shrew by its grayish brown, not
black, color. Its overall length is 2-1/2 to
3-1/8 inches, and generally weighs 1/10
to 2/10 of an ounce. The least shrew
occurs throughout Illinois, but seems to
be relatively scarce in the northern part
of the state. Except for Blarina
brevicauda, the least shrew is the
commonest shrew in Illinois.

... is hungry all of the time...
And no wonder, with a metabolic rate

unparalleled among mammals: a high
basal matabolism of 130 compared to

78 for man and a high rate of respiration
which is 140 times a minute while at rest
compared to 15 for a man. Shrews do not
hibernate and are active throughout the
year even in the coldest part of their
range. Their activities cannot be called
either nocturnal or diurnal, since they
are active throughout the 24-hour day.
In order to meet their energy needs, they
must feed day and night. In a single day,
a shrew can eat one, two, or even three
times its body weight.

The masked shrew, which is usually
found under a dense growth of weeds
or in woods, feeds on mice, insects,
snails, worms, dead animals and occa-
sionally nuts and berries. Like other
Illinois shrews, it possesses scent glands
that secrete a musky fluid which at times
renders the animal undesirable to
predators. Its eyesight is poor, but its
sense of smell is good. The masked shrew
has a sixteen-month life spent mostly in
pursuit of food, with time out to raise 3
litters of 4 to 10 young each. Sleep is
taken in very short snatchs.

Little is known about the feeding
habits of the southeastern shrew or the
pigmy shrew, except that the pigmy
shrew inhabits dry woodlands, thickets,
and grassy clearings where it feeds
primarily on insects.

Much more is known about the
short-tailed shrew. It is primarily an
animal of forest floors, forest-edges,
meadows near woods, or swampy, brushy
habitats. Blarina varies its diet of insects
and earthworms with mice, snakes, birds,
and other shrews, usually catching them
when they enter its underground tunnels.
Roots, nuts, fruits and berries comprise
the vegetable foods taken most often in
winter. On the average this shrew eats
half its body weight in food every
24-hours. The short-tailed shrew has very
poor eyesight and its sense of smell is
not well-developed. However hearing is
acute, as is the sense of touch.

Blarina has the same scent glands
as other shrews, but also possesses that
something special that legends are made
of: salivary glands which secrete a poison
that can kill or render helpless the
shrew's prey.

Like other shrews, the least shrew
has an insatiable appetite. Drs. Carl Mohr
and Donald Hoffmeister described a least

Nee Tee ne en en
shrew in captivity feeding upon seven
grasshoppers in 30 hours. The shrew
killed each one by biting the head, then
eating the insect head first, then dis-
carding wings and hind legs as it came
to them. In the wild this shrew feeds on
small insects, snails, slugs, earthworms
and the dead bodies of small mammals.
The least shrew does not incline to
vegetarianism, but without the poison
glands of Blarina, fears and avoids mice.

... and is very belligerent.

The most dangerous of the shrews is the
short-tailed shrew. This shrew and the
male duckbilled platypus are the only
known kind of mammals that have
venom. In the shrew it is used to disable The Masked Shrew
and kill its prey.

Pearson (1942) describes the

Briley glonds and ised by Te MN OUUUTUTOUCTUDTOV UTC OU OV UDUDU CTU DUUUD
4

Ernest P. Walker, Washington, D.C.

UU)
10

mt

a pair of ducts to an opening near the
base of the lower incisor teeth. The ‘
median pair of lower incisors projects far
forward, forming a groove along which
the venom can flow into a wound. This
injection system is less efficient than
hollow fangs and is almost ineffective
against humans. No human fatalities
resulting from shrew bites are known,
and only a few local reactions have been
reported.”

That is not the case for smaller
mammals, in which the injected poison
slows the heart and breathing of the The Least Shrew
victims and may cause disintegration of
the muscle. The submaxillary glands of
one adult short-tailed shrew contain
enough poison to kill 200 mice.

Since the short-tailed shrew is not
indigenous to England or the Continent,
and no one has suggested that it migrated
there, the fear of shrews is hard to
explain. One possibility is that the
European water shrew is poisonous,
since it has submaxillary glands similar
to those of the short-tailed shrew. The
citizenry may have believed that if one
shrew is poisonous, they all are. Even

Ernest P. Walker, Washington, D.C

= } oh ' ‘ . aa

Maslowski and Goodpaster, Cincinnati, Ohio

without the poison glands shrews in ‘ r hg Bs De Sa eek os
general are highly aggressive in their co ee dios i. aca Pats. are en” %
habitats, which may account for their AEST SE . ee =

fearsome reputation. The Southeastern Shrew
In any event shrews are not

recommended as house pets, which,

come to think about it, may have been

Shakespeare's point.

TRANSITIONS

Harvey Sheldon

Society Elects New
Board Members

Harvey M. Sheldon has been elected to
the Board of the Society for the Scientific
Surveys. Mr. Sheldon is a partner in the
law firm of Coffield Ungaretti Harris &
Slavin in Chicago. His practice includes
prosecution and defense of environmental
cases, including workplace and environ-
mental chemical exposure cases and
federal, state and local regulatory com-
pliance with air, solid and hazardous
waste, wastewater discharge and other
laws.

Mr. Sheldon chairs the Environmental
Regulation Committee and is a Director
of the Chicago Association of Commerce
and Industry. He is a member of the
Environmental Regulation Committee of

Albert Pyott

the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce,
and teaches environmental law at Loyola
University Law School in Chicago. He
graduated from Amherst College in 1905
and received his law degree from Harvard
Law School in 1968. Mr. Sheldon resides
in Wilmette.

Albert E. Pyott has also been elected to
the Board of the Society for the Scientific
Surveys. He recently started the American
Dynabrite Corporation in Lake Forest,
which develops a product to address the
need for improved traction in agricultural
vehicles and related markets. Prior to this,
Mr. Pyott enjoyed a thirty-vear career
combining senior management respon-
sibilities in sales and marketing at Inland
Steel Industries with volunteer leadership
roles in the fields of conservation and

- natural resource restoration.

Since 1983 Mr. Pyott has been a
board member and Vice President of the
Open Lands Project, as well as a board
member and Vice President of Wetland
Research, Inc., working on funding
strategies for both projects. He is a
member of the National Wildlife
Federation, Ducks Unlimited, the Nature
Conservancy and Trout.Unlimited.

A resident of Winnetka, Mr. Pyott is
a graduate of the Harvard Business
School and Cornell University:

Society Moves to New Offices

The Society for the Surveys has moved |
its offices to 1525 S. Oth Street, Suite B,

Springfield, Illinois 62703. The new phone
number for the Society is (217) 522-2033.

ik hi

ee ee

Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

Membership in the Society

Membership is open to any person or group that subscribes to the
purpose of the Society. Two kinds of membership are offered — personal
and corporate or organizational.

Support for the operation of the Society and its programs is sought
from individuals, businesses, corporations, and foundations. The Society
has a 501(c) 3 tax status, and contributions are tax-deductible.

The Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

Scale of Contributions

Personal Memberships Corporate/Business
Memberships
Founding $1,000 per year = Founding $10,000 per year
Contributing 100 per year — Benefactor 5,000 per year

Family 50 per year Associate
Individual 25 per year Patron

1,000 per year
250 per year

Benefits of Membership

The magazine of the Society, The Nature of Ilinois, is sent without
charge to all members, personal and corporate

In addition, corporate members receive the following services

Speakers Bureau. Speakers from the three Surveys are available to
talk on such topics as hazardous waste, acid rain, ground-water problems,
Illinois coal, radiocarbon age dating, sport fish, farmland wildlife, and Illinois
prairies

Special Seminars. Seminars tailored to the interests of businesses

and industries may be arranged

Field Trips. Field trips for groups from individual industries and
organizations may be conducted upon request

Informal Meetings. The Chiefs of the three Surveys meet annually
with interested corporate members to discuss topical issues

Free Publications. Survey articles, monographs, maps and pamphlets
are available on an ongoing basis. In addition, the Society publishes an
annual summary of research underway at the Surveys

(Tear off and return)

I wish to become a member of the Society and support its efforts for understanding our natural heritage

Name
Address
City

Personal Membership

Founding ——— Family Founding

Contributing Individual Benefactor

Corporate Membership

Oe 0)

Associate = ____ Patron

Sponsor

Make checks payable to Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys and send check and membership blank to: Society for the Surveys, 1525 South 6th Street

Suite B, Springfield, IL 62703.

Society for the

Illinois Scientific Surveys
607 East Peabody Drive
Champaign, IL 61820

CARLA HEISTER

NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY LIBRARY
196 NATURAL RESOURCES BLDG
607 E PEABODY DR

CHAMPAIGN IL 61820

62L057
#02918
O1

Non-Profit Org.
US. Postage Paid

Springfield, IL
Permit No. 453

pV

OF ILLINOIS Winter, 1988

4
'
D
r .
\} Pie ( . a
“ ‘i

Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

a

OF ILLINOIS

Snow Birds

Local histories and pioneers diaries hold
the fascinating stories of some of Illinois’
greatest winter storms.

-

The Big Bite

It came from Japan in a shipment of
used tires bound for Houston. The Asian
tiger mosquito, one of the world’s most
lethal mosquito species, has arrived in
Illinois.

10

Finding A Safe Place For Low-Level
Radioactive Waste

Time is running short as Illinois scientists
gather data to locate a safe site for the
218,000 cubic feet of radioactive waste
generated annually in the state.

14

Shiitake

Cultivation of the highly-prized shiitake
mushroom is a $1 billion annual business
in Japan. If the Natural History Survey
has its way, shiitake mushrooms may
become a profitable crop for Illinois
farmers as well.

At OAL E’STORY SURVEY

FEB i & 1988

LIBRARY

16

Stirring Out Trouble: Recycling
Illinois’ Lakes

Illinois’ aging lakes are getting a facelift
from the Water Survey

19

Answering the Geophone
Communities in northern Illinois could
no longer look to deep wells for a safe
water supply. The Geological Survey
came up with a surface solution

21

Surveying Illinois
Wildlife

Biorhythms
Currents

Centering on Waste
Geograms

Transitions

About the Cover

The wonder of an Illinois winter.
Photo credit: Central Illinois Light
Company

Published by the Society for the
Mlinois Scientific Surveys

Volume II, Number II
Winter, 1988
Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Editor

ComUnigraph
Design and Production

Society Offices

Correspondence about memberships,
magazine deliveries, contributions and
general information should be addressed
to the Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, 1525 South 6th Street, Suite B,
Springfield, IL 62703

The Society encourages readers to sub
mit letters to the editor of The Nature
of Illinois at the address above

Copyright 1988 by the Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys. All rights
reserved

Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

Board of Directors
Gaylord Donnelley _

Chairman, Society for the Surveys
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton

Vice-Chairman, Society for the Surveys

Ottawa Silica Company Foundation
Ottawa

Walter E. Hanson

Treasurer, Society for the Surveys
Founder, Hanson Engineers, Inc.
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals Company
Hinsdale

Henry N. Barkhausen
Jonesboro

George Farnsworth, Jr
Farnsworth and Wylie
Bloomington

Clayton Gaylord

Ingersoll Milling Machine Company

Rockford

Ralph E. Grim

Professor Emeritus’ Geology
University of Illinois

Urbana

Richard C. Hartnack
The First National Bank of Chicago
Chicago

John Homeier
Bi - Petro
Springfield

Richard A. Lenon

International Minerals & Chemicals
Corporation

Northbrook

Richard A. Lumpkin

Illinois Consolidated Telephone
Company

Mattoon

Albert Pyott
Director, Nature Conservancy
Winnetka

John Rednour
R. & H. Construction
DuQuoin

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

William L. Rutherford
Forest Park Foundation
Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
Coffield, Ungaretti, Harris & Slavin
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.
J.R. Short Milling Company
Chicago

Joseph Spivey
Illinois Coal Association
Springfield

Harold B. Steele
Green Prairie Products, Inc.
Princeton

Susan Stone
Champaign

Warren Trask
AE. Staley
Decatur

Leo Whalen
Whistling Wings
Hanover

Louise B. Young
Wilmette

Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director

Estie Karpman
Assistant Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Illinois Scientific Surveys

Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

Supporters*

Corporate and Foundation:

Archer Daniels Midland; BASF Wyandotte;
Bell & Howell Foundation; Bi-Petro; Borg-
Warner Foundation, Inc.; Boulevard
Bancorp, Inc.; Chicago Community Trust,
Chicago Title & Trust; Collins & Rice;
Commonwealth Edison; Crawford,
Murphy & Tilly; Dames & Moore; Don-
nelley Foundation; Gaylord Donnelley
Trust; Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley
Foundation; R.R. Donnelley & Sons; Dow
Chemical; Draper & Kramer Foundation;
Farnsworth & Wylie; Field Foundation of
Illinois; Jamee & Marshall Field Founda-
tion; First Chicago Bank; Forest Fund;
Freeman United Coal Mining Company;
Greeley and Hansen; Hamilton Consult-
ing Engineers; Hanson Engineers; Harris
Foundation; Henry, Meisenheimer &
Gende; Hurst-Rosche Engineers; Illinois
Bell; Illinois Coal Association; Illinois
Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund; Illinois
Soybean Program Operating Board; Inter
national Minerals & Chemicals Corp.;
Joyce Foundation; Klingner & Associates;
Kraft, Inc.; Marine Bank of Springfield;
Brooks & Hope McCormick Foundation;
Robert R. McCormick Foundation; Mid-
west Consulting Engineers; Mobay
Chemical; Peabody Coal Company; Abbie
Norman Prince Trust; Rand McNally &
Company; Randolph & Associates; Rhut-
asel & Associates; Sahara Coal Company;
Sargent & Lundy Engineers; J.R. Short
Milling Company; AE. Staley Continental;
Tornrose, Campbell & Associates; Union
Carbide; Whistling Wings.

Individuals: James Anderson, E. Arm-
brust, Henry Barkhausen, Jane Bolin,
Gaylord Donnelley, James & Nina Don-
nelley, Clayton Gaylord, Walter Hanson,
Frederick Jaicks, Dr. Michael Jeffords, Dr.
Morris Leighton, Richard Lenon, Al Pyott,
William Rutherford, Michael Scully,
Edmund, Leo Whalen, Louise Young.

* Contributions of $200 or more.

The Society Page

After the holiday season, the pace of life
seems to slow as if in anticipation of
spring and the growing season. However
research and development projects know
no season, and so the scientists at Our
three Illinois Scientific Surveys are very
busy at this time of the year as at all
times.

Those of you who are grappling
with winter's miseries will appreciate
The Snow Birds: A History of Illi-
nois’ Great Winter Storms, based on
data gathered by the Illinois Water Survey.

Scientists at both the Water and
Geological Surveys are working under
great pressure to provide technical data
for the safe siting of Illinois’ radioactive
waste disposal facility. Their work is re-
ported in Finding a Safe Place for
Low-Level Radioactive Waste.

Economic development is high on
the research agendas of all three Surveys.
The Natural History Survey is working
on developing alternative crops for IIli-
nois farmers, including what has tradi-
tionally been a Japanese export, shiitake
mushrooms.

An adequate supply of quality water
is essential to any areas economic well-
being. The Geological Survey is cooper-
ating with northern Illinois’ communities
in locating shallow groundwater re-
sources. At the same time, the Water
Survey is hard at work rejuvenating public
water supplies hampered by lake
eutrophication.

It may seem early to think about
mosquitoes, but what about a breed that
likes to live with man and may be win
tering in Chicago? The Asian tiger
mosquito, first found in the continental
United States in 1985 on the west coast,
is now an Illinois native. Natural History
Survey researchers are gathering the data
needed to control this formidable health
threat.

Finally, | hope you enjoy reading about
the bat, one of nature’s most efficient
insecticides and one of her most ma
ligned creatures.

Iam constantly amazed by the
breadth of research projects conducted
by our three Surveys. I hope you will join

me in supporting this research by be
coming a friend of the Surveys through
membership in the Society

Sincerely,

Prod Mme

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

The Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys

Scale of Contributions

Personal Memberships
Founding
Contributing

Family
Individual

$1,000 per year
LOO per year
50 per yeal

25 per yeat

Corporate/Business
Memberships

Founding
Benetactor

$10,000 per year

5.000 per year
Associate 1,000 per yeat
Sponso! 500 per veal

Patron 250 per year

The Snow Birds:

Being An Account of Cold Tuesday, the Winter of the
Deep Snow and Other Great Illinois Winters

It was known as “The Sudden Change”
of December 1836 to Illinois pioneers
and to writers like John Moses, whose
accounts of one of Illinois’ great winter
storms have become part of Illinois’
weather folklore. To other Illinois settlers
it was “Cold Tuesday” or “The Cold Day
in Illinois.” In Lacon Township it was
named “Butler's Snap” in memory of a
Mr. Butler and his daughter who were
tragically frozen to death.

“The Sudden Change” is probably
most descriptive of the snowstorm and
coldwave that passed through Illinois on
December 20, 1836. Temperatures fell
40 degrees fahrenheit from morning to
two p.m. at Augusta, Illinois, accom
panied by 70 mile per hour winds, as
reported by Dr. Samuel Mead of that city.

About two o'clock in the afternoon
it began to grow dark, from a
heavy black cloud which was seen
in the northwest. Almost instantly
the strong wind, traveling at the
rate of 70 miles an hour, accom-
panied by a deep bellowing sound,
with its icy blast, swept over the
land, and everything was frozen
hard. The water in the littke ponds
in the roads froze in waves, sharp-
edged and pointed, as the gale had
blown it. The chickens, pigs and
other small animals were frozen in
their tracks. Wagon wheels ceased
to roll, froze to the ground. Men,
going from their barns or fields a
short distance from their homes,
in slush and water, returned a few
minutes later walking on the ice.

_ Those caught out on horseback

were frozen to their saddles, and
had to be lifted off and carried to
the fire to be thawed apart. Two
young men were frozen to death
near Rushville. One of them was
found with his back against a tree,
with his horse's bridle over his arm
and his horse frozen in front of
him. The other was partly in a
kneeling position, with a tinder
box in one hand and a flint in the
other, with both eyes wide open
as if intent on trying to strike a
light. Many other casualties were
reported . . . the ice was frozen

in the stream, as variously reported,
from six inches to a foot in thick
ness in a few hours,

John Moses

Illinois historical and statistical
Fergus Printing Co., 1889

The Mississippi River was frozen from
this date until April 15 at Rock Island,
and Lake Pepin (within the Mississippi
River halfway between LaCrosse, Wiscon-
sin and St. Paul) was closed with ice until
May 20. The cold front was reported to
have passed Burlington, Iowa on the
Mississippi at ten a.m. and to have been
in the vicinity of Springfield by two p.m.
— showing forward progress of about
50 miles per hour

The first account of a severe Illinois
winter was that of 1830-1831, “The
Winter of the Deep Snow.” This winter
received great attention in local histories
and pioneers diaries. In fact a cult grew
up around that winter, with the settlers
who survived it in their log shelters
gathering together at the annual Old

ae ee ee eee

Settlers Day meetings to recount again
and again their experiences. They
became known as the “snow birds.”

Heavy snow began to fall on Decem
ber 29, 1830 in northern Illinois, accu-
mulating in the second week in January
to 30 inches at Peoria, 24 inches at Fort
Armstrong (Moline ), and two and one-
half to three feet at Jacksonville. The
second snow of that winter increased
Peoria’s snow cover to a reported four
feet. There was floating ice in the Mis-
issippi River at St. Louis in mid-Decem-
ber, and the river was completely frozen
by mid-January.

One snow succeeded another, often
with sleet storms interspersed, produc
ing a crust of ice upon which the next
snowfall piled even higher. Sunless days
and icy cold temperatures were the
norm. An eclipse of the sun added to
the dreariness. People rarely went out.
Late in the winter Abraham Lincoln and
his father Thomas had to leave their
home near Decatur to ask for food from
their neighbors. They were not alone in
their hardship. In Springfield Pascal Enos
and his two teams of oxen saved the
lives of many by keeping the way to the
mill and wood lot open and by delivering
large logs to his less fortunate neighbors.
Once-plentiful game became virtually
non-existent, and snow was cleared off
fields of corn to keep the settlers alive.

Every Illinoisan, whether of the
19th or 20th century variety, has his or
her worst winter story. The second worst
winter storm since 1900 belongs to Chi-
cagoans. On January 26 and 27, 1967,
the forecast in Chicago called for four
inches of snow. In 29 hours 23 inches
of snow fell, winds of up to 53 miles per
hour howled through the city, and
Chicago shut down. Twenty-six people
died from snow-related activities.

Illinois 1977-1978 winter was the
worst winter the state has experienced
since the turn of the century. Along with
18 severe winter storms, northern Illinois
maintained at least one inch of snow on
the ground for 120 days and southern
Illinois for 90 days. The 1978-1979 win
ter was also memorable, for in addition
to its 17 severe winter storms, it was the
third consecutive severe winter in III
nois. The winter of 1981-1982 was the
fourth severe winter in six years, and
the second most severe on record, again
with 18 major winter storms.

For Central Illinois communities,
Good Friday 1978 brought a special chill.
Central Illinois experiences more freez
ing precipitation events in the mean
than either north or south Illinois. Freez
ing rain or freezing drizzle can be espe
cially destructive since ice forms on

surfaces of roads, wires, houses and
trees and exerts temendous weight on

those surfaces. The area between Spring-

field and Champaign was particularly
hard hit that Easter weekend as trees
toppled, wires were torn loose from
poles, and electricity was interrupted for
up to three weeks. One television sta
tion's tower fell to the ground due to
the weight of accumulated ice, and the
station was off the air for one and one
half years.

The Cold Hard Facts

Severe winter storms in Illinois produce
more total damage than any other form
of short-term severe weather, including
tornadoes, lightning and hail. Illinois
experiences five severe winter storms
on the average. Any one storm will not
impact the entire state. A severe winter
storm is defined as at least six or more
inches of snow in 48 hours or less
somewhere in the state, or damaging ice
over at least 5,000 square miles. A storm
with less snow or ice may still be classi
fied as a severe winter storm if high
winds or extreme cold accompany the
storm and it results in deaths or signi-
ficant damage.

These storms are usually more fre
quent in northern Illinois but not always.
Central Illinois has the distinction of
experiencing more freezing precipitation
storms than either north or south.
Because of central Illinois’ flat terrain,
strong easterly winds often accompany
winter storms, resulting in substantial

drifting of snow. The 1977-1978 winter
storms caused substantial drifting, clos
ing the University of Illinois at Cham
paign for the first time ever and trapping
some motorists in their cars for periods
of hours to several days

Severe winter storms normally move
from southwest to northeast across the
state. They are most likely to occur in an
area north of a line from Quincy to Chi
cago. In the early winter, they often
include snow, strong winds and blowing
snow behind the storm center — the

The first account ofa
severe Illinois winter
was that of 1830-1831,
“The Winter of the
Deep Snow.” .. . a cult
grew up around that
winter, with the settlers
who survived it in
their log shelters
gathering together at
the annual Old Settlers’
Day meetings to recount
again and again their
experiences.

Chicago, January 27, 1967: Snowbound cars & buses completely block Cermak
Road east of Wabash Avenue. (Chicago Tribune photo)

low pressure area. In addition these
storms often include strong thunder.
storms and even tornadoes ahead of the
storm in the warm air sector. The ten-
dency for thunder and tornadoes
decreases in late winter, when tempera-
tures are cold enough to inhibit that
activity.

Severe winter storms Occur most
frequently in January, with a 70% chance
of one or more such storms during that
month. December, February and March
rank close behind in numbers of storms.
High incidence periods of severe winter
storms are December 24, 25 and 26 and
March 2 and 3. Low incidence periods
are December 3-4 and 15-16, January 3-5
and 23-28, February 20-24, and March
15-17 and 21-24.

The earliest severe winter storm in
Illinois occurred on October 28-29,
1925; the latest on May 1-2, 1929. The
winters of 1977-1978 and 1981-1982 saw
the most storms — 18 each — recorded
in Illinois weather history. The fewest
storms, a paltry (by Illinois standards )
two, occurred in 1921-1922 and 1980-
1981.

The average Illinois winter storm
duration at any one location is about 14
hours, and the area of impact at any one
time is about 50 miles north to south
by 155 miles east to west.

Rocky Mountain High

Most Illinois winter storms take shape
hundreds or even thousands of miles
away. Low pressure systems traveling
east from as far away as Asia may move
into the United States from off the Paci-
fic Ocean. Many of these disturbances
die in the mountainous southwest as
they cross the rough terrain. Some do
make it across the mountains and re-
develop just east of the Rockies.

Most Illinois severe winter storms
originate in Colorado, according to Illi-
nois Water Survey (IWS) climatologists.
Two other areas — the Province of
Alberta and the Texas Gulf Coast — also
contribute to Illinois’ white look during
the winter. As shown in Figure 1, there
are five severe winter storm types, three
of which (2, 4 and 5) affect Illinois based
on the source of the storm and the track
they follow.

Only a small percentage of storms
that develop in these favorable areas
become severe winter storms in Illinois.
Storms form where there are the greatest
contrasts in temperatures. The battle
ground for these air masses is the lee-
ward side of the Rockies and the western
Gulf coast. Once the storms have devel
oped, the winds in the upper atmosphere

6

Depiction of weather types related
to severe winter storms in Illinois.

Area of low forma-
tion or major
re-formation or
intensification of
lows

Figure 1

determine where and how fast they will
move... and if Illinois is going to get
socked.

Damage from severe winter storms
can be very expensive. Transportation
shuts down, businesses and schools
close, power and communication are
disrupted, and auto accidents increase.
IWS climatologists estimate that snow
costs us $50 million an inch.

Always Prepared

When a winter storm is forecast for your

area, the Illinois Water Survey suggests
that you keep the following rules in
mind:

» Check battery-powered equipment like
radios and flashlights before the storm
begins.

- Check your fuel supply if you heat with

wood, oil or bottled gas.

Check your food and make trips for

supplies before the storm develops.

Include food that does not require

refrigeration.

Check your home for hazards from

fireplaces, over-heated stoves, space

heaters and furnaces.

+ Stay indoors unless you are in excellent

physical condition. Don't kill yourself

shoveling snow!

Dress properly. Layers of protective

clothing are your best bet in keeping

warm,

- If you are traveling by car, seek refuge
if storm conditions worsen. Plan ahead
and select alternate routes. Try not to
travel alone. Always have a full tank of
gas if venturing into open county.
Carry a winter storm kit consisting of:
blanket, shovel, bag of sand, flashlight,
booster cables, windshield scraper.
Also carry a small supply of high-calorie
non-perishable food such as nuts or
candy bars.

Feeling Blue?

One last word of encouragement. Win-
ters of the last few years in Illinois
have been subdued compared with
those of the late 1970s. On Christmas
of 1982 temperatures in central and
southern Illinois were in the 60's. Dur
ing the winter of 1986-1987 Illinois
experienced only two major winter
storms. The winter of 1987-1988 could
prove one for the record books, but
hopefully only for the least number of
winter storms ever recorded.

This article is based on the work of Dr:
Wayne M. Wendland, State Climatologist
and others with the Illinois Water Survey:
Dr: Wendland is an Adjunct Professor of
Geography at the University of Illinois in
Champaign. He has been with the Water
Survey for seven years and earned his
Ph.D. in Meteorology at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.

The Big Bite

It came from Japan, hitching a ride on

a shipment of used tires bound for a
reprocessing plant in Houston. It spread
to New Orleans, Kansas City, as far south
as Jacksonville, Florida, as far north as
Greenville, Ohio. It is now in Illinois
and it is the biggest development in
American medical entomology in the
last 25 years.

“It” is the Asian tiger mosquito
(Aedes albopictus ), a potentially lethal
species of mosquito whose range ex-
tends from the tropics of southeast Asia
and the Pacific Islands north through

China, Japan and Southern Siberia. The
Center for Disease Control in Atlanta
reports that, as of August 31, 1987, the
Asian tiger mosquito has been found in
sixteen states, including Illinois.

Harris County Texas is no stranger
to mosquitoes, with more than 54 spe-
cies indigenous to the area. But on a
hot August day in 1985 Taweesak Wui-
thiranyagool, an inspector with the local
mosquito control district, bumped into
a tire containing a mosquito trap and
was roundly attacked. Harris County
knew its 55th species was something
special.

The biting adult is an aggressive
mosquito. Aquatic larvae were found in
used tires, broken television sets, soda
cans, chain-saw handles — any kind of
container that held water seemed to do.
Houston authorities, aided by the Smith-
sOnian Institution, finally determined
that the mosquito with the single silver
stripe running down its back was a new
mosquito with significant disease poten
tial. Mosquito control officers hoped that
the outbreak was local, that its spread
could be prevented.

Black September

Their hopes were unfounded. New
Orleans, once called the Necropolis of
the South because of its frequent yellow
fever epidemics, was duplicating Hous-
ton’s experience. On April 4, 1986, Aedes
albopictus was found in an auto salvage
yard in the eastern part of the city.
Within weeks, it was all over the city,
and mosquito control officers discovered
more bad news. The insect was resistant
to malathion, the insecticide used most
often during epidemic disease outbreaks.

Worried entomologists called it
Black September. During the summer
months of 1986, the mosquito had
spread to all the Gulf Coast states from
Texas to Florida; north to Indianapolis,
Indiana; Mt. Vernon and East St. Louis,
Illinois and Greenville, Ohio; and west
to Kansas City, Missouri. Populations of
the mosquito were intercepted in Seattle,
Washington, in tires originating in Japan.
During the summer of 1987 a major
infestation of Aedes albopictus was found
in downtown Chicago, significantly in-
creasing its north central extension. A
similar northern movement occurred
along the Atlantic Seaboard from North
and South Carolina to New Jersey.

The Asian tiger mosquito is rapidly
becoming the American tiger mosquito
as well. Based upon the work of ento-
mologists William Hawley and Stefan
Nawrocki of the University of Notre
Dame, any place east of the Rockies and
south of a line from Maine to Chicago
is fair game for the insect. Recently it
has moved into Brazil and Argentina.

Why are entomologists so worried?

A Domestic Mosquito

Aedes albopictus is an extremely aggres-
sive and voracious biter. It feeds on
humans, birds and other mammals and
may feed on reptiles and amphibians as
well. It can breed in any container with
a little water in it. It has been found in
natural containers, but also in the holes
of bowling balls, flowerpots, cemetery
vases, tin cans, drums and buckets. It is
active during daylight hours. It can live
indoors with man. It can complete its
aquatic lifecycle from egg to adult in as
little as 7 days. It is a fierce competitor
and can easily replace less harmful local
species. It is a major carrier of disease,
one of the few such to invade the United
States in the last 300 years.

The last major mosquito health
threat in this country came from Aedes
aegypti, also known as the yellow fever
mosquito. Between 1693 and 1901 it

killed an estimated 100,000 people in
this country and infected half a million.
The Asian tiger mosquito is potentially
more dangerous than Aegypii. It is a
known carrier of all four types of epi-
demic and hemorrhagic dengue. Any
soldier who served in World War II in
the Pacific is probably familiar with den-
gue and its joint pain, fever and rashes.
Dengue is not usually fatal, but a related
disorder, hemorrhagic dengue, can kill
children who experience a second bout
with dengue. The most recent large-scale
outbreak of dengue occurred in Cuba
in 1981, affecting 1% of that country’s
population — a figure considered very
high by epidemiologists. 344,000 people
were infected and there were 158 deaths.

Aedes albopictus is an
extremely aggressive
and voracious biter. It
feeds on humans, birds
and other mammals
and may feed on reptiles
and amphibians as well.
It can breed in any
container with a little
water in it. It has
been found in natural
containers, but also in
the holes of bowling
balls, flowerpots,
cemetery vases, tin cans,
drums and buckets.

The Cuban fatality rate was very low,
due to that country’s ability to hospital-
ize large number of dengue patients,
thus circumventing hemorrhagic and
shock manifestations. Over 100,000
dengue patients were hospitalized dur-
ing the epidemic.

The Asian tiger mosquito has also
been associated with 27 arboviruses
(insect-borne viruses ) known to affect
man, including: Japanese encephalitis,
West Nile virus, Kunjin virus, all flavi-
viruses, Ross River virus, Chikungunya
virus, Batai virus, and all Bunyaviruses
including LaCrosse and San Angelo vi-
ruses. The most serious threats to Illinois
are significant potentials for increased
transmission of St. Louis encephalitis and
LaCrosse encephalitis.

Because Aedes albopictus feeds on
so many species, it is called the universal
vector by entomologists. It can transmit
just about anything. For example,
because Aedes albopictus transmits the
LaCrosse virus, it could become the most
important carrier of this disease in IIli-
nois and the Midwest. This, coupled with
its aggressive behavior and ability to live
with man in his home, could significantly
increase the number of LaCrosse ence-
phalitis cases in Illinois. Encephalitis is
particularly dangerous for children. The
mosquito is also a very effective vector
of dog heartworm, a parasitic and often
fatal disease of dogs, now epidemic in
Illinois.

Appearing Now...
In Illinois!

In the greater Chicago area, approxi-
mately nine million tires have accumu-
lated this year — one used tire for every
person in the area. And over the past
ten years, the Chicago metropolitan area
has accumulated close to 90 million
tires. No one knows where they are or
whether Aedes albopictus has made a
home in a few, some or most of them.

Chicago authorities do know that
Aedes albopictus has found Chicago. On
August 10, 1987 the Asian tiger mosquito
was first collected in a tire yard along
the Chicago River between the Webster
Street and Cortland Street bridges. A
positive identification of Aedes albopictus
was made at the Smithsonian by Dr
Ronald Ward on August 17. On August
19 and 20, at the request of Chicago's
Health Department, a team of nine pro-
fessionals from the Illinois Natural His-
tory Survey (NHS) visited the site.

Through bite counts (One scientist
counts the number of mosquitoes land-
ing on and biting the arm of another
scientist) NHS staff were able to deter-
mine that the yard was heavily infested
and that eradication was not feasible.
The number of mosquitoes biting was
22 to 25 per minute.

NHS staff did find the answer to
control of the mosquito. Corncob gran-
ules, impregnated with Bacillus thurin-
giensis, were filtered through the tire
piles to kill off the larvae of Aedes
albopictus. The results were impressive:
89%, 98% and 85% control (dead larvae)
of the tires sampled. No further applica-
tion was required.

NHS staff were also concerned
about the extent of infestation outside
of the Webster Street Tire Yard, and with
good reason. Aedes albopictus was found
one mile away from the yard. Additionally,
large numbers of potential habitats for

the mosquito were found as far away as
three miles, in both residential and
commercial areas. The NHS scientists
established a house/ factory index of
47%: 47% of 136 premises surveyed by
the scientists had at least one potential
larval habitat.

Dr. Robert Novak, a medical ento
mologist with the Natural History Survey,
enumerates the dangers for Illinois and
the research that has yet to be done:
“We need to know if this species can
overwinter in Chicago, that is, survive
the winter and still impact on man. Our
guess is that it can, and that it has already
spread throughout Illinois. We need to
map all of the tire yards in Illinois to
back that guess up. And we need to
know if Aedes albopictus is replacing
Illinois’ natural mosquito species. Again,
our guess is yes or very soon. We also
need to research insecticide resistance
and, very importantly, whether the mos-
quito has actually begun transmitting any
diseases. What we need to know is
staggering.”

“We've had funding, but that money
runs out soon. We'll be looking for more.
The problem with this kind of situation
is that people want the body count —
how many people are sick, how many
are dying. We don’t want to wait until
the bodies stack up. I’ve heard a fellow
entomologist describe Aedes albopictus
as a black box — in health terms is it
a tiny firecracker or a big stick of dyna-
mite? No one knows for sure. But can
we afford to wait?”

“We're not isolated by the oceans
anymore in this country. We're seeing
rapid worldwide movement of goods
and people, and that means the poten-
tial for a whole host of exotic insects,
plants and associated diseases that this
country has never seen before. Illinois is
the hub of a huge transportation net
work. Goods are moving up Our rivers
to Chicago directly from Asia and South
America. Our international air transport
through O'Hare Airport is staggering. We
have to start thinking in terms of avoiding
catastrophic behavior.”

Dr, Robert Novak is an Associate Medical
Entomologist with the Faunistics Section
of the Illinois Natural History Survey: He
has been with the Survey for the past
one and one-half years. Prior to that
time he worked for the Center for Di
sease Control for eight years, three in
Atlanta, Georgia and five in San Juan,
Puerto Rico. He received his Ph.D. in
Entomology at the University of Illinois
Working with the Faunistics Section on
this project is the Economic Entomology
Section of the Natural History Survey:

*

Aedes Albopictus, the Asian Tiger Mosquito.

Sampling a tire pile.

Natural History Survey

Finding A Safe Place For
w-Level Radioactive Waste

Until 1980 the history of low-level radio-
active waste (LIW) disposal policy was
one of few successes, many failures,
detours, dead-ends and confusion and
frustration for the public and regulatory
agencies alike. In the 1940s and 1950s
low-level radioactive wastes were dis-
posed of only at government-owned
sites, usually in shallow trenches or
packaged in steel drums and dumped
into the ocean. Ocean disposal of these
wastes ceased in 1970. From 1962 to
1971 the private sector stepped in where
even the government was treading tre-
pidatiously Six commercially-owned sites
were established. Three are no longer
operating: Sheffield, Illinois; Maxey Flats,
Kentucky; and West Valley, New York.

At Sheffield, about 50 miles north
of Peoria, the site owner, U.S. Ecology,
petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Agency
to expand past the 21 trenches already
filled with LLW, The petition met state
Opposition and was denied in April of
1978: the site was effectively closed.

In the meantime monitoring wells
around the site detected tritium (water
with a radioactive hydrogen atom ) mi-
grating from the site along an under
ground pathway of 1,200 to 1,500 feet.
Tritium, which has a relatively short half
life of 12.3 years, is not as “hot” as other
substances disposed at the site. But the
fact that there was a pathway — and
other more highly radioactive substances
could come down that pathway — had
state scientists very concerned. In 1982
the site was found to be discharging into
standing water in a nearby strip-mined
area. A settlement to a state-filed lawsuit
against the site owner is still in the pro-
cess Of negotiation.

Kentucky officials were having their
own problems with their LLW site at
Maxey Flats, which had operated from
1963 to 1977. The site’s 48 trenches,
filled with more than 4.8 million cubic
feet of radioactive wastes, were carved
out of shale filled with sandstone lenses.
Sand is notorious for its high permeabil
ity, and officials discovered that some of
the 140 pounds of plutonium scattered
throughout the site had moved hundreds
of feet from where they had been buried.

10

Tritium migration was found offsite, and
in 1977 the site was closed. The state
eventually purchased the site and took
over responsibility for clean-up, which
may cost as much as $131 million.

The three remaining sites still
Operating — Barnwell, South Carolina;
Beatty, Nevada; and Hanford, Washing-
ton — put everyone on notice in the
late 1970s that they were going to
restrict other states’ access to their
facilities.

It was time for a new approach.

Illinois was the first
state to ban shallow
land burial of hazardous
chemicals and radio-
active wastes. Illinois
also requires an
engineered disposal
method such as use of a
concrete barrier to
separate packaged LLW
from the earth.

Congress Steps In

The federal government was grappling
with two hot issues: disposal of high-
level nuclear waste (HLW’) and disposal
of everything else that is radioactive. An
attempt to develop regional centers for
disposal of high-level wastes met with
stubborn opposition from the states. In
an odd kind of quid pro quo, Congress
put the burden for developing one
(eventually two ) high-level waste repos-
itory on the federal government and then
mandated that the states were responsi-
ble for developing their own regional
low-level sites.

The law that drives national policy
on LIW is the Low-Level Radioactive
Waste Policy Act of 1980. It requires
each state to assure adequate disposal

capability for low-level radioactive wastes
generated within its borders, and it
encourages that this be accomplished
through regional groupings of states,
through inter-state waste compacts.
These compacts are formed by the states
themselves, although Congress must ap-
prove the compact. Within each state
compact, a host state is selected to
develop and oversee a LIW site.

The original operating deadline for
these sites was set for January 1, 1986
and was later extended to January 1,
1993. Penalties were attached to non-
compliers. By January 1988, compacts,
host states and siting plans must be in
place or states must be prepared to pay
twice the $20 base surcharge for each
cubic foot of LLW disposed at the three
remaining landfills. By June of 1988 this
amount increases to $60 per cubic foot.
The three LIW sites still operating will
be allowed to restrict other states’ access
to their facilities after 1993.

Regional groupings have emerged,
with compacts formed or forming in the
Northwest, Rocky Mountains, Midwest,
Central Midwest, and Southeast. Texas
will have its own facility, and California
will probably join with Arizona. The
Northeast will probably form a compact
centering around Pennsylvania.

Not surprisingly, Illinois and Ken-
tucky found that, at least in terms of
low-level waste, they had much in com-
mon. The two states formed the Central
Midwest Compact, agreed that Illinois
(by far the larger generator of LIW) would
host the site, and began work on the
siting plan. The Central Midwest Com
pact has been approved by Congress
and has three Commissioners: Clark
Bullard, Director of the University of
Illinois’ Office of Energy Research and
Chairman of the Compact; Terry Lash,
Director of the Illinois Department of
Nuclear Safety; and Donald R. Hughes,
representing Kentucky. The Governor of
Illinois will appoint a fourth non-voting
member from the county in which the
site is located.

The Illinois Department of Nuclear
Safety (DNS) has been designated as
the lead agency in developing the site.

Low Level Waste: What It Is
and What It Isn't

The official definition for low-level radio-
active waste — everything that isn’t high-
level waste — isn't very helpful. By
exclusion, low-level waste is 770/ spent
nuclear reactor fuel rods, of uranium
or mill tailings, of byproducts of either
nuclear weapons production or spent
fuel reprocessing and 701 high-level
waste from nuclear reactors or nuclear
weapons prodution.

The best way to define low-level
waste is by example: Low-level waste
includes slightly radioactive clothing
worn by utility workers, test tubes and
syringes from hospitals and industrial
producers, reactor water sludge, and the
more highly radioactive irradiated com-
ponents and steel parts removed peri-
odically from nuclear reactors.

There are about two million cubic
feet of LIW produced nationally. Illinois
contributes more LIW to this stream than
any other state: 218,000 cubic feet in
1986, 77.8% by volume and 99% by acti-
vity from nuclear power plant operations.
Other LLW waste generators include pri-
vate companies involved in the fuel cycle,
industrial users like pharmaceutical firms,
academic researchers, hospital and
medical research facilities and state gov-
ernment agencies (see Figure 1 for
breakdown by volume shipped).

There are three categories of LLW,
Class A and B wastes decay to very low
radioactive levels within 100 years. Class
C waste, which takes 500 years to decay,
must be disposed of in structurally stable
waste forms with at least 16 feet earth
cover or behind an intruder barrier that
will last for the full S500 years. Class C
waste includes the irradiated compo-
nents from nuclear power plants. Envi
ronmentalists are most concerned about
the long-lived radionuclides in these
components, niobium-94 and nickel-59,
which occur in extremely small amounts
but have half-lives of 20,000 and 80,000
years respectively. Spokesmen for DNS
point out that the irradiated components
are extremely immobile and will have to
be shielded in containers inside an engi
neered structure at the LIW facility.

Designing for 500 Years

The LIW site, as now envisioned by
IDNS, will require 1,000 acres of land,
with the disposal facility itself on 100 to
200 acres. State law prohibits siting of a
disposal facility closer than one and
one-half miles from a non-consenting
municipality. A town may agree to a closer
site. Costing $10 to 15 million, the site

Figure 1

will take in 250,000 cubic feet of waste
per year and will have an operating life
of 50 to 100 years. It is expected to
generate in excess of $1 million per year
in tax revenues and other cash payments
for the county where it is located and
will employ 80 to 100 workers.

Illinois was the first state to ban
shallow land burial of hazardous chemi-
cal and radioactive wastes. Illinois also
requires an engineered disposal method
such as use of a concrete barrier to sep
arate packaged LIW from the earth. These
legislative mandates have important ram-
ifications for the disposal facility's design.

The ultimate design of the facility
will depend largely on the contractor
selected by DNS to develop the facility,
in accordance with the rules promul-
gated by the agency. Local input into the
design will be part of the process. Each
design has its benefits and drawbacks.
Some options include:

- Above-ground vault disposal would
be engineered above the natural
grade. Roof, walls, and floor would be
made of steel-reinforced concrete.
Wastes could be inserted through the
roof and could therefore be more easily
retrieved if necessary. Drawbacks in
clude exposure to the natural elements
and no additional barrier if the vault is
damaged (see Figure 2).
Below-ground concrete vaults
would be engineered with the same
steel-reinforced concrete floors, walls
and roof used in the above-ground
vault. In addition, a layer of earth
would overlie the vault. It is less vul
nerable to surface elements, but retriey
ability is a problem (see Figure 3).

ieee

Illinois LLRW Sources
Volume percentage shipped
in 1986

Industrial (1.1% )
Academic (1.5% )
Hospitals (1.7% )

Government (6.3% )

Fuel Cycle (10.7% )

Utilities (78.7

(courtesy of League of Women
Voters of Illinois )

- Earth-mounded concrete bunker
such as that used in France utilizes a
base concrete bunker cell. Waste con
tainers are placed in layers with con-
crete filling in the voids. A concrete
roof will be added once the cell is filled.
Wastes would also be stored above-
ground by stacking canisters and steel
drums on top of the cell and then cov
ering the canisters with earth. Class B
and C wastes would be stored in the
cell; Class A above (see Figure 4).
Modular concrete canister disposal
uses individual waste containers placed
inside reinforced concrete modular
canisters that are then buried in
trenches. Grout would be used be
tween the individual containers. This
method is closest to shallow land burial
but allows for easier accessibility to
individual containers (see Figure 5).

.

Design choice and site geology top the
list of concerns of environmentalists like

Joanna Hoelscher of Citizens For A Bet

ter Environment: “We want to encourage
above-ground and highly-engineered
structures. We don't want to see shallow
land or enhanced shallow land burial.”

The Science of Siting:
Weighing All the Factors

The site selection process is long and
complicated, with many players. In 1985
DNS contracted with the Illinois Geolog
ical Survey (IGS) and the Illinois Water
Survey (IWS) to provide geologic and
hydrologic data to be used in the initial
phases of the siting process

“Along with the Water Survey, Our
job was to provide DNS with guideli

Above-Ground Vault Disposal

Figure 2

Below-Ground Vault Disposal

Figure 3

Earth-Mounded Concrete Bunker

Figure 4

Modular Concrete Canister
Disposal Facility

Figure 5

(courtesy of League of Women Voters of Illinois )

to conduct siting and characterization
studies by providing statewide maps on
those factors critical to a safe site,”
explains Dr. Richard Berg, Environmen-
tal Geologist with the Geological Survey.
“That included maps on aquifer distribu-
tion at various depths, the locations of
water supplies and lakes and streams,
alluvial deposits, sand and gravel re-
sources, coal reserves, inactive faults
and other areas of public interest. It was
a first step to developing those factors
that might exclude an area from consid-
eration site or make other areas more
favorable.”

Illinois has advanced rapidly in the
site selection process partly due to the
availability of statewide and county level
data from the state’s Geographic Infor
mation System (GIS) and the work of
the Surveys, according to Dale Egner,
Program Manager for Battelle. The GIS,
housed in Champaign, is a computerized
data base containing extensive informa-
tion on the state’s natural resources.

On June 1, 1987 DNS contracted
with Battelle Memorial Institute of Ohio
to assist in the site selection process.
Battelle Columbus was brought in to
assist with environmental studies, and
Hanson Engineers, Incorporated of
Springfield was added to perform geo-
technical field work. Originally all 102 of
the state’s counties were fair game for
site consideration. That list quickly nar-
rowed as northern Illinois’ counties were
eliminated because of their large popula-
tion centers and abundant high-yielding
aquifers. An additional 20 southern IIli-
nois counties were eliminated because
of their seismic risk potential.

DNS put out a kind of informal re-
quest for proposals to all counties asking
them to notify DNS if they were inter-
ested in learning more about the facility
and its potential economic benefits.
Based upon response to that request
and preliminary data on those counties
that had geologically and hydrologically
acceptable conditions, the list was nar-
rowed to twenty-one counties.

Carroll, Cass, Clark, DeWitt, Ford,
Marshall, Menard, Peoria, Sangamon and
Vermilion counties indicated an interest
in learning more about the site. Eleven
other counties took steps to opt out of
consideration because of negative citi-
zen reaction: Bond, Champaign, Cum-
berland, Effingham, Fayette, Gallatin,
Greene, Iroquois, Knox, Logan and Piatt.
Carroll and Gallatin were subsequently
dropped from the list due to technical
deficiencies identified by Battelle's
preliminary review.

Battelle and the Surveys are now
involved in the site identification pro-

cess: using the GIS, other state data bases
and relevant statutes and regulations to
identify potential candidate areas.

Presence of one of the following
factors eliminates a candidate area from
selection: areas with free-standing water,
areas Of significant earthquake intensity,
designated federally-protected lands,
designated state-protected lands, areas
prone to landsliding or subsidence, and
areas within 100-year floodplains.

Areas with no exclusionary factors
present are then subjected to a favora-
bility analysis, consisting of seven factors
drawn from county-wide GIS maps.
These include: low soil permeability,
simple geological structure, absence of
surficial sand and gravel deposits, areas
with low erosion, areas not in watersheds
of surface water supplies, absence of
high groundwater yield aquifers, and
absence of shallow aquifers. To date 34
areas have been identified as candidates
by this process.

“Other favorability factors will be
investigated at the site-specific level
when we have identified the candidate
areas,’ Dale Egner of Battelle explains.
“That includes 11 more factors — such
conditions as presence of coal, oil or
gas; critical habitats; presence of prime
farmland; archaeological or historical
sites; closeness to LLW generators and
many others. We will use these factors
to narrow down the candidate areas to
approximately eight potential alternative
sites. Our next step involves field recon-
naissance. We want to see the potential
sites first-hand, drill bore holes at each
of the eight sites to confirm our map-
ping data, and obtain more local infor-
mation. We have the potential candidate
areas fairly well-mapped and we'll soon
have about eight sites that will need
further investigation.”

Down to Four

After additional modeling and field
reconnaissance, the list of potential
alternative sites will be reduced to four
alternative sites and the 18-month pro-
cess of site characterization begins. Bat-
telle and Hanson must obtain firsthand
geological information by drilling several
bore holes at each site and by conducting
pump testing to evaluate the hydrogeo
ology of the alternative sites. Ground
water and a site’s impact on groundwater
are paramount considerations.
Concurrent with this effort, Battelle
will be conducting environmental studies
on each of the four sites. The Illinois
State Museum, Illinois Department of
Conservation, the Surveys, and agricul
tural offices will all provide data for the

environmental reports.

More than 100 workshops and meet
ings have already been held with local
officials and other interested groups to
discuss the site selection process. Public
education efforts move into high gear
after the four sites have been identified.
A negotiation process goes along with
that effort, as local governing groups help
identify design choice and economic
benefits to be included in the site sel-
ection package.

This 18-month process is expected
to begin in the spring of 1988 and be
completed by fall of 1989, at which point
Battelle will submit a list of four fully
characterized sites to the Director of DNS.
The Director has the unenviable task of
choosing one of those four as the final
site. The Department of Nuclear Safety
then moves into the licensing phase,
selecting a contractor/ developer who
must work with local officials in design
negotiation and eventually submit a li-
censing application to DNS. One full year
of environmental baseline data must also
be developed for the site chosen.

A Matter of Local Importance

As complicated as the technical studies
are surrounding site selection, they pale
in comparison with finding a site that is
politically acceptable. Under Illinois
House Bill 717, which passed the legis-
lature last fall, county boards or city
councils must agree to accept a low-level
facility before it can be licensed to oper-
ate by DNS. Local disapproval must rest
on sound technical considerations. The
site selected is subject to appeal to the
Illinois Pollution Control Board by local
Officials or by DNS.

Counties are being offered several
economic benefits: construction jobs in
building the $15 million facility, 80 to
100 permanent on-site jobs, local waste

surcharges generating up to $1 million
per year, property taxes and training of
local residents for the site's jobs. Other
state guarantees include providing assis
tance in meeting the site’s operational
demands on roads, schools, and other
traditional municipal services; maintain
ing current property values of nearby
residents or purchasing the property;
establishing strict site closure guarantees
to be funded from a perpetual care fund;
and implementing a cradle-to-grave
tracking system for LIW.

Local officials will also have a voice
in determining facility design, as well as
other aspects of site operation, including
monitoring methods. Again, environ.
mentalists have voiced concern that the
best technically available site be chosen,
even if that means some tough political
decisions.

To assist local officials in making an
informed decision, DNS and the Central
Midwest Compact are making grants of
$50,000 and $100,000 available to the
governing bodies of each of the four site
finalists. There is also a citizens’ advisory
group consisting of 17 members from
the public including waste generators,
environmentalists, radiologists, farmers,
hospitals and others to advise DNS
throughout the entire siting process.

According to Terry Lash, Director of
DNS, “I am committed to not selecting
a site in the face of local opposition. It
is possible that no county will want the
site, at which point we have to go back
to the legislature. It may ratify our choice
or it may send us back to characterize
additional sites. We are still optimistic.
There are still many counties not op
posed to a site, who are still talking and
negotiating with us. No one has said they
really want it. On the other hand, we
have a lot of groups out there willing to
keep an open mind. That's all we ask.”

DNS Timetable for An Illinois Low-Level Waste Site

January 7, 1988

DNS announces candidate areas

March 1988 Eight potential sites identified

April 1988 Announcement of four alternative sites; site, characterization begins
Fall 1989 Battelle submits fully-characterized profiles of sites to DNS
1989-1990 One site selected

1990 Application for licensing submitted to DNS by facility developer
1991-1992 Site construction

1993, Disposal facility comes on-line and accepts waste

Candidate Areas Chosen by Department of Nuclear Safety

The Department of Nuclear Safety had identified 60 areas in 17 counties as potential

candidate areas for siting. Since the accompanying article was written, 29 candidate

areas in eight counties with the following distribution are now under active consideration:
Cass (2); Clark (5); DeWitt (4); Ford (2); Marshall (1); Menard (4); Sangamon (5 );

Vermilion (6).

From low-value hardwood logs come
great-tasting high-value ($6 a pound and
up) edible mushrooms. Balancing busi-
ness and nature is the message Dr. Chris
Burnett of the Illinois Natural History
Survey (NHS) is preaching to farmers
and small landowners, all potential
growers of shiitake mushrooms.

A Samurai’s Delight

Shiitake (pronounced sheé-é-tah-kay )
has been cultivated in Asia for centuries.
Shiitake is the Japanese name for this
highly-prized mushroom, also called
Dong by the Chinese and Huang Skin
by Koreans. Shiitake means mushroom
of the shia tree, which is related to the
oak. The first written reference to shiitake
was in the 1600's, although it was prob-
ably cultivated for centuries before that.

It was valued both for its taste and
for its medicinal properties. Like ginseng,
shiitake was thought to cure ailments
associated with old age and to have
aphrodisiac qualities. The shiitake was
so highly prized in Japan that samurai
who knew where the mushroom was
grown would threaten anyone who at-
tempted to trespass.

The shiitake was originally harvested
from the wild. It wasn't long before logs
bearing the mushroom were hauled into
courtyards, and domestic cultivation
began. In 1942 Kisaku Mori, an agricul
ture student at Kyoto University, discov-
ered that the fungus could be grown on
presterilized wood chips. Pure cultures
of the fungus could then be inoculated
directly into holes drilled in logs.

Shiitake is Japan's leading agricultural
industry, employing over 180,000 people

14

Shiitake

The shiitake was so
highly prized in Japan
that samurai who knew
where the mushroom
was grown would
threaten anyone who
attempted to trespass.

and generating over $1 billion in retail
sales annually. The United States imports
over $100 million per year in shiitake,
making this country Japan's third best
customer in shiitake sales. A market exists
here for growing shiitake, according to
the U.S. Department of Agriculture: a $2
million annual market in this country
now and a potential $20 million market
in the future.

The Oak Mushroom

Shiitake did not make its appearance in
the United States until 1974, when Dr
Fred Howard and R.M. Hoffman estab-
lished the Mushroom Research Institute
in California. They produced shiitake
mushrooms within four months. A scant
year later Dr. Byong Yoo began his
domestic experiment in shiitake by
inoculating a cord of oak logs in a wood-
lot outside Washington D.C. Two years
later Dr. Yoo’s logs produced a bumper
American crop of 110 pounds of shiitake
mushrooms. There are thousands of
small shiitake growers in the United
States now, and 40 to 50 large growers.
These large growers usually grow shiitake
indoors using artificial media.

For those interested in growing their
own shiitake crop, the process is surpris-
ingly easy and not labor intensive. The
first step is obtaining viable inoculum in
pure culture and then refrigerating, but
not freezing it until ready for use. Do-
mestic companies that supply spawn are
limited, but there is one in Naperville,
Illinois.

Selecting the right species of tree
and preparing the logs for inoculation is
particularly important in establishing vig-
orous shiitake growth. This step requires
freshly-harvested (best time is late win-
ter), low-grade hardwood logs of small
diameter (2-8 inches). Shiitake will not
grow on living tissue and survives on
dead wood only when given a head start
on competitive fungi. For that reason,
only recently cut trees are used for shii-
take cultivation. Oak is the preferred tree
species, although shiitake also grows on
other hardwoods.

The fungus is introduced to the logs
via inoculation, a process that involves
introducing the shiitake spawn into holes
drilled in the logs within two to three
weeks after felling of the host tee. Spawn
plugs are placed into the holes — 20 to
50 pieces of spawn per log — spaced 8
to 16 inches apart in rows, with rows
one to two inches apart. The holes are
then covered with wax to keep moisture
in and competing fungi out.

Turning the Logs and
Turning a Profit

Laying the logs is one of the trickiest
parts of the cultivation process. Dr. Chris
Burnett of the NHS, along with the Ver
milion County Conservation District, is
currently conducting a demonstration
project on shiitake mushroom produc
tion at Kennekuk Cove County Park (just
north of Kickapoo State Park), and
explains the process and the reasons for
the Survey's involvement.

“We're looking at seven strains now;
two are already producing well. We use
100 logs per strain, so we have 700 logs
in various piles and configurations. We're
concerned about moisture, climate and
log management. The logs have to be
stacked, moved and periodically soaked.
The logs may also have to be covered to
prevent them from receiving too much
sunlight or becoming dehydrated.”

“My interest is in showing that
growing shiitake is an economically via-
ble opportunity as well as sound envi-
ronmentally. People will probably grow
shiitake anyway, but we don't want them
cutting down just any oak. We want to
educate them on woodland manage-
ment. The logs you need for shiitake cul-
tivation can be low quality and only four
to six inches in diameter. That means
that the trees that should be used are
the ones that would be thinned in forest
management anyway or the tops of trees
felled for timber. The whole idea is to
complement the management of estab-
lished timber stands avd increase the
feasibility of restoring woodland cover to
marginal croplands.”

The Fruit of the Oak

Shiitake is capable of fruiting only after
the logs have been completely colonized
by the fungus. This process takes six
months to two years. The logs are
“raised” in a configuration that favors
abundant moisture, good air movement
and shaded exposure to light. Cool tem
peratures — 46 to 72 degrees fahrenheit
— are best. Fruiting occurs in spring
and autumn, the wet cool seasons. Rais
ing the logs is also helpful in harvesting

the crop. After mushroom formation
begins, shiitake is often ready to be
picked in two to seven days. Fresh mush
rooms should be stored refrigerated in
trays with slots for ventilation. Shiitake
can also be dried using heated forced air
chambers or an inexpensive alternative
for the small grower — the sun.

“There's a lot more flavor to the
shiitake mushroom than there is to the
standard button mushroom most of us
are familiar with,” reports Dr Burnett.
“The shiitake has a meatier, more sub
stantial texture. The mushrooms are a
good source of B and D vitamins. Some
early research indicates that eritodenin,
a substance found in shiitake, reduces
cholesterol. Other studies as to its medi-
cinal properties are underway.”

“T got involved in growing shiitake
because it fits in with what I am trying
to do as a wildlife ecologist. Wildlife can
take care of itself if it has suitable habi
tat. Rather than studying wildlife, we
need to study people and the ways they
can work the land without destroying
the habitats of the native flora and fauna.
Agriculture and wildlife preservation are
not mutually exclusive goals. Shiitake
production can help farmers who would
like to grow trees on marginal cropland.
Most timber takes 40 or more years to
mature. How can I convince farmers that
that’s economical? But a farmer can har
vest trees for shiitake in ten years. He's
preventing farmland erosion, providing
wildlife habitat and growing another pro-
fitable crop.”

Shiitake Mushroom Dip

Ingredients:

4 tbs. butter

3 cups chopped onions

1 Ib. chopped mushrooms
¥2 tsp. salt (more, to taste )
1 tsp. dry mustard

¥2 tsp. dill weed

black pepper, to taste
cayenne, to taste

Dr. Christopher Burnett is an Assistant
Wildlife Ecologist and has been with the
Natural History Survey's Wildlife Re
search Section for the past five years
He received his doctorate in Mammal
ian Ecology from Boston Universih:
Anyone wishing more information on
shiitake cultivation is encouraged to
write to Dr Burnett at the Illinois
Natural History Survey, 607 East Pea
body Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61820

Shiitake

picking stage

3 tbs. dry white wine (more, to desired consistency )
8 oz. (1 cup) neufchatel or cream cheese

Procedure:

1) Sautee onions in butter until soft (5 min. )
2) Add mushrooms & seasoning, stir and cook another 5 min.

3) Add wine & cook 5 more min.

4) Blend about 4 of cooked mixture with the cheese, adjust seasoning

5) Stir in unblended mixture

* Adapted from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Molly Katzen (1982) Ten

Speed Press

Stirring Out Trouble:
Recycling Illinois Lakes

For 40 years, Lake Eureka had faithfully
provided Eureka’s citizens with a good
cheap source of drinking water. But since
the early 1970s citizen complaints about
bad tastes and odors in their drinking
water had increased. Then came the
winter of 1976-1977, and patience with
the on-again, offagain quality of the
drinking water came to a halt. Benny
Arbuckle, Superintendent of City Services
for Eureka, summed up everybody’s frus-
tration, “At least twice this year, for about
three weeks continuously, our water
tastes — and smells — just terrible. And
this time it has been worse than ever.”

The Aging Process

Eureka wasn't the only Illinois commu-
nity suffering from lake water gone bad.
Other towns and cities were wrestling
with deteriorating lake drinking water
and with recreational lakes covered with
unsightly surface scums and dense

Oligotrophic Lake

16

growths of aquatic plants. Illinois’ lakes
are getting old, and that means a steady
deterioration in water quality.

All lakes undergo a kind of aging
process. Every lake, whether natural or
man-made, has a life span during which
it begins its existence, ages, becomes
a marsh or swamp, and eventually returns
to dry land.

The first phase of a natural lake’s
existence is called the oligotrophic (from
the Greek meaning “little nourishment’ ).
Lake waters in this phase have high levels
of dissolved oxygen, low concentrations
of plant nutrients and little animal or
plant life. Natural lakes are formed on
infertile land that has low potential for
supporting plant and animal life. Man-
made lakes differ in that they are fre-
quently created by the flooding of fertile
river valleys rich in plant nutrients and
thus have a large amount of biological
activity in their early stages. These lakes
have their own problems if fresh nutri-
ents do not flow into them. Biological

Mesotrophic Lake

activity may decline after just a few
years as the original nutrients sink into
the bottom sediments.

Mesotrophic (“intermediate nourish-
ment’ ) describes the next stage of a
lake’s life. Plant nutrients from rain,
melted snow and groundwater increase
in the lake. These nutrients feed plants
along the shore and in the water The
plants grow, and as they get larger, they
begin to trap incoming sediments. The
lake begins to fill in and to become shal-
lower from the accumulated plants and
bottom sediment.

The last stage in a lake's life before
it becomes a marsh or swamp is the
eutrophic (“rich nourishment’ ) Stage.
Dissolved nutrients are very high, and
plant and animal life abound. The de-
composition of organic life in the lake
draws heavily on the lake's oxygen levels.
The bottom waters of the lake, which
can be completely isolated from the
upper layers in the summer, may have

Eutrophic Lake

no oxygen at all. The lack of oxygen in
the bottom waters leads to biochemical
reactions in the bottom sediments, which
in turn lead to the release of nitrogen,
iron, manganese, phosphorus, hydrogen
sulfide, methane, and other substances.
The external symptoms of lake
eutrophication are prolific weed growth,
large masses of algae that create surface
scum, fish kills and even more rapid
accumulation of sediments.

Too Much Nourishment

The problems caused by eutrophication
are many. The waters used for public
supplies are most often taken from the
bottom of the lake, yet that is where
substances like iron, manganese and
hydrogen sulfide are found. And those
substances are responsible for the un-
pleasant odors and tastes which can be
difficult and costly to remove. Color,
taste and odor problems are exacerbated
by excessive plant growth in eutrophic
lakes. This plant growth can also clog fil-
ters in the water treatment process.

All lakes undergo a kind
of aging process. Every
lake, whether natural or
man-made, has a life span
during which it begins
its existence, ages,
becomes a marsh or
swamp, and eventually
returns to dry land.

Spoiled drinking water isn’t the only
problem. For those lakes used for recrea-
tional purposes, fishing may be ham-
pered as sports fish give way to fish that
can tolerate low oxygen levels. Organisms
that serve as food for fish give way to
sludge worms. Fish populations become
restricted to limited areas and fish kills
may result. Blue-green algae becomes
the predominant form of algae. This
algae has gas pockets which float on the
surface, creating unsightly surface scums.
Some of these algae also have toxic ef
fects on certain fish and animals and
cause skin irritations and gastrointestinal
disturbances in humans.

Recycling A Lake

There are two methods of lake restora-
tion. The first involves preventive mea-

sures to reduce the amount of nutrients
and sediments that flow into a lake. These
include restricting the types of activities
in the lake’s drainage basins. Large-scale
farming, land development and logging
lead to soil erosion and an influx of sedi-
ments and nutrients into a lake. Another
preventive measure is diverting the efflu-
ents away from a lake. This is especially
helpful where sewage effluents have
been the primary factor in eutrophica-
tion. A third preventive measure involves
using the wastewater treatment process
to reduce nutrient process loads in
waterways.

The second method of lake restora:
tion relies on in-lake measures that may
bring about immediate improvement.
In-lake measures are usually the most
cost effective, yielding the maximum
benefits for the least amount of money.

A Case Study: Restoring
Lake Eureka

Back to Lake Eureka. The taste and odor
problems in the lake’s water had grown
so bad that the city switched to ground
water as its water supply. That switch led
to another set of problems. Dr Raman kK.
Raman of the Illinois Water Survey (IWS)
describes those problems: “The use of
groundwater as a source increased
pumping, chemical and treatment costs.
And since the water treatment plant had

Low-Energy Mechanical
Destratification System

Electric motor

Floating platform

not been designed to treat groundwater,
a number of operating and maintenance
problems developed.”

The IWS solved Lake Eureka’s prob-
lems with a destratifier used in conjunc-
tion with chemical control of algae. A
destratifier mixes the lake water at all
depths. This brings oxygen to the bottom
waters and eliminates the separation of
water into layers with distinct tempera
tures, a process that occurs during the
summer and winter months.

The mechanical destratifier used in
Lake Eureka is a low-energy axial flow
pump with a six-foot impeller driven by
a 1.5 horsepower motor through a gear
reduction box. The system is supported
by a floating platform with the impeller
mounted at five feet from the water sur
face. The impeller rotates at 36 rp.m.,
forcing the oxygen-rich surface waters
downward. This in essence mixes the
waters and the oxygen.

One year after the 1981 installation
of the destratifier, the City of Eureka
again began using Lake Eureka as its
main source of drinking water. The
destratifier continues to be used each
winter and summer season. Overall sav
ings to the community in power and
chemical costs amount to $40,000 per
year. In addition, operational problems
within the treatment plant have been
eliminated or minimized

“The water supply system at Eureka

works very well. There have been no
consumer complaints about taste and
odor in the finished waters. We found
that the destratifier maintained adequate
levels of oxygen throughout the waters
of Lake Eureka,” reports Dr. Raman.
“Reductions of about 90, 95, 98, and
50% in the mean values of ammonia-
nitrogen, iron, manganese and chlorine
demand were achieved, and blue-green
algae have never been dominant in the
lake since destratification began. Algicide
applications have not been required in
the lake since 1984.”

There have been similar IWS suc-
cess stories using destratifiers in recrea-
tional lakes. One such lake was Lake of
the Woods in Champaign County, used
both for recreation and irrigation of an
adjacent golf course. The problems were
similar: unsightly algae, aquatic weeds,
poor fishing, unclear water, silting, etc.
Chemicals had been applied, but this
led to concern about the effects of those
chemicals on swimmers, fish and
turfgrass.

Once again, lack of oxygen in the
bottom layers of the lake was the cul-
prit. One-fourth to one-third of the total
lake volume was unsuitable for fish and
other aquatic life. Again, destratification
was the answer. Since a destratifier was
installed, the water in Lake of the Woods
cleared considerably and there was a
decrease in algal blooms and aquatic
weeds.

The in-lake water quality manage-
ment techniques developed for Lake
Eureka have since been successfully
adopted in several other impoundments
in Illinois (see Figure 1). All the lakes
except Lake Catherine and Lake Canton
employ mechanical destratifiers. An aspi-
rated air aeration system is used in Lake
Catherine and a diffused air aeration
system is used in Lake Canton. Of the 12
lakes treated, seven are water supply
impoundments and the remaining five
are recreational lakes.

“All the lake and water treatment
managers expressed great satisfaction
with the systems,” Dr Raman reported.
“Odor and taste problems have been
effectively controlled. Our costs in
developing these systems have been
minimal, involving only travel and
material costs. And, as in the case of
Lake Eureka, the costs incurred should
be recovered within one year.”

Dr Raman K Raman is the Head of the
Water Quality Section at the Illinois Water
Survey: He has been a Principal Scientist
with the Survey since 1968. Dr Raman
graduated from the University of Illinois
with his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering.

18

Lake Eureka destratifier prior to its installation.

Lakes in Illinois which
adopted IWS’s Management
Techniques.

. Lake Le-Aqua-Na
. Lake Catherine
3. Johnson Sauk Trail Lake
. Lake Rice
. Lake Canton
. Lake Eureka
’. Palmyra Lake
. Lake of the Woods
9. Altamont Reservoir
10. SLM Lake
11. Sparta Reservoir
12. Nashville Reservoir

Figure 1

Answering the Geophone

In the good old days of elixirs and patent
medicines, charlatans and con men used
forked sticks, usually made of hazel and
called divining or dowsing rods, to
“locate” underground water. More often
than not what they located was PT. Bar-
num’s proverbial sucker and his wallet.
In these days of scarce water, science
has taken over.

Unlike Chicago and surrounding
areas that draw down their water from
Lake Michigan in a complicated alloca-
tion system, Kane County and other col-
lar counties historically have relied on
deep wells for their water supplies.

This source of water is literally dry-
ing up as demand for water increases.
The wells of these communities, 1,200
to 1,400 feet deep, suffer from over-
pumping and deteriorating water quality.
County officials discovered to their dis-
may that additional deep wells were not
the answer. In Kane County these deep
supply wells produce groundwater that
exceeds the U.S. Environmental Protec
tion Agency’s standards for dissolved
radium and, in some areas, barium.
These substances are not the result of
contamination, but instead occur natu-
rally in the area’s aquifers. Another
solution, transportation of water from
Lake Michigan by pipeline, was rejected
as too costly.

A ray of hope did exist for munici-
pal officials in shallow groundwater re-
sources, found in shallow dolomite
bedrock and sand and gravel deposits
in the glacial drift that overlies the bed-
rock. Shallow wells drilled as close as 100
feet below the surface would avoid the
radium and barium typically found at
deeper levels and would have lower pro-
duction costs in terms of the electricity
needed to bring the water to the surface.

Concern over stewardship of their
groundwater resources led Kane County
and city officials into a partnership with
the Illinois Geological Survey (IGS) and
the Illinois Water Survey (IWS) to eval
uate shallow groundwater resources in
the area.

A Solution Surfaces

The geology of northeastern Illinois is
complex. Continental glaciers modified
and buried the preglacial landscape.
Shallow bedrock in the region is dolo-
mite and shale. This bedrock is overlain
by glacial materials deposited from one
million to about 10,000 years ago. These
glacial deposits contain clay, silt, sand
and gravel. Etched into the bedrock are
hidden bedrock valleys filled in with
these glacial deposits. The valleys are
useless as aquifers if they are filled with
clay: water won't flow through clay. But
if the valleys are filled with sand and
gravel, they are full of fresh water. The

Etched into the bedrock
are hidden bedrock
valleys filled in with

these glacial deposits.

The valleys are useless as

aquifers if they are filled

with clay: water won't
flow through clay. But if
the valleys are filled with
sand and gravel, they are
full of fresh water.

problem is finding these buried shallow
bedrock valleys and then pinpointing the
ones with glacial sand and gravel. Unfor
tunately aquifers in northeastern Illinois
are not uniformly distributed.

The first step researchers took was
to look at regional water well informa
tion already available, and that led to the
first stumbling block. An early environ
mental mapping program conducted by
IGS Geologist Bob Gilkeson in 1975 and
1976 found that drillers had cited erron

eous locations for a large number of the
water well records on file for Kane
County. An intensive program was initi
ated by the IGS and Kane County to
cross-reference records and provide an
accurate regional picture of water wells.
Since 1976 an ongoing program has been
maintained to verify the locations of new
water Wells drilled in the county

Once IGS scientists were sure they
had an accurate data base, they were
able to determine that significant shallow
groundwater resources were indeed
present in the county: The next phase
of the project focused on where and
how extensive those resources were.

Drilling costs could amount to
$5,000 per test well. If drilled randomly
to locate the aquifer, drilling costs would
be prohibitive. To reduce the number
of test wells needed and associated
costs, IGS scientists used two surface
geophysical methods to map the regional
distribution of sand and gravel deposits
in the glacial drift and locate the most
promising areas for shallow aquifers.

A Network of Hidden
Bedrock Valleys

The first method employed by the IGS
team is called seismic refraction. An elec
trical line is laid out on the ground. Geo
phones, which are four to five inches
long and look like spikes hammered into
the ground, are spaced along this line
Dynamite is placed in holes four to five
feet deep and then set off. Sound waves
from these explosions travel through the
ground and strike bedrock and glacial
materials and then bounce back to the
geophones embedded in the surface
The geophones measure the travel time
of the sound waves. The scientists al
ready know sound waves generally travel
at a faster velocity through bedrock than
through glacial materials in this area. The
more time it takes for the sound waves
to travel back to the geophones, the
thicker the glacial materials are

From these soundings researcher

are able to map the top of the bedrock
profile and determine where the thicker
glacial materials lie. Once those deposits
and a hidden bedrock valley are found,
water may be at hand. The research team
still needs information on what type of
materials are in the valley.

The second surface geophysical
method, electrical earth resistivity, is
used to investigate the presence of sand
and gravel in the hidden valleys. Once
again an electrical line is laid on the
ground with electrodes placed in the
ground at various distances. An electric
current is sent through the ground and
a wire is hooked into a meter that mea-
sures resistivity.

In freshwater environments, sand
and gravel deposits have a higher resis-
tance than clay-rich fine-grained deposits.
Earth resistivity studies provide data on
which areas are likely to contain fresh-
water bearing sands and gravels and
which are likely to contain clay. The very
best find for water-seeking geologists is
sand and gravel deposits full of water but
with a clay confinement. The clay con-
finement protects the aquifer from sur-
face sources of contamination.

CRE rr Stn FS, thse i ER I i

Energy is being put into the ground by the Geological Survey's “thumper”. The geo-

The IGS team put down 100 miles
of seismic line through Kane County
after identifying promising areas in the
region. All of the county is being map-
ped, but the eastern one-third was
specifically targeted because of large
population centers in need of water. The
researchers found some buried valleys
that traveled all the way across Kane
County, The valleys were usually long
and narrow, one-quarter to one and one-
quarter miles wide. The search yielded
several possibilities for city and county
planners.

Well Fields and Aquifer Tests

After more detailed seismic studies were
conducted, city and county officials iden-
tified areas that they wanted to look at
further. The cities contracted with private
well-drillers using locations supplied by
IGS personnel. Twenty-five to thirty test
wells were sunk in Kane County since
September of 1983 for the cities of
Aurora, Geneva, Batavia, St. Charles and
Montgomery, and more test wells will be
drilled in the future. These test wells
confirmed the geophysical findings of
the IGS staff.

phone, placed next to the street, is picking up the signal and transmitting it to the

seismograph.

20

The next step brought in the exper
tise of the Illinois Water Survey (IWS) to
conduct aquifer tests. In these tests a well
is drilled that pumps water out. A series
of observation wells are then drilled to
monitor water levels in the aquifer while
the first well is being pumped. These
tests give information on the yield of the
well: how many gallons per minute
(gpm) of water the well can be expected
to yield. They also tell researchers how
closely the wells can be spaced so that
one does not interfere with another Just
as importantly scientists want to know if
the aquifer is recharging. As the water is
pumped out of the well, is the aquifer
refilling with water so that with long-term
use water levels do not drop below cri-
tical levels?

To date the IWS has conducted six
aquifer tests: three at sites in Aurora,
two for the city of Montgomery and one
for Geneva. Yields from these wells have
run from 400 gpm at Montgomery to
1500 gpm at the Geneva site.

According to Stephen McFadden of
the IGS, “The costs of pumping and
treating water from shallow aquifers is
approximately one-half the price of using
deep well water and one-quarter the
price of piping in Lake Michigan water.
Aurora, Geneva, Batavia and Montgomery
will all be using these wells as part of
their municipal water supply systems. I
think people up there weren't convinced
at first that shallow water resources were
going to do them any good. This was
really a pilot project. I think we've con-
vinced them that shallow groundwater
is a significant resource; that it is possi-
ble to find that water and use it. We're
already hearing from other communities
around the state about their water
problems.”

This article is based on the work of
Stephen S. McFadden, an Associate Geo-
logist in the Groundwater Section of the
Illinois Geological Survey and Robert
Gilkeson, a former Geological Survey staff
member: Mi; McFadden has been with
the Survey since 1980. His research
interests include aquifer mapping and
quantitative analysis.

Also contributing to the shallow ground.
water project is Adrian Visock); a
Hydrologist at the Illinois Water Survey:
Mi: Visocky’s research interests include
groundwater resource assessment, )y-
draulics of deep-well waste injection,
natural recharge of groundwater sys-
tems and groundwater management.

SURVEYING

ILLINOIS

WILDLIFE

Eye of Newt . . . Wool of BAT

Bats are flying rats. Bats are blind. Bats
attack people, and they like to fly into
women’s hair. Bats are filthy, disease-
ridden and they carry rabies. Bats suck
human blood.

No, and no again. Contrary to every
belief commonly held by western cul-
ture, bats are among the most beneficial
creatures in all nature. In other cultures
bats are revered and made symbols of
good fortune. The Chinese word for bat
is fu; the same word meaning happiness
and good luck. A favorite Chinese design
called the wu-fi, consisting of a disk
enclosing the symbol of life surrounded
by five bats with spread wings, was incor-
porated in royal treasures. The design
symbolizes the five great blessings de-
sired by all: health, wealth, long life, good
luck and virtue or tranquility.

According to Muhammadan legend,
Christ personally created bats during a
fast among secluded hills, to apprise him
of the time between sunset and sunrise.
In Central America, the bat god was a
powerful deity of the Mayans. And cur-
rent-day Britons have become cham-
pions of the bat: joining bat conservation
groups, hanging bat roosting houses in
their gardens and even refurbishing an
old Victorian mansion in Gloucestershire
solely for an endangered colony.

Why has there existed such a bat-
lash against these warm-blooded mam-
mals, who share as much with humans
as they do with rodents and birds? As
part of a western culture, descendants
of Old World Europeans, we have been
conditioned over the centuries to asso-
ciate bats with superstition, magical
ingredients and evil doings, viz Shake-
speare's weird sisters. All of this nonsense
may go back to the early 1400's when
Vlad the Impaler terrorized his Transyl-
vanian kingdom earning him the Roma-

nian nickname “Dracula”, meaning “son
of devil.” Thus begun the legend of
Dracula the vampire, a blood-thirsty
fiend who turned into a bat and flew
through the night sky in search of a vir-
gin’s neck to pierce with his blood-
sucking fangs.

No one understands how Roma-
nians thought up a vampire bat which
feeds on blood. Bats do live in Romania,
but they eat only insects there. The
blood- feeding bats (which do not suck
blood, but merely lap it from an incision
they make in the skin of animals) live
only in tropical America. And America
was not discovered by Europeans until
1492. There are three species of vampire
bats, but even these species were not
discovered and described until many
years after that

The Truth About Bats

Bats are neither flying rodents nor are
they birds. They are tiny, secretive, warm-
blooded mammals active only at night.
The scientific classification of bats places
them in the order “Chiroptera”, mean-
ing hand-wing. A bat’s wings are made
of a double layer of elastic skin stretched
between elongated fingers. Bats were
well-developed over fifty million years
ago, when horses were just evolving.
Bats are totally unlike rodents except
that they are small and furry and may
slightly resemble rodents in facial fea-
tures. Unlike rodents, bats usually only
have one young per year.

Bats are not blind. Some bats see
better than others, and like many other
forms of wildlife they do not see color.
Bats do use a very sophisticated form of
radar called echolocation for moving
about and feeding. Bats have played a
special role in space biology, with studies
of bat sonar leading to the development
of navigational devices for the blind and
sonar used in military defense.

Bats do not attack people, and do
not normally become entangled in
women’s hair. Imagine a creature capa-
ble of detecting insects smaller than
mosquitoes blundering into a woman's
hair. Bats are attracted at night by the
insects that are attracted to boat lights,
and fishermen may have misinterpreted
their motives. Bats are very secretive,
and they don’t even like being around
people. They colonize caves, hibernate
and would prefer to be left alone.

Bats are not filthy and disease-rid-
den. They are very fastidious animals,
continuously grooming themselves, their
offspring and their neighbors. Bats do
have parasites, like all mammals, but
these parasites are so specialized that
they pose no health hazards to humans.
And bats do not carry human bed bugs.

A special word about bats and
rabies. Rabies does occur in bats, as in
many other mammals, but at a very low
incidence, according to Illinois Natural
History Survey (NHS) researcher Dr.
Chris Burnett, who has been conducting
a 22-year study on bat rabies in Illinois.
Only ten people in the United States
and Canada are believed to have gotten
rabies from bats in the last four decades.
There are two forms of rabies, one called
the “mad” form, in which the animal is
aggressive. Bats suffer from the other
form, the “dumb” form of rabies, which
debilitates the animal. Most bats are not
aggressive, reports Dr Burnett. The im
portant thing to remember is to stay
away from any animal that appears to
be ill. This caveat is important for your
health and the bat’s. Bats may be ill or
they may simply give the appearance of
being ill.

To conserve energy bats drop their
body temperature a great deal because
they are so small that it is hard to keep

WILDLIFE

their temperature up. Some bats can
even hibernate at will. What looks like a
sick bat may simply be a torpid bat that
is perfectly all right. Once you disturb
the bat, as human cave explorers are
wont to do on occasion, temperature
jumps up, metabolism speeds up and the
bat ends up losing valuable fat reserves.
The bat may not make it through the
winter.

The Bat Qua Bat

Bats have successfully colonized every
continental region in the world except
the most extreme desert and polar areas.
There are nearly 1,000 species world-
wide, comprising the second largest
order of mammals in number of species,
second only to rodents. Bats represent
one-fourth of all mammal species on
earth. In the tropics that number jumps
to half. There are 40 bat species in the
United States, and 12 species that com-
monly occur in Illinois. About the vam-
pire bats — there are exactly three such
species, all living in Latin America.

Bat size ranges from extremely small
to the large flying foxes of Africa, Asia,
Australia and many Pacific Islands. The
world’s smallest mammal is the Kitti’s
hognosed bat in Thailand, weighing less
than a penny (less than one-tenth of an
ounce ) with a body roughly the size of
a bumble bee. Flying foxes can weigh
more than two pounds and have wing-
spans up to six feet. Bats eat insects
(approximately 70% of all bat species in
the world are insectivorous), fruit, leaves,
flowers, nectar and pollen, fish, other
vertebrates (rats, small lizards, frogs) and
animal blood.

ie)
i)

The Bat As Bug-Zapper

In the bat, nature devised a ruthless and
effective insect killer long before insecti-
cides and electric bug-zappers were in-
vented. Bats are the only major predators
of night-flying insects. One endangered
gray bat (found in Illinois by the way)
can eat up to 3,000 insects in one night.
The little brown bat, a species common
to Illinois, can devour over 140 mosqui-
toes in less than 15 minutes and up to
900 insects within an hour (including
harmful corn borer and cutworm moths).
A colony of free-tailed bats in Texas
chows down on more than 250,000
pounds of insects nightly.

Good eyesight isn’t enough when
you're after a gnat in pitch-black dark
ness. One reason bats may have evolved
their wonderful system of sonar is as a
weapon in their war on night-flying in-
sects. During flight, the bat emits high-
pitched sounds and listens for the echo
— thus homing in on the evening’s meal.

Bats and the Fruit Stand

No, we're not talking about bat guano
here, although that is another bat bene-
fit we'll talk about later. Fruit-eating bats
are among nature’s most important seed-
dispersing animals. Nectar bats are es-
sential for the pollination of countless
tropical and sub-tropical trees and shrubs.
Without the bat, no rain forests. And
without the rain forests, less oxygen and
unstable climates would result.

More than 130 genera of tropical
trees and shrubs depend on the bat for
pollination. The fruit stand wouldn't be
the same without bats: no bananas, man-
goes, guavas, plantains, breadfruit, figs,
avocados, cashews, cloves or dates. Dur-
ian fruit from Southeast Asia, worth $90
million annually, could not be produced
without being pollinated by a single
species of bat. In Malaysia, bat guano
fertilizes almost one-third of the world’s
supply of black and white pepper.

Other non-food items depend on the
bat for production: tequila (agave plant),
chewing gum (chicle latex), candy

Eastern Pipistrelle

(carob), rope (manila and sisal fibers),
bandages and life preservers (kapok
fiber), Iroko lumber from West Africa,
balsa wood and other timber-producing
trees used in the manufacture of
furniture.

And then there are the bat’s medi-
cal contributions: Research on the bat
has led to the development of new drugs
to combat high blood pressure, studies
of disease resistance, progress in speech
pathology, and important finds on aging
and the healing process. The delayed
fertilization ability of some bats has also
yielded research gold in the areas of arti-
ficial insemination and birth control.

Batriotism and the
Revolutionary War

During the Revolutionary War, Britain
would not of course export gunpowder
to the rebelling thirteen American colo-
nies, and British blockades significantly
reduced other imports. The Americans
had to produce domestic supplies. This
is where the gray bat comes in. Once
prevalent throughout the eastern United
States, these bats spend the winter hiber
nating in caves. They also form large col-
onies in caves during the summer to
bear their young.

Hoary bat in flight

After centuries, millions of tons of
litrogen-rich insect remains accumulated
n caves below the gray bats’ roosts. Bat
zuano was used as a substitute ingredi-
ent in producing blackpowder, which is
made from sulphur, charcoal and potas-
sium nitrate (also known as saltpeter).
saltpeter is made by leaching bat guano,
ind in the eastern United States, ade-
juate supplies of bat guano could only
lave come from gray bats. Gray bat
zuano deposits mined for saltpeter in
Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, date back
over 34,000 years.

Illinois’ Bats

The 12 native bat species of Illinois range
in size from the one-fifth ounce eastern
dipistrelle to the one and one-half ounce
noary bat. The most commonly encoun-
ered Illinois bats are the red bat, the
ittle brown bat and the big brown bat.
The latter can be seen around street
lamps during the summer months feed-
ing on insects; all Illinois bats are
insectivorous. The most rarely seen IIli-
nois bat is the big-eared bat with ears
over One and one-quarter inches long.
All Illinois bat species are protected by

law. However, two species are classified
as federal and state endangered: the
Indiana bat and the gray bat. The Indi-
ana bat once numbered in the millions
but is now down to a mere 230,000.

The first colonies of Indiana bats
found in Illinois were discovered in 1986
by Gene Gardner and Dr. Joyce Hof
mann of the Natural History Survey and
Jim Garner of the Illinois Department of
Conservation (DOC). After an extensive
three-year survey of 900 plus trees, the
bats were found in a dead northern red
oak and a dead cottonwood, both located
near a stream in west-central Illinois.
There are not many bat-suitable caves in
Illinois (four out of 360), and so the
Indiana bat population in Illinois during
the winter is small compared to those
of neighboring states. However bats do
migrate to Illinois from Missouri and
Indiana to form maternity colonies be
neath the loose bark of trees like the
ones found in the NHS-DOC cooperative
study.

The task of finding more bats got a
little easier with the use of radiotelem
etry, a never-before tried technique with
this small a bat. Tiny transmitters half
the size of a dime and weighing less than
.03 ounces were glued to the bats, allow
ing them to be followed with antennae
and tracking receivers. The researchers
found 26 more trees in 1987, some with
maternity colonies, some with only male
bats, in five counties: Pike, Adams, John
son, Jackson and Macoupin. The research
team is now plotting out large amounts
of data to obtain a fuller picture of the
bats summer home range, size, foraging
range, nightly movements and essential
habitats.

The picture for the gray bat is en
couraging, according to Gene Gardner.
Through protective management, they
are making a comeback, and in the near
future may be upgraded from endan
gered to a less serious threatened status.
The outlook is not as good for the Indi
ana bat; in fact, it is quite bleak. The
national census of this species shows a
continually downward trend. The major
culprits, as in so many wildlife tragedies,
are pesticides, human disturbance, and
especially loss of suitable habitat.

This article is based in part on the work
of Dr. Chris Burnett and Mr; James E
(Gene) Gardner, Dr Burnett is a re
searcher with the Natural History Sur
vey's Wildlife Research Section. He has
been with the Survey for five years and
received his Ph.D. in Ecology from Boston
Universit: Mr Gardner has been a re
searcher in the NHS’ Faunistic Surveys
Section since 1985. He received his MS
in Biology from Arkansas State Univer
sit: For more information on bats, please
write to Mr Gardner at the NHS, or to
Dr Merlin Tittle, Bat Conservation Inter
ational, PO. Box 162603, Austin, Texas
78716-9990

Prairie Pasture
Project Underway

Prairie restoration has become very pop-
ular in Illinois in recent years. There may
be unrealized potential for practical ben-
efits from native prairie vegetation, par-
ticularly grasses, for livestock raisers, wild-
life, and soil erosion control in Illinois.
Through a grant provided by the Illinois
Department of Energy and Natural Re-
sources (DENR) beginning in October
of this year, R.L. Westemeier, an NHS re-
searcher, has begun a project to develop
the McCormick Prairie-Chicken Sanctu-
ary (site of the Grassland Wildlife Ecol-
ogy Laboratory) as an area on which these
integrated values can be researched and
demonstrated.

Research in other states has demon-
strated that native warm-season grasses
provide cattlemen with a drought-toler-
ant forage on which cattle may double
weight gains over that possible with con-
ventional cool-season forages. Benefits to
wildlife, particularly for nest cover, can
be significant. The prairie-pasture strat-
egy could be promoted as a viable solu-
tion to the declining number of cattle
farms in Illinois. This decline has re-
sulted in more row-cropping on erosion-
prone farmland with concomitant losses
of topsoil, grassland and grassland
wildlife.

Tree Wounds:
The Healing Process

Trees may receive wounds many times
during their lifetimes. Most occur as acts
of nature due to breakage by wind, ice,
snow, and feeding by animals, or care-
less acts by man. A tree that has a deep
wound probably has incurred damage

24

BIORHYTHMS

to both the xylem and phloem layers.
Such a wound can structurally weaken
a tree, reduce translocation of sap and
provide entry sites for insects or disease
organisms.

Illinois data collected over five years
by Dr Dan Neely of the NHS’ Section of
Botany and Plant Pathology indicate that
wound closure is directly related to tree
vigor. Large wounds close more in one
year than do small wounds. Wounds less
than 12 mm. wide are likely to close in
one year Wounds of less than 12 mm.
in diameter, annually inflicted, are not
likely to slow tree growth. Wounds on
slow-growing trees will close more per
unit of radial growth than will wounds
on fast-growing trees.

The Fishes of
Champaign County

In 1899 a survey of the stream fishes of
Champaign County was completed by
Stephen A. Forbes, the founder of the
NHS, and Richard E. Richardson. Every
30 years since then, the fish populations
in the same stream have been resampled
by other Survey scientists, revealing long-
term changes in species compositions
related to land-use and water quality
changes.

The current project, begun in July
1987 by R.W, Larimore, L.L. Osbome and
PB. Bayley, is the fourth in this series of
surveys. This survey is the most compre-
hensive because sites sampled thirty years

ago are being quantitatively replicated
using the same method so that direct
estimates of changes in fish abundance
are obtained. The program is funded by
the US. Fish and Wildlife Service and
the Illinois Department of Conservation.

Two Boats Dock at Surveys

The “William C. Starrett” and the “Robert
E. Richardson” were launched in the
waters of the Illinois River on Friday, June
12th. Named after two Illinois Natural
History Survey (NHS) scientists, the two
pontoon work boats will be outfitted and
used as research laboratories in monitor
ing the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. The
two vessels are jointly owned by the Ili-
nois Natural History Survey, the Illinois
Water Survey and the Illinois Geological
Survey.

The scientists on these floating lab-
oratories will be studying stream ecol-
ogy, hydrology and other subjects which
will give them answers to questions of
how to care for our river systems.

Plant Survival in
Oil Field Brine Soils

Oil brine contaminated soils are critically
eroding soils since little or no vegetation
typically covers the area. Sodium-enriched
soils are also extremely vulnerable to —
water movement. Dr LR. Iverson of NHS’
Botany and Plant Pathology section is
investigating 18 plant species for their
effectiveness in providing permanent
cover for these damaged areas. A test plot
was established near Flora in Clay County
in April 1986 to test species growth. After
two growing seasons, the species.show-
ing promise for extended cover on these
sites were two species of wheatgrass,
switchgrass and two Atriplex shrubs. Ero-
sion on the plot has been essentially
eliminated, while areas surrounding the
plot continue to have excessive sheet and
gully erosion.

Pesticides in the Environment

illinois agriculture suffers losses of about
$500 million a year from weeds, diseases,
nematodes and insects. When to use and
when not to use pesticides are issues of
pressing concern to the public at large
and to scientists at the Illinois Natural
History Survey and the staff at the Coop-
erative Extension Service. Both groups
have been working together in an effort
(O Manage pests on farmland, an effort
that starts with the premise that good
pesticide management will curtail many
problems. Their strategy is called Inte-
prated Pest Management (IPM).

IPM is based on four strategies:
(1) crop pest scouting - timely field visits
10 identify pest density; (2) economic
threshold - identifying the number of
pests that can be tolerated before control
is needed; (3) chemical and biological
control - pesticides are not applied until
the pest population has reached the eco-
nomic threshold; and (4) cultural man-
agement - the use of crop rotation and
resistant crop varieties to prevent pest
outbreaks without using pesticides.

Eddies Are Biological
Hot Spots

During the spring and fall migrations, large
concentrations of diving ducks occur
only in preferred locations along the
Mississippi River From the surface, these
locations appear no different than other
broad shallow areas, and yet, year after
year, such diving ducks as the lesser scaup
return to the same favored spots.

These areas support huge numbers of
fingernail clams - the preferred food of
the lesser scaup. Recent investigations
have revealed the presence of a large
eddy that causes slow circulation, keeping
the water from stagnating and transport-
ing detritus generated by nearby plant
beds to the invertebrate filter feeders.
The travel time of the water in the eddy
is at least three times, and may be as
much as 60 times, that of the adjacent
water in the main channel. The forma-
tion or loss of eddies and other secon-
dary circulation patterns may help
explain yearly and longer term variations
in biological production in this large river
system.

Suddenly Caterpillars

The public’s attention is often captured
by lazy butterflies in an idyllic Illinois
prairie setting or in one of the state's
numerous parks. Often overlooked are
the more numerous moths, not to men-
tion their caterpillars, which may become
obvious when patches of forest “sud-
denly” lose their leaves in late spring or
mid-summer, long before frost. It is dur-
ing these times that NHS scientists are
most frequently called upon to help Illi-
nois residents identify problem caterpillars.

A lack of adequate published photo-
graphs and basic descriptions of these
caterpillars has made this a very difficult
task. A step in resolving this informational
void has been completed with the re-
cent publication of Immature Insects
(Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company ), a
book to which Drs. George Godfrey,
James E. Appleby and Michael Jeffords
of the NHS have made major
contributions.

Information on purchasing copies
of Immature Insects can be obtained by
contacting any of the three scientists at
the Illinois Natural History Survey.

Leafhopper Carrier of
Horseradish Disease

Brittle root disease has caused losses of
30% to 80% of the state horseradish crop
during epidemic years. Recently NHS re-
searchers, in cooperation with the De-
partment of Plant Pathology at the
University of Illinois, evaluated the capa-
bility of the beet leafhopper as a carrier
of brittle root disease in Illinois. The leaf-
hopper readily acquires the Illinois strain
of the disease and is highly efficient at
transmitting it to uninfected horseradish
plants. Further research is underway to
to determine the incidence and spread
of brittle root disease in Illinois - the
leading producer of horseradish in the
United States.

CURRENTS

Midwestern Climate Center
Established at Water Survey

A “missing link” in the delivery of cli-
mate information in the United States is
expected to be filled by the establish-
ment of a new institution for climate
services. Regional climate centers are
being established across the United States
to improve the collection and dissemi-
nation of climate data and information
and to coordinate and conduct applied
research. The Midwestern Climate Cen-
ter will be located at the Illinois Water
Survey.

The Midwestern Climate Center will
serve a nine-state region. There are three
main components to the climate center.
A data delivery system (similar to the Illi-
nois Climate Assistance Service (CLASS)
at the Water Survey, but more sophisti-
cated and region-wide ) will be devel-
oped to collect real-time weather data
and provide climate information delivery
to nine states. A second component of
the climate center is the development of
relevant historical climatic data bases.
These will be a mixture of existing data
bases and new data bases developed to
address specific problems. The third
component of the center is applied re-
search in diverse climate issues. The
research will be designed to define the
key weather and climate factors that have
impacts on agriculture, water resources,
and the generation and consumption of
energy. Research in the first years of the
center will primarily deal with agricul-
ture. Water resources and energy appli-
cations will be phased in as the center
develops.

26

The Midwestern Climate Center will
also work closely with federal agencies
concerned with climate issues, such as
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, and the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency: The center will pro-
vide assistance to federal agencies in
ways similar to those provided on a re-
gional and state basis, and will work with
other federally sponsored regional cli-
mate, weather, water, and agricultural
centers.

Flow Gate Operation at Dams
Could Improve Water Quality

Dam flow-release gates, used to regulate
water levels for navigation, can be manip-
ulated to significantly increase dissolved
oxygen concentrations in the pool below
the dam. This finding resulted from a
study conducted at the Starved Rock
dam, located on the Illinois River below
Ottawa. The dam is at the head of the
74-mile-long Peoria pool.

Thomas Butts, of the Survey's Water
Quality Section, says this finding is im-
portant because it provides a way to
improve dissolved oxygen levels in the
Illinois Waterway without capital expen-
ditures. Some of the natural aeration
capacity that water loses when it is
pooled can be partially made up as the
water is passed under or over flow-
release structures at a dam.

Dissolved oxygen levels have im-
proved greatly in the last 15 years because
point source waste loads have been re-
duced throughout the waterway. How-
ever, low dissolved oxygen levels still
occur routinely along the waterway.
According to Butts, no significant im-
provement in dissolved oxygen levels
will be realized by requiring additional
reductions of organic waste loads from

point sources. Very little additional reduc-
tion of these loads can be achieved in a
practical economic manner.

The results of the study were used
to develop management schemes in
which gate openings are manipulated to
increase aeration efficiency without inter
fering with navigational needs.

Watershed Management
Practices Can Significantly
Reduce Erosion

Millions of tons of soil particles erode
from Illinois farmlands each year. Much
of this soil, carrying nutrients and fertil-
izers, winds up in the stream system
and eventually in lakes. The soil and
nutrients degrade the water quality in a
number of ways. A study of the effective-
ness of erosion control measures, called
Best Management Practices (BMPs),
installed in the Highland Silver Lake
watershed found that erosion could be
significantly reduced if the BMPs were
applied throughout the watershed.
Water Survey hydrologist Ming T.
Lee, who headed this study, says that if
all the recommended BMPs were applied
in the watershed, sediment yields to the
lake could be reduced by about six per
cent, and in some areas could be cut by
more than 30 percent. BMPs were in- _
stalled on 11 percent of the watershed.
Highland Silver Lake, located in
southwest Illinois, is used for both public
water supply and recreation. Use of the
lake has been impaired by high levels of
turbidity and suspended sediments. The
lake watershed is one of 13 experimental
areas selected for participation in the
Rural Clean Water Program. The program
provides financial and technical assis-

tance to landowners in installing BMPs.
The goal is to reduce agricultural non-
point pollution and bring about a result-
ing improvement in water quality in a
10-year testing period. The Highland Sil-
ver Lake watershed was one of five RCWP
areas chosen for comprehensive moni-
toring and evaluation.

The Water Survey monitored the
watershed for a three-year period.
Computerized watershed modeling
procedures were then used to predict
conditions at the end of the 10-year
experimental period. The results indi-
cated that nonstructural practices, such
as conservation tillage and cropland pro-
tective cover, are effective in reducing
sediment yields, as well as the nitrogen
and phosphorus in the sediment. Struc-
tural practices, such as terracing and
grass waterways, were effective in reduc-
ing stream peak discharges at some
locations.

Studies at Highland Silver Lake have
concluded, but Water Survey researchers
may return at the end of the 10-year
experimental period to see what changes
may have occurred in the watershed.

Stormwater Perils

Rainwater smells and feels so wonderful
coming down. However, according to
Water and Geological Survey scientists,
stormwaters may contain pollutants that
are endangering underground sources
of drinking water. Stormwaters run off
into underground injection wells, and
are the subject of a Water Survey study
funded by the Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency (IEPA). The study
concentrated on one type of under
ground injection well, the Class V.
“Class V wells don’t handle wastes
classified as ‘hazardous’, but the fluids
they inject may still contain some harm-
ful contaminants,” says Stephen Burch,
the IWS hydrologist who headed the
study. “These wells have the potential to
contaminate drinking water because they

inject fluids into, between or above
underground sources of water.”

There are 1,766 Class V injection
wells that are listed by the IEPA. The
Survey developed a ranking system to
evaluate the contamination potential of
the wells. Study results ranked the most
possibility of contamination to three
common Illinois well types from high to
low: (1) stormwater drainage wells, (2)
waste disposal wells, and (3) heat
pump/air condition return flow wells.

Contamination rankings were high-
est for stormwater drainage wells because
the sand and gravel formations into
which they inject fluid are frequently
used as underground sources of drink-
ing water, and also because stormwater
may contain pollutants. Past studies show
that urban stormwater runoff is quite
likely to contain lead, copper and iron.
It may also contain other pollutants, in-
cluding chloride from road salt.

A Hail of a Storm

A hailstorm can be on of the most devas-
tating types of storm, capable of moving
in and out of an area in a matter of min-
utes. A hailstorm can do millions of dol-
lars of damage to cars, windows, and
crops in one area, while completely miss-
ing an adjacent area. Although hailstorms
are fairly infrequent in Illinois, the state
still ranks eighth nationally in crop dam-
age. Hail ranks just behind drought and
excessive moisture as the three most
destructive weather events involving Illi-
nois agriculture.

Hail damage to crops varies depend-
ing on the growing stage of the crop
when the storm hits. In Illinois, the peak
of hail activity occurs in the spring
months of March to May, a small bonus
for Illinois since damage can be recti-
fied by replanting.

To obtain more information about
hail, contact the Illinois Water Survey or
the Crop-Hail Insurance Actuarial Asso-
ciation, 209 West Jackson Blvd., Suite
700, Chicago, Illinois 60606. Both ser-
vices can provide data and publications
relating to hail.

Ninety-six Years of Service

This year three Illinois Water Survey
employees are retiring: Robert T. Sasman,
in charge of the Chicago area regional
office since 1956 and with the Survey
since 1951; Donald H. Schnepper, a
hydraulic and sanitary engineer in the
Survey’s Peoria laboratory since 1954;
and J. Loreena Ivens, Currents editor,
Head of the Communications Unit, and
technical editor for the Survey since
1960. Among them, they have contri-
buted 96 years of service to the Water
Survey.

Bob Sasman, a prize-winning photo-
grapher, plans to continue taking and
exhibiting color photos. Bob and his
wife plan to travel throughout the US.
and Europe. Don Schnepper and his
wife traveled to France this past fall, and
he plans to continue his activities in
music in the Peoria area. Loreena Ivens
is planning to stay close to her life's work
by doing some free-lance writing and
editing projects. She and her husband
will stay in the Urbana area.

CENTERING ON WASTE

Hazardous Waste Reduction
in Mlinois: An Economic
Perspective

by Christina Komadina and
Linnea Eschenlohr

In 1985, 584 million gallons of hazard-
ous wastes were generated in Illinois —
most of it by industry. The costs of
treating, storing and disposing of it are
staggering — as much as a billion dollars
a year.

After a century of intensive indus-
trial development with little concern
about the hazardous byproducts of our
prosperity, awareness of the severity of
the problem is finally becoming wide-
spread. The challenge before us now is
to do something about it.

According to David L. Thomas,
Director of the Illinois Hazardous Waste
Research and Information Center
(HWRIC), waste reduction is a viable,
long-term solution that is well within our
means and, in fact, has already saved
some Illinois companies millions of
dollars.

“Generating hazardous waste has
its costs: both to handle it and to dis-
pose of it. And there is a potential cost
due to future liability for present disposal
practices. Many of the wastes we create
today will have to be cleaned up in the
next generation of Superfund sites,” he
said.

“The only safe way to break this
cycle is to reduce or eliminate the gen-
eration of hazardous wastes at the source.
In the process of doing this, companies
improve efficiency, reduce costs for raw
materials and disposal, reduce long-term
liability, and achieve greater competitive-
ness in the market place,” Thomas said.

Waste reduction, which is rapidly
becoming a national priority within the
federal government, has been defined
by the Congressional Office of Technol-
ogy Assessment as “in-plant practices that
reduce, avoid, or eliminate the genera-
tion of hazardous waste so as to reduce
risks to health and the environment.”
The US. Environmental Protection
Agency has a broader definition includ-
ing in-plant practices plus both on-site
and off site recycling.

HWRIC has made waste reduction a
high priority goal and is working on a
number of fronts to encourage its adop-
tion by Illinois generators. The Center
has established a technical assistance
program so generators can learn about
their waste reduction options. It has also
created an alternative technology data
base and clearinghouse for waste reduc-
tion-related materials, and administers a
matching grant program for industries to
modify their existing equipment or de-
velop new technologies to minimize the
amount of hazardous waste produced.

HWRIC is encouraging waste reduc-
tion among Illinois industries by working
with the Governor's office to solicit de-
scriptions of waste reduction efforts from
various companies.

“We need to find out what methods
have been successful and encourage
waste reduction efforts in more Illinois
industries,’ Thomas said. “Our goals are
to educate companies about the eco-
nomic and environmental benefits of
waste reduction and to foster communi-
cation both among industries and be-
tween industries and government,’ he
said.

As a result of this effort, HWRIC
presents the “Governor's Innovative
Waste Reduction Awards’ to industries,
trade groups and public institutions
every year. These awards are presented
to recognize the waste reduction efforts
made by specific hazardous waste gener-
ators. This year’s awards were presented
at HWRIC’s “Illinois Hazardous Waste
Reduction ’87” conference held in Chi-
cago on Sept. 22-23.

The economic benefits of waste re-
duction was one of the topics discussed
at this conference. As several speakers
noted, many industries don’t realize that
companies can often save thousands, if
not millions, of dollars by implementing
waste reduction techniques into their
industrial processes.

In Illinois, one of the nation’s larg-
est producers of hazardous waste, waste
reduction has become a high-priority
item on the state’s agenda.

Borg-Warner Chemicals Inc., one of
this year’s Governor's Award recipients,
has significantly reduced hazardous
waste storage and treatment costs by
employing new waste reduction tech-
niques at their Linmar Plant in Ottawa,
Illinois.

Innovative management strategies,
such as their plant-wide “employee in-
volvement” program, have been at the
forefront of Borg-Warner's waste reduc-
tion program. The company’s “Waste
Minimization Program” consists of an
employee from each area of the plant
who identifies all wastes in his area,
investigates causes of waste generation
and determines if minimization is
possible.

“This spreads an attitude of waste
reduction throughout the entire plant as
workers discuss waste causes among
themselves,” Bob Miller, Borg-Warner's
Environmental Manager, said.

Modifications in their industrial pro-
cesses have helped the plant save dis-
posal costs up to $196,000 and gain 2.8
million pounds of additional product
per year.

Another area that Borg-Warner has
focused on is the recycling and recovery
of raw materials and waste plastics.

“Our recovery and recycle program
has netted savings of over $70,000 per -
year in disposal costs and has allowed
us to recycle or recover over two mil-
lion pounds of industrial materials,” Mil-
ler said.

Although industry is one of the
state’s primary hazardous waste pro-
ducers, it is not the only one. Commu-
nities, households and even schools can
be a source of hazardous waste.

Last summer, the Illinois Environ-
mental Protection Agency (IEPA) col-
lected more than 23,000 pounds of toxic
and potentially dangerous surplus chem-
icals from Illinois high schools. The High
School Laboratory Chemical Cleanup
program came out of a survey of chemi-
cals in schools that was partially funded
by HWRIC. The program resulted after
schools around the state asked for help
in getting rid of these materials. With

ee

ne threat of these chemicals removed

om the schools, IEPA officials are now

sking schools to consider revising their
f and usage procedures for these

_Awaste reduction technique, imple-
nented by a professor of organic chem-
stry at Illinois Benedictine College
IBC) in Lisle, may help other school
abs better manage the amount of haz-
rdous waste they produce. Professor
Yavid Rausch has reduced the amount
of waste generated by chemistry labora-
ory experiments in the college by con-
erting from macroscale to microscale
listillation techniques in the organic
abs. The college won the Governor's
nnovative Waste Reduction Award this
year in honor of its achievement.

According to Rausch, IBC is one of
he first colleges to completely convert
‘© microscale methods.

- Rausch estimates that the amount
of hazardous waste produced by these
experiments has been reduced from 20
kilograms a year to 100 grams a year.

“Smaller is safer,” he said. “This
technique eliminates Bunsen burners
and provides less of a chance for fires
and explosions.”

Rausch and laboratory supervisor
Michael O'Grady are currently acting as
resource people for a “Microscale Help
Line” to assist schools across the country
in setting up a microscale organic
laboratory.

Illinois Benedictine College and
Borg-Warner Chemicals are just two
examples of successful waste reduction
programs in operation. Many other Illi-
nois industries, trade groups and com-
munities are practicing waste reduction
techniques and are saving thousands of
dollars in waste disposal, treatment and
liability costs.

, “The really exciting thing about
waste reduction is that it is one of the
few areas where environmental protec-
tion and industrial productivity can go
hand in hand,” Thomas said. “It will re-
main a central component of HWRIC’s
overall program of helping industry and
others in the state better manage their
waste.”

Winners
1987 Governor’s “Innovative Waste Reduction Awards”

Automotive Wholesalers of Illinois

The Automotive Wholesalers of Illinois has initiated an assistance
program to aid its membership (mostly automotive job shops and
machine shops) with environmental compliance. This is done through the
publication of a short, practical compliance manual, organization of infor
mational seminars, and publication of compliance and waste reduction
tips in newsletters.

For more information contact: AWOI, Vincent Madonia, Executive
Vice President, 217/786-2850.

Illinois Benedictine College, Lisle, IL

IBC is in the process of converting its educational laboratories to
microscale glassware and experimental apparatus. Through this conver
sion, lab chemical usage is reduced by 95% or more. This will result in
improved laboratory safety through reduced exposure to chemicals, im
proved environmental control by reduced amounts of spent chemicals
requiring disposal. Significant cost savings will be achieved through
reduced chemical purchases.

Contact: Prof. David J. Rausch, 312/960-1500.

Omni Circuits, Inc., Glenview, IL

Omni, a manufacturer of printed circuit boards, has implemented at
their facility several process modifications that recover and reuse organic
solvents and metal plating solutions. By doing this, they have greatly re
duced the amount of sludges and spent solvents which must be shipped
off site for disposal. Any new piece of equipment introduced into the work
place is examined to determine how the amount of waste generated can
be reduced.

Contact: James E. Schwartz, Jr, 312/729-7280.

Borg-Warner Chemicals, Inc., Ottawa, IL

Borg-Warner has implemented a facility-wide corporate management
plan to reduce waste generation in all phases of its operation. Waste mini
ization teams have been established utilizing both management and line
personnel to evaluate in-plant processes and practices for possible reduc
tion of waste generation. Educational programs have been initiated to
make all employees aware of the need for waste reduction. In addition to
these activities, recovery systems have been initiated for both hazardous
and nonhazardous materials, resulting in yearly savings of well over one
million dollars.

Contact: Robert J. Miller, 815/434-7000.

MPI Label Systems of Illinois, Inc., University Park, IL

MPI has converted their label making operations from the use of
organic solvent-based inks to less toxic water-based inks. This has greatly
reduced their generation of hazardous wastes. They have also taken many
steps to encourage their customers to use water-based inks in their
operations.

Contact: Timothy G. Dawes, 312/534-5111

New Prospecting Tool for
Metallic Elements

A chemical technique for determining
trace amounts of metals in Illinois
limestones and dolomites appears to
provide another means of prospecting
for mineral deposits in the subsurface
of western and southern Illinois. The
technique involves spectrographic analy-
sis of metallic elements in trace amounts
of residue obtained by dissolving lime-
stone and dolomite rocks in acid. Results
from a pilot study undertaken by scientists
of the Illinois Geological Survey (IGS)
and the US. Geological Survey (USGS)
indicate areas of high anomalous metallic
values. Distribution of the anomalous or
unusually high metal values is indicative
of metal transport in heated groundwater
and, if mapped in more detail, are ex-
pected to outline halos around mineral-
ized areas containing zinc, lead, fluorite
and rare earth mineralization in and near
the Illinois Basin. The results suggest
areas requiring further exploration for
subsurface minerals in western and
southern Illinois.

The IGS’s geological samples library
provided cores and cuttings from churn
and rotary-drilled wells for the pilot
study; Some 4,000 composite samples
were immersed in hydrochloric acid. The
insoluble materials remaining were then
finely ground and analyzed for 31 metallic
elements. As developed by the USGS, the
method previously used rock samples
obtained from diamond drill core. Suc-
cessful use of cuttings, small rock chips
recovered during conventional oil and
gas drilling, enhances the usefulness of
the method.

30

GEOGRAMS

The technique now is being used in
evaluation of mineral potential in part
of southem Illinois and the adjacent states
of Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri in a
cooperative project under the USGS
Conterminous United States Mineral
Assessment Program (CUSMAP) to be
completed by October 1990. In a con-
tinuing effort, the IGS plans to extend
the insoluble residue program to establish
a statewide subsurface geochemical net-
work for further mineral resource evalu-
ations. Results of this pilot study,
published in a document entitled
“Subsurface Geochemical Investigation
in Western and Southern Illinois”, will
be of interest to the minerals industry,
resource-oriented state and local land
use planners, land owners and various
state and federal agencies. Released
November 2, 1987, the publication is
available from the IGS Information Office.

Performance Nets
National Award

Robert A. Bauer, associate geologist with
the Illinois Geological Survey, was honored
recently by the Association of Engineer-
ing Geologists at their annual meeting
as the Douglas Piteau Outstanding Young

Member for “exceptional performance
in his young career’. Bauer, who holds
an MS. degree in engineering geology
from the University of Illinois, Urbana,
and a B.S. in geological science from the
University of Illinois at Chicago, has been
with the Survey since 1976 when hired
as a research assistant. Bauer was pro-
moted to assistant geologist in 1981
before being elevated to associate
geologist in 1985.

The honoree has directed the
Survey's geotechnical investigations of
the proposed Superconducting Super
Collider site in Illinois since 1984. From
1985 to the present, Bauer has been
technical manager of the Illinois Mine
Subsidence Research Program to develop
guidelines for high-extraction coal mining
under prime farmland. Additionally, he
has been co-principal investigator of an
Office of Surface Mining project to evalu-
ate the use of Time Domain Reflectometry
to monitor coal mine subsidence move-
ments in bedrock as well as supervisor
of the Survey's rock mechanics laboratory:
He is the author of nine and co-author
of 22 publications.

Rock Hunts Become Odyssies

Recently, geologists with the Illinois
Geological Survey assisted in locating
samples of Illinois stone for use in the
creation of two historic monuments, one
in the United States, the other in France.
All 50 states have been invited to partici-

a

pate by contributing native rock to both
_ projects.
: A four-by-two-by-two-foot block of
ome from northeastern Illinois will be-
come part of a memorial wall in conjunc-
tion with the “Fountain of Freedom,” a
_ bicentennial tribute to the U.S. Constitu-
_ tion to be constructed at Independence
"National Historic Park in Philadelphia, Pa.
- Commenting on the state's stone, Dr M. W.
Leighton, Chief, IGS, said, “Most appro-
_ priately, our geologists have located a suit-
able block of Silurian dolomite, a type of
_ rock that was the ‘backbone’ of the Chi-
cago building stone industry in the 1800's.
The rock will be ‘cemented’ symbolically
into a monument, flanked on Indepen-
dence Hall by the Liberty Bell and Inde-
pendence Hall.” To date, 41 states each
have contributed a representative stone
which will be engraved with the name of
the state and the year of its admission to
the Union.

The five-ton rock was donated by
Vulcan Materials Company, Countryside,
Ill, from its quarry at McCook, Ill. The
stone was finished to specified dimen-
sions by Tri-State Cut Stone Company of
Frankfort, Ill. Finishing brought the
weight of the block to 1% tons. Survey
geologists John Masters, David Reinertsen
and Donald Mikulic describe the rock as
being “.. . from the Markgraf Member
of the Silurian-age Joliet Dolomite, which
was formed from material deposited
about 420 million years ago.” The rock is
light gray in color, fine-grained, dense,
even-textured and weathers to a very pale
brown.

Coal Research Awards Assist
IGS Program

Seven research projects and two support
programs at the Geological Survey will
receive more than $863,000 of the $2.4
million awarded to nine institutions for

coal research in fiscal 1988. These con-
tracts were authorized by the Illinois Coal
Development Board and the Coal Indus-
try Committee (CIC) through the Cen-
ter for Research on Sulfur in Coal. The
awards include both state funds and sig-
nificant contributions from nine of the
major Illinois coal mining companies.

Working on a wide spectrum of coal
cleaning processes, the projects ranged
from physical and chemical separation of
sulfur from Illinois coal to microbiolog-
ical enhancement of physical cleaning
methods. In addition, funds were allo-
cated for IGS research on the manage-
ment of solid wastes derived from physical
cleaning of coal, on the burning charac-
teristics of coal containing low volatile
matter, on desulfurization properties of
specially treated lime, and on produc-
tion of premium, high-quality, coal-derived
oil. The Illinois Basin Coal Sample Bank,
located at the Survey, also shared in the
contracts. The bank's samples, stored
under conditions that retard coal decom-
position, are widely used in desulfuriza-
tion research allowing a comparison of
results among laboratories and processes.
Allocations also covered computerization
of chemical and physical information on
Illinois coals.

Learn the Lay of the Land

Comfortable clothing, walking shoes, bag
lunch and transportation are necessities
for the IGS’ forthcoming science field
trips. Designed to acquaint teachers and
the general public with the geology and
mineral resources of Illinois, these

8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m. outings will be held
April 16 in the Shawneetown area of
Gallatin County and May 21 in the Canton
area of Fulton County.

David L Reinertsen, senior staff geol-
ogist, who leads the field trips, notes the
ventures will begin following registration
at designated locations. Participants in
the April trip will register at the Shawnee-
town junior-senior high school, south
side of State Route 13. Those attending
the May outing will sign up at Canton
High School, 1001 North Main Street, on
the east side of State Route 78.

Open to everyone, these free ex-
peditions provide frequent stops for ex-
ploration, discussion and collection of
rocks and fossils and are especially help-
ful to teachers planning earth science,
geography and history units. Drivers
should begin the tour with a full tank of
gas. For more information, contact the
Illinois Geological Survey, 217/333-4747.

Richard C. Hartnack

Society Elects New
Board Members

Richard C. Hartnack is Senior Vice Pres-
ident and head of the Personal Banking
Group for First Chicago Corporation. His
responsibilities include all personal and
small business financial services (except
for credit cards) at First National Bank of
Chicago and at suburban First Chicago
Bank locations.

He joined First Chicago in June,
1982 and was promoted to his current
position in July 1987. Prior to joining
the bank, he was Senior Vice President
at First Interstate Bank of Oregon where
he headed the Corporate Banking Di-
vision of that $5 billion regional bank.

TRANSITIONS

Richard A. Lumpkin

Mr. Hartnack, a native Californian, re-

ceived his B.A. degree in economics from
UCLA. in 1967 and an M.B.A. from
Stanford in 1976. He served as a Captain
in the US. Marine Corps during the Viet-
nam War and flew 220 combat missions
in the F-4 Phantom Jet.

He is a Director of the Child Care
Society, Stanford Business School Alumni

Association and Public Interest Law Insti-

tute. He is Treasurer of the Child Welfare

- League and Chairman of the Commu-

nity Investment Corporation
He lives in Winnetka with his wile,
Dail, and three children.

Richard A. Lumpkin is president of
Consolidated Communications, Inc., a
diversified telecommunications company
headquartered in Mattoon. The company
was originally organized by his great
grandfather in 1894. Today, its principal
subsidiary, Illinois Consolidated Tele-
phone Company; provides local exchange
service to 37 communities in the central
part of the state. :

As in many family businesses,
Lumpkin has worked in almost every
aspect of the business. He has also served
as president of the Illinois Telephone
Association and the United States Tele-
phone Association. He is a past Director
of the Illinois State Chamber of
Commerce.

Mr. Lumpkin contributes a signifi-
cant portion of his time to community
organizations. He is trustee of Millikin Uni-
versity, a director of Sarah Bush Lincoln
Health Systems, Inc., East Central Illinois
Development Corporation, and Eastern
Illinois University Foundation. He gradu-
ated from Yale University in 1957 and The
Harvard Business School in 1963.

Non-Profit Org.
Society for the Ue Peeeecarta
Illinois Scientific Surveys ‘S.F Fe
607 East Peabody Drive Spring e :
Champaign, IL 61820 Permit No. 453

CARLA HEISTER 62L218
NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY LIBRARY #02918
196 NATURAL RESOURCES BLOG

607 E PEABODY pR

CHAMPAIGN IL 619z0

OF ILLINOIS Spring/Summer, 1988

ae :
a . a

Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

The Society Page

With spring here and summer on the
horizon, many of the scientists at the
Illinois Natural History, Geological
and Water Surveys are in the field.
They are working to preserve and
protect the nature of Illinois. In these
pages we try to bring you a little of
their world, as they move from the
problems of shoreline erosion in
Chicago to oil production research in
southern Illinois.

You might not recognize it, but
that’s Illinois on the cover. The
southernmost sixteen counties of Il-
linois contain some of the most
beautiful natural areas I have seen
anywhere — fern forests, cypress
trees, caves, cliffs, swamps.
Southern Illinois offers us an ex-
hilarating variety of natural features
to choose from, even though many
of our state’s residents are barely
aware of them. The Natural History
Survey’s scientists take author Jim
Krohe, and the rest of us, on an arm-
chair tour of forgotten Illinois.

Most of us enjoy a good fish
story, and the domestic saga of the
bluegill is certainly unique. Natural
History Survey researchers, along
with scientists at the University of
Toronto and the University of Illinois,
provide us a rare glimpse of a species
with two different males and two dif-
ferent mating strategies.

A side benefit of the siting work
done for the superconducting super
collider is vast amounts of Illinois ar-
chaeological data. I remember how
excited we all were by the work done
at the Koster archaeological site in the
lower Illinois River Valley. Radiocar-
bon age dating studies performed
by the Illinois Geological Survey
helped identify twelve cultures dating
as far back as 8,000 to 10,000 B.C.
The radiocarbon dating laboratory at
the Survey is only one of forty
throughout the country and is an in-
valuable asset to our archaeologists
and geologists.

While working to conserve our
history and our natural resources,
Survey scientists also strive to pro-
mote our state’s economic growth.
No civilization progresses far without
adequate water supplies. Protection
of Illinois’ groundwater
resources is the focus of a multi-
agency effort spurred on by the 1987
passage of the Illinois Groundwater
Protection Act. It is also the focus of
a special article in this issue. We par-

ticularly hope that you enjoy and
clip out the special insert on the
water cycle.

NIMBY is the acronym for Not
In My Back Yard, and it is a social
phenomenon that is affecting the
placement of facilities as diverse as
state parks and low-level radioactive
waste facilities. As a follow-up to the
nuclear waste article in our last issue,
we offer you a think-piece on
NIMBY-ism from journalist Don
Sevener.

On a more musical note, Natural
History researcher Dr. Scott Robinson
is taking a hard look at what is hap-
pening to Illinois’ songbirds as a
result of greater forest
fragmentation.

Please join us in supporting the
efforts of these dedicated and hard-
working professionals by becoming a
member of our Society. Help us pro-
mote wise stewardship of the nature
of Illinois.

Enjoy a happy and natural
spring!

Sincerely,

Pr bd mney

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Supporters*

Corporate and Foundation:

James and Marjorie Anderson Foun-
dation; Archer Daniels Midland;
BASF-Wyandotte; Bell & Howell
Foundation; Bi-Petro; Borg-Warner
Foundation, Inc.; Boulevard Bancorp,
Inc.; Chicago Community Trust;
Chicago Title & Trust; Coffield,
Ungaretti, Harris & Slavin; Collins &
Rice; Commonwealth Edison;
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly, Dames &
Moore; Donnelley Foundation;
Gaylord Donnelley Trust; Gaylord &
Dorothy Donnelley Foundaton; R.R.
Donnelley & Sons; Dow Chemical;
Draper & Kramer Foundation;
DuQuoin State Bank; Farnsworth &
Wylie; Field Foundation of Illinois;
Jamee & Marshall Field Foundation;
First Chicago Bank; Forest Fund;
Freeman United Coal Mining Com-
pany; Greeley and Hansen; Hamilton
Consulting Engineers; Hanson
Engineers; Harris Foundation; Henry,
Meisenheimer & Gende; Hurst-
Rosche Engineers; Illinois Bell;
Illinois Coal Association; Illinois
Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund;
Illinois Power Company;, Illinois Soy-
bean Program Operating Board; Inter-
national Minerals & Chemicals Corp.;
Joyce Foundation; Klingner &
Associates; Kraft, Inc.; Marine Bank
of Springfield; Brooks & Hope
McCormick Foundaton; Robert R.
McCormick Foundation; Midwest
Consulting Engineers; Mobay
Chemical; Peabody Coal Company;
Abbie Norman Prince Trust; Rand
McNally & Company; Randolph &
Associates; R & H Construction;
Rhutasel & Associates; Sahara Coal
Company; Sargent & Lundy
Engineers; J.R. Short Milling Com-
pany; A.E. Staley Continental; Torn-
rose, Campbell & Associates; Union
Carbide; Whistling Wings.

Individuals: James Anderson, E.
Armbrust, Henry Barkhausen, Jane
Bolin, Gaylord Donnelley, James &
Nina Donnelley, Clayton Gaylord,
Walter Hanson, Frederick Jaicks, Dr.
Michael Jeffords, Dr. Morris Leighton,
Richard Lenon, Al Pyott, William
Rooney, William Rutherford, Michael
Scully, Edmund B. Thornton, Leo
Whalen, Louise Young.

*Contributions of $200 or more.

OF ILLINOIS

Egypt

Take a tour of Little Egypt, Illinois’
often forgotten and under-
appreciated southernmost sixteen
counties.

6

Sex and the Single Bluegill

Sneakers, darters and female mimics:
an unexpurgated look at an Illinois

fish with alternative mating strategies.

8

Dating Illinois
Radiocarbon age analyses help ar-

chaeologists and geologists date the
past.

10

“Whose Backyard Is It Anyway?”

Why Illinois citizens are fighting

about the location of everything from

school playgrounds to low-level
radioactive waste sites.

NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY

JUN 7 1988

LIBRARY

13

Groundwater: The Invisible
Resource

An in-depth look at one of geology’s
greatest gifts to Illinois.

18

Natural Resources Digest
Wildlife

Biorhythms

Currents

Centering on Waste
Geograms

Short Takes

Transitions

About the Cover

Heron Pond, Johnson County. Photo
Credit: Illinois Water Survey.

Published by the Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys

Volume II, Number III
Spring/Summer, 1988
Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Editor

Eric Holgerson
Assistant to the Editor

ComUnigraph
Design and Production

The Society Offices

Correspondence about memberships,
magazine deliveries, contributions
and general information should be
addressed to the Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys, 1525 South
Oth Street, Suite B, Springfield, Il
627034

The Society encourages readers to
submit letters to the editor of The
Nature of Illinois at the address
above

Copyright 1988 by the Society |!
the Illinois Scientific Surveys. Al
rights reserved

<<<

By James Krohe Jr.

On hazy, humid sum-
mer days, the gorges where
the fern forests grow are al-
ways cool. But the upland rivers
often slow to trickles, and only the
bigger swamps — where cotton-
mouths curl between the cypress
trees — never dry up. The hills pro-
vide only poor farming, although
sorghum does well enough and the
apple and peach crops are fine if it
isn’t too cold. There are jobs in the
tripoli mines, but cheap imports
from Mexico have made the future
doubtful for the fluorspar miners.
Louisiana? Kentucky? No,
Illinois. The southernmost 16 coun-
ties of the Prairie State comprise the
warmest, lowest, hilliest, tree-iest
part of Illinois. Nestled in the arms of
the Mississippi, Wabash, and Ohio
rivers, the region is Illinois in a car-
tographic image. But geologically,
climatologically, and ecologically it is
closer kin to the border-state South.
To its historically minded
residents, southern Illinois is still
“Egypt,” the nickname attached to it
in the 1840’s in honor of its fabled
(and ultimately short-lived) fertility.
To the rest of the state, southern
Illinois is no particular place at all.
One of the standard guide books to
Illinois — the one authored by the
old Works Progress Administration,
published in 1939 and revised in
1974 — profiles only one southern
town of the 22 Illinois towns and
cities which get special mention.
Even that one — Cairo — interests

~

Randolph Perry

Williamson

Alexander

the authors more for what it was
than what it is.

Part of the problem is that
southern Illinois is physically remote
from the economic and political
centers of Illinois. Geography is
destiny, and Carbondale, the region’s
largest city, is 331 miles from Chicago.

The southernmost 16
counties of the Prairie
State comprise the
warmest, lowest,
hilliest, tree-iest part
of Illinois.

a,

That puts Carbondale farther

from Chicago than Chicago is
from Indianapolis, Dubuque,
Louisville, Cincinnati, or Detroit.

The War of
Water and Stone

It is not mere distance which ex-

plains southern Illinois’ distinc-

tiveness but nature. Repeated inva-
sions of glacial ice physically
transformed most of the rest of the
state during the Pleistocene Age.
More than 90 percent of Illinois (in-
cluding the northern edge of
southern Illinois) lies in what
geographers call the Central Lowland
of the United States, a physiographic
region which is about as interesting
as its name suggests. By comparison,
the unglaciated south of the state is a
riot of topography. The Shawnee
Hills (the northernmost extension of
the Ozark Mountains) are part of the
Interior Low Plateau which peeks in-
to Illinois from the east. The Ozark
Plateau reaches into southern Illinois
from the west, and the Coastal Plain
— coastal as in “Gulf coast,’ a bit of
the bayou country gone upriver —
forms the extreme southern tip of
the state.

Glacial ice repeatedly interrupted
erosional processes in the north,
obliterating old landscapes and
depositing new ones, most recently
about 12,000 years ago. In contrast,
the south’s hillsides tend to be
steeper, valleys deeper than
elsewhere in Illinois. As Richard
Berg, an environmental geologist

with the Illinois Geological Survey
explains, “Mother Nature has had a
long time to operate on it and carve
it out. The land is much more
dissected and the streams are more
entrenched.” The thin mantle of sur-
face deposits has been washed or
blown away to reveal bedrock in
many places; once exposed, that rock
has been carved into steep canyons,
even natural stone bridges.

Time and physiographic variety
combined to produce a local land-
scape of exhilarating diversity. There
are clay plains, sandstone ravines,
muddy floodplains, gravel hills,
cliffs, caves, and swamps — each
feature a treaty of sorts in the wars
which have been fought for tens of
thousands of years between water
and stone.

If geology supplied the canvas
on which southern Illinois’ face was
drawn, climate provided the brush.
Harrisburg lies farther south than
does Louisville, Kentucky. Mean an-
nual snowfall on southern Illinois is
only nine inches, compared to the 33
inches which usually fall every
winter on northern Illinois. Season
by season, the southern counties are
16 degrees fahrenheit warmer than
their upstate cousins. They are also
wetter, a fact owed partly to terrain.
As Wayne Wendland of the Illinois
Water Survey explains, the hills in
southern Illinois push moist air
masses upward as they pass, cooling
them and making local precipitation
rates roughly 10 percent higher than
they would be otherwise.

Natural Divisions

Together, geology and climate define
not just the landscape but the
possibilities for life in any region.
Diverse habitat explains why five of
the 14 “natural divisions’ identified
in Illinois are represented in southern
Illinois even though the region en-
compasses only 11 percent of the
state’s land area. The plant and
animal life which has come to oc-
cupy these niches is as different from
that of the rest of the state as the ter-
rain. The Shawnee National Forest
sprawls across parts of 10 of the 16
southern Illinois counties. A recent
study found that the forest was home
to more than 500 wildlife species,
many of them rare. Many creatures
are found in Illinois only in these
counties. A few, such as the crayfish
Orconectes illinoiensis, are found on-
ly in these counties period, being

known nowhere else.

In the 1970s, Illinois Natural
History Survey botanist Robert Evers
(now retired) and fish taxonomist
Larry Page described a few of the
region’s riches in Biological Notes
No. 100, “Some Unusual Natural
Areas in Illinois.’ They described in-
sects which stroll about in the snow
and grasshoppers which look like
lichens, grass that grows eight feet tall
and plant communities which dwell
on floating logs, cavefish and rice rats
and bird-voiced tree frogs and beetles

bigger than some mammals, and
mosquito fern so thick that it makes
open water look like a manicured
lawn.

Because southern Illinois sits on
the continental cusp between north
and south, east and west, its flora
and fauna comprise quite
cosmopolitan communities. At
Jackson Hollow, filmy ferns grow in
the shady, moist undercuts of cliffs
on whose sun-baked crowns rock
selaginella grows on solid sandstone.
The local staphylinid beetle is a
truant from its original eastern
habitat, as are relict populations of
northern fishes who have found
refuge in the cool spring-fed waters
of Hardin County’s Big Creek. Visit
LaRue swamp in Union County,
however, and (in the words of Evers
and Page), “The plaintive calls of the
chuck-will’s-widow and the mock-
ingbird remind one that he is now in
the southland.”

Why the ranges of certain plants
and animals are limited to these
counties is not well understood.

Some explanations are obvious. As
Page puts it, a swamp creature will
usually be found where the swamps
are. But Glen Sanderson of the
Natural History Survey notes that
even though habitat suitable for
southern Illinois’ swamp rabbit, for
example, exists in the form of stream
bottoms in other parts of the state,
the animal has never strayed far from
its present home. “‘We just can’t put
our finger on it, although it’s pro-
bably the climate,’ Sanderson sug-
gests, speculating that differences in

the species’ enzyme system may leave
it less adaptable to cold.

Southern Illinois was the most
heavily forested part of pre-
settlement Illinois. The oak-hickory
forest common to the rest of the state
occurs here, but so does beech-maple
forest from the east and such
southern species as cypress, pecan,
tupelo, and catalpa. Most of the pre-
sent stands are second-growth timber
at best and thus pale shadows of
their 19th century ancestors, but a
few majestic patches of presettlement
forests survive. “Certainly there are
places which have never been
timbered,’ confirms Louis Iverson,
Natural History Survey botanist
Cypresses have reached 100 feet, and
some sycamores in the Wabash River
bottomland stand 175 feet tall

Extracting the Past

To drive through southern Illinois is
to take a tour of Illinois’ past
Southern Illinois today probab!
looks much the way the rest of

2 :

Dept. of Conservation

Illinois looked before it was buried
under the thick blankets of sands,
silts, and gravels left behind by the
glaciers. The major plant com-
munities in turn constitute a museum
of climatological change. Remnants
of the northern boreal forests which
covered Illinois during cooler eras
survive in the shade of cliffs. Prairie
openings on blufftops are reminders
of warmer, dryer intervals, while
relicts of more recent moist forest
types still grow in ravine bottoms.

Here and there, the traveler can
glimpse an even more ancient past.
The bedrock of the Illinois Basin is
cupped, the strata of succeeding
geologic ages stacked like spoons.
Buried under hundreds of feet of
glacial debris elsewhere, the edges of
these strata emerge at or near the sur-
face in western and southern Illinois.
The exposed rock is Pennsylvania-era
sandstones and limestones mostly,
along with older Mississippian,
Silurian, and Ordovician formations.

In these fossil landscapes are
hidden minerals which are no less
exotic in their origins than the
modern plants and animals which
dwell atop them. Tripoli, or amor-
phous silica, is a very fine-grained
quartz used to polish glass, among
other industrial uses. The only
known deposits of it occur in Union
and Alexander counties, where it has
been mined since early in this cen-
tury. “Those rocks in other parts of
the state tend to contain lots of cher-
ty materials,’ explains John Masters
of the Geological Survey. “For some
reason that material has been altered
in that local area, perhaps as a result
of a very ancient period of
weathering.”

Fluorspar is another unique
mineral extensively used in the
manufacture of steel, aluminum, and
chemicals. Only Mexico and China
have larger deposits than the United
States, and most U.S. output comes
from Hardin and Pope counties. The
deposits were created when fluorine-
rich solutions seeped into limestone
from deep in the earth, dissolving
the host stone and replacing it with
fluorite. “The process is fairly com-
mon,’ says Masters, “but the occur-
rence of deposits of mineable quanti-
ty is not.”

Mineral extraction was southern
Illinois’ first industry, and remains its
largest. In the mid-19th century, salt
was evaporated from brackish spring
water along the Saline River for ex-
port up and down the Ohio River.

Garden of the Gods, Shawnee National Forest

Today the river barges carry coal, not
salt. There is coal under most of
Illinois, but in few other spots are the
deposits so thick at mineable depths.
Springfield and Herrin coals occur
here within reach of giant strip mine
shovels, in veins as thick as 8-15 feet.
At greater depths lie most of the few
sizeable deposits of relatively low-
sulfur coal in Illinois. As a result, coal
is mined in nine of the 16 southern-
most counties. Combined, their
mines account for nearly two-thirds
of the state’s total output in recent
years.

Our Southern Brethren

Such natural wealth, along with its
network of river highways, explains
why southern Illinois has a record of
continuous human habitation stretch-
ing back at least 15,000 years. Ar-
chaeological surveys of the Shawnee
National Forest grounds alone have
so far found more than 900
prehistoric sites. The Indians, such as
those who repeatedly camped at the
rock shelter at Modoc between 4,000
and 10,000 years ago, found plentiful
game, nuts, and fish. The French,

whose 18th century occupation of
the region is revealed in the names of
Prairie du Rocher and Fort de Char-
tres and the architecture of Kaskaskia
and Cahokia, grew rich trading in
grains and furs.

The French were only the first
phase of European settlement in the
region. In the 19th century, white
settlement began in earnest. Most of
the newcomers came across the Ohio
from Kentucky and the mid-Atlantic
states to the east in the years before
the Erie Canal and then the railroads
opened up the flatter, more fertile
parts of the state. Local culture
historically reflects the traits of hill
people everywhere, including in-
dependence, clannishness, and skep-
ticism of outsiders. (For example,
poaching on public land is con-
sidered less a crime than a tradition.)
Even today, many southern
Illinoisans speak with more of a
drawl than a twang. It should not
surprise the visitor that some
southern Illinoisans are more
southern than Illinoisan. Marion,
after all, lies 150 miles south of the
old Mason-Dixon Line.

The French came as artisans,

Dept. of Commerce and Community Affairs

missionaries, and traders and they
prospered. Later arrivals were largely
poor and unskilled, and thus were
doomed, at least at first, to sub-
sistence farming. Making a living in
southern Illinois has never been easy.
For as long as there has been a rest of
the state, the southern part of Illinois
has lagged behind it in income and
employment. Farms in southern
Illinois have been smaller than
elsewhere in Illinois, and earn less.
Sorghum and wheat are more
drought-tolerant than corn and soy-
beans but they do not earn as much.
The hills and heavy clay soils leave
much of the region ill-suited to
Illinois’ more familiar farm staples.
Instead, fruit orchards profitably
combine agriculture and forestry in
some areas. Union and Saline coun-
ties lead Illinois in the production of
such horticultural exotica as
cucumbers, sweet peppers, and
popcorn.

A Fragile Delta

As the region became more heavily
populated, the fertility of this new
Egypt quickly proved to be fragile.

> eS.

Fern Clyffe State Park, Johnson County

Overhunting decimated the birds and
large game which had astonished
travelers such as the young Audubon.
Huge tracts of timber were cleared
for farming, building, and fuel. (At
the height of the salt industry, for in-
stance, the state legislature set aside
180,000 acres of timber just to keep
the salt-maker’s kettles boiling.) Un-
fortunately soil which can sustain a
forest often cannot sustain a farm.
The soils of southern Illinois were
only a few inches thick in places. Ex-
posed to weather for 60,000 years
(far longer than the newer soil of the
north), they were often acid and
nutrient-poor as a result of leaching.
Erosion quickly chewed away the
hillsides once the protective cover of
trees was removed. The clay pan
which lies just beneath the surface
across much of the region keeps rain
and melting snow from soaking into
deeper soil layers. Surface water runs
off quickly, leaving many areas prone
to flooding when it rains too much
and prone to drought when it doesn’t
rain enough.

As a result, the attempt to wres-
tle a living from land not well suited
for it damaged both the farms and

Dept. of Conservation

the farmers. By the 1930's the region
was littered with thousands of acres
of fields which had been abandoned
because either the soil or the farmer
was too poor. (“You can’t grow corn
on bedrock,” observes Berg.)
Timberland had been overcut in
places and pasture overgrazed. The
federal government bought up nearly
90,000 acres of spent land, the
nucleus of what is today the more
than quarter-million-acre Shawnee
National Forest.

As forests go, the Shawnee is an
oddity, and its oddness tells a lot
about the often careless human oc-
cupation of southern Illinois. To save
the soil federal agencies planted some
46,000 acres in pine populations,
which some ecologists today regard
as weeds in the garden compared to
the native deciduous woods they
replaced. The wooded tracts are not
continuous in any event, being in-
terspersed with towns, farms, and
mines.

The wholesale despoliation of
land inside the forest boundaries has
ceased, of course, but elsewhere the
region’s natural resources are still
often misused. Forested private land
is still being cleared to plant highly
erodible row crops. Manmade fires
are fairly common, and unrestricted
grazing of woods by livestock has
killed off native understory plant
species and left woods open to inva-
sion by non-native weeds.

And the future? The history of
the region may be summarized by
three facts: Southern Illinois was the
site of Illinois’ first bank
(Shawneetown), its first capital
(Kaskaskia), and its first state park (Ft
Massac, which opened in 1903). How
long the coal will last can't be
predicted, and agriculture may never
be dependably profitable. But
southern Illinois’ terrain and wildlife
are proving to be a profitable base for
expanding tourism and recreation in-
dustries. Cairo may or may not be
the “Goose Capital of the World,” as
it has claimed, but it certainly is the
goose capital of Illinois. Hundreds of
thousands of waterfowl such as
Canada geese make their homes in
the region’s many wildlife refuges
Hunting and fishing (indeed living in
a setting of such striking beauty) are
making it a refuge for humans too
specifically the ex-urbanites who
began flocking to the region to
the 1970's. Not for the first t
past of southern Illinois n
its future

Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated
fleas do it. Bluegill do it too, but very
differently.

Among the most common of
North American freshwater fish, the
bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus) is one
of the most fished for species in II-
linois. It is also the official state fish,
beating out the carp and other
species for that honor in an election
by the state’s schoolchildren. The
bluegill belongs to the sunfish family,
Centrarchidae, which also includes
the basses and crappies. The bluegill
is found throughout much of this
country south from Ontario through
Florida and from the east coast
westward across the Mississippi
drainage. The average size of an adult
male bluegill is one-quarter pound
and seven to eight inches long,
although some may exceed one-half
pound. Females are smaller, with an
average length of four to six inches.

What is uncommon about the
bluegill is its complex reproductive
behavior. Bluegill males follow two
alternative mating strategies:
cuckoldry or parental care. Resear-
chers from the Illinois Natural
History Survey (NHS), working with
scientists at the University of Toronto
and the University of Illinois, are
conducting field and laboratory ex-
periments at the NHS and at the
Queen’s University Biological Station
on Lake Opinicon, Ontario, to ex-
plain these complex behaviors.

Spawning Bouts

The domestic drama of the bluegill
unfolds in this way. In late spring to
mid-summer, mature adult males
move into shallow areas and form

6

Sex

And The
Single
Bluegill

breeding colonies. Anywhere from 10
to 200 males congregate and build
adjacent nests. Nests are shallow,
bowl-shaped depressions built by
parental males using lateral sweeping
movements with their tail fins. These
males are extremely territorial and
aggressive towards intruders at these
sites.

What is uncommon
about the bluegill is its
complex reproductive

behavior. Bluegill males
follow two alternative
mating strategies:
cuckoldry or parental
care.

Once the colony is established
and nest construction is completed,
female bluegill (in schools of up to a
thousand individuals) move into the
area to spawn. Since a single female
will spawn with a variety of males, a
nest will have batches of eggs from
different females. Spawning can last
from only a few hours to more than a
day.

Actual spawning behavior con-
sists of a female entering the nest of a
male, who then begins to circle
around her until she dips on her side
to release 10 to 20 eggs. As she
releases the eggs, the male fertilizes
them. After the spawning bout is
completed, the females leave the
males to remain in the nest and
assume all parental care for the
newly-laid eggs. :

Sneakers and Mimics

Dr. Mart Gross, a zoologist at the
University of Toronto, began studying
bluegill reproduction at Lake
Opinicon in the mid-1970’s. He
found that the typical male bluegill,
called a “‘parental”’ male, took seven
years to sexually mature, participating
in colonial spawning from age seven
to age ten or eleven.

He also discovered that certain
male bluegills did not exhibit the
typical pattern of mating, but instead
matured sexually at age two or three,
when they were only two to three
inches long. During spawning, these
sexually precocious males move
among the lake’s weeds and hide in
positions near nests containing
spawning pairs. At the right moment
they quickly dart under the pair,
releasing sperm in an attempt to steal
fertilizations from the parental male.
During this action, these males are
successful in fertilizing a portion of
the eggs, thus earning the term
“sneaker” males.

Precocious males are most effec-
tive at sneaking when small and less
detectable. At the age of four, these
cuckolders become too large to sneak
into the nests and acquire a new

behavioral tactic — female mimicry.
Females in Lake Opinicon reach sex-
ual maturity at age five or six. These
adult females are smaller and lighter
in color than adult parental males,
but about the same size as the four
year old cuckolder. These cuckolders,
termed satellite males, mimic the col-
or and behavior of the females, fool-
ing the parental male into allowing
them into the nest and then position-
ing themselves between the parental
male and the true female.

The parental male believes he is
spawning with two females, and the
mimic therefore escapes the aggres-
sion of the parental male. In fact the
mimic is adjacent to the female and
probably has the better spawning
position. Precocious male bluegill
spawn as female mimics through age
five but then die a full two years
before their brother parentals reach
sexual maturity. Sneakers and mimics
do not grow up to become parental
males. The two alternative reproduc-
tive strategies — parental behavior

and cuckoldry — are mutually
exclusive.

Maximizing Fitness

Dr. David Philipp and Julie Claussen
of the NHS, and Dr. Janice Bahr and
Pawel Kindler of the Department of
Animal Sciences at the University of
Illinois, are collaborating with Dr.
Gross in an effort to understand the
hows and whys of these alternative
mating strategies.

Their research to date disproves
the original idea that sneakers and
mimics were just rare, abnormal in-
dividuals who were sick or were
eating eggs. Instead their research
predicts that these mating strategies
and behaviors are a mixture of evolu-
tionary stable strategies (ESS’s). This
mixture of parental, sneaker and
satellite males is stable evolutionarily
over time and will not disappear. For
these ESS’s to exist, however, the
theory predicts that the fitness of
males entering the cuckolder and the
parental pathways must be equal.

A bluegill parental male spawning with female.

™

Parental male and female spawning.
The satellite male is in the middle,
mimicking the true female.

Dr. Mart Gross

According to Dr. David Philipp,
“These mixed mating strategies are
genetically based and have evolved
from mutation. It goes back to the
male-male competition for central
over peripheral nest sites, the sites

preferred by females while spawning.

To get that favored central nest site,
males need to be larger than their
competitors. To become larger, males
have to delay maturation. Of course
that delay in maturation is accom-
panied by an increase in mortality
costs for the parental males.”

“A mutation occurred
somewhere along the line, allowing
early sexual maturation for some
males. These males, the sneakers and

Dr. David Philipp INHS

the satellites, could not compete for
central nest position, but they could
in effect steal fertilizations from the
larger parentals. These two strategies
are stable because cach one has equal
fitness for its participants. In Lake
Opinicon 75 percent of one-year old
males evolutionarily “‘choose’”’ to
become cuckolders.”’

“However, many more of the
parental males die in waiting until
age seven to mature sexually than do
sneaker males who only need wait
until age two to mature. The trade-off
between mortality and fertilization
success is the basis for the predicted
equality of fitness for the two
strategies. We have shown that these
reproductive behaviors are inherited,
and now we are trying to quantify
the fitness of males in the two
strategies to prove this new theory.”

The research team is also looking
at the biochemical mechanisms
regulating these mating strategies.
The researchers postulate that there is
some endocrine trigger that Causes
the sneaker’s gonads to mature early,
resulting in his unique set of sexual
behaviors. Early experiments indicate
that the fish androgens testosterone
and 11 ketotestosterone (1IKT) affect
both parental and cuckolder males in
different ways. Parental males ex-
perience a spike of 11KT that drives
male-male aggression before
spawning.

Experimental time release hor-
monal implants in bluegill males have
affected their behavior. A current ex-
periment is designed to show that, in
the absence of parental males,
satellite males given elevated amounts
of 11 KT build nests and act as paren-
tals. Multidisciplinary experiments of
this type will tie together the facts
needed to answer key questions con-
cerned with the evolution of sexual
behavior.

This article is based on the work of
Dr. Mart Gross, an Associate Pro
fessor in the Department of Zoologs
at the University of Toronto; Dr.
David Philipp, a Fisheries Geneticist
with the NHS; Julie Claussen, an NHS
Research Biologist; Pawell Kindler, a
graduate student at the University of
Iinois; and Dr. Janice Bahr, a Pro
fessor in the Department of Animal
Sciences at the University of Illinois
at Urbana

Dating Illinois

In 1950 Willard Libby revolutionized
archaeology, geology and many other
sciences with the radiocarbon
method of age dating. Developed at
the University of Chicago, Libby’s
method is being used today by the
Illinois Geological Survey (IGS) for
projects ranging from tracing glacial
and postglacial levels of Lake
Michigan to assisting archaeologists
with the history of prehistoric
cultures in Illinois.

The radiocarbon age dating
technique takes advantage of the in-
terplay between our atmosphere and
all carbon-containing substances, in-
cluding living organisms. Carbon has
three naturally-occurring isotopes.

Oxygen atoms combine with

radiocarbon atoms in the atmosphere © O
to form radioactive carbon dioxide. @

Almost all of the carbon dioxide in J

the air is made with non-radioactive
carbon-12 and carbon-13, but about ©)
.0000000001 percent is carbon-14. or

cs

amount of radiocarbon remaining in
the tissues. After a plant or animal
has been dead for about 50,000
years, the amount of radiocarbon re-
maining is so small that itcan no ~
longer be measured with normal
equipment. When a sample is analyz-

Two of these, carbon-12 and SV Yen A ee ed in the laboratory, its age is stated
carbon-13, are stable. The third, ~ i oye LF as x years Before Present (BP). The
oN Se 3 present is taken as the year 1950, so

that the reported age is not depen-
dent on when the analysis was made.

carbon-14 or radiocarbon, emits
small amounts of radioactivity.

From the Field C)

Cosmic rays, which are constantly
entering the atmosphere, change
some of the nitrogen-14 atoms in the
air into radiocarbon. These carbon-14

atoms are formed at nearly the same
rate all the time.

Plants take in both regular and
radioactive carbon dioxide and grow
tissues with it. Animals eating these
plants also take radiocarbon into
their tissues. There is a balance bet-
ween the rate of radiocarbon produc-
tion and radioactive decay. All living
organisms in equilibrium with the at-
mosphere maintain small natural con-
centrations of radiocarbon in their
bodies that are nearly the same as the
proportion of radiocarbon in the air.
After plants and animals die, they
no longer take in radiocarbon and
regular carbon. Radiocarbon atoms in
the dead tissue begin to decay to
nitrogen-14 atoms at a steady rate.
The rate of decay is expressed by the
half-life of radiocarbon, the time
taken for half of the carbon-14 atoms
in any sample to decay. The half-life
of radiocarbon is 5730 years. The
time since the plant or animal died
can be determined by measuring the

To The Laboratory

Once a sample is delivered to a
laboratory, several techniques are
available for radiocarbon age dating.
Scientists at the Geological Survey’s
Isotope Geochemistry Laboratory use
the benzene liquid scintillation
technique to date the nearly 200
samples they receive each year.

Samples are rarely delivered in
pristine condition, so that the first
order of business is to clean out any
contaminants that might not be an
original component of the sample.
Without this cleaning technique,
dates could be compromised. The
most common field contaminants are
plant rootlets, humic acids and car-
bonates. Humic acid is a generic term
describing the organic breakdown
products of plants and animals. They
are mobile in the soil and can ac-
cumulate in porous sections of a sam-
ple. Carbonates are present in most
natural waters and environments and
can contaminate some sample
materials.

The first step in the laboratory is
cleaning the sample. This is done by
boiling the sample in acid to rid it of
carbonates. The original carbon in
the sample is not soluble. The sample
is then washed with sodium hydrox-
ide to eliminate humic acids.

In a closed system, under pure
oxygen, the now-clean sample is
burned, and all carbon in the sample
is converted to carbon dioxide, a gas.
A series of chemical conversions are
then made to change the carbon
dioxide to benzene.

The benezene is placed into a li-
quid scintillation counter, which
measures how much radioactive car-
bon is left in the sample. As the
carbon-14 atoms disintegrate, they
give off light flashes. These are
measured electronically in the
counter by two photomultiplier
tubes. Within 24 hours, the counter
can tell researchers how many light
flashes have taken place. This number
is then compared with a sample con-
taining a known amount of carbon-14
and with a sample having no
carbon-14. Mathematic calculations
complete, the IGS scientists can tell
how old the sample is.

And Back To The Field

According to Dr. Dennis Coleman,
Head of the Geochemistry Section,
the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory
was originally established as an aid to
the Survey’s geologists for the dating

Dennis Coleman (left) and chemist Barry Fisher examine a 10,000-year-old

mastodon tooth recovered from a site near Urbana. The laboratory systems in
the background are used for the conversion of carbon dioxide to benzene.

of glacial materials. Now the
laboratory, the only one of its kind in
Illinois and one of only about 40 in
the country, dates samples for many
diverse projects.

“We have strict guidelines for ac-
cepting samples: the project is being
conducted at an Illinois institution or
by an Illinois researcher, or the pro-
ject has some general relevance for
Illinois whether done by college
researchers in or out of state. We also
want assurances that the samples
have been properly collected and
documented and that they are scien-
tifically significant and not just a
matter of curiosity. Sixty percent of
our samples come from ar-
chaeologists; the other 40 percent are
from geologists.”

“For geologists, we frequently
correlate the age of sediments in one
area against the age of those in
another. Our support has been
especially helpful in two recent pro-
jects involving the timing and causes
of high lake phases in the Lake
Michigan basin. We do a lot of work
with archaeologists as well. We're
assisting a professor now at the
University of Illinois to establish a
chronology of Upper Paleolithic set-
tlements in eastern Europe. And
we're dating some dwarf hip-
popotamus bones from southern
Cyprus for the Field Museum in
Chicago.”

Radiocarbon is also being used
in studying a possible coal
desulfurization technique. One of the

coal studies at the IGS involves the
use of carbon monoxide and ethanol
(corn alcohol) to rid coal of sulfur.
Radiocarbon is used as a tracer to
detect whether the alcohol is used up
during the process by being retained
in the coal. Coal has no radiocarbon
because it is millions of years old, but
the alcohol is from modern corn and
thus contains radiocarbon. A
radiocarbon analysis performed on
the treated coal will tell how much
alcohol is being retained in the coal
and thus is being used by the process.
The amount of alcohol retained in
the coal as shown by the radiocarbon
analysis greatly affects the economics
of the process.

“One of the laboratory's biggest
success stories was the radiocarbon
dating done for the Koster ar-
chaeological site in the lower Illinois
River valley, a natural spot for habita-
tion by early man,” relates Coleman
“Radiocarbon tests conducted by the
IGS helped archaeologists map at
least 12 cultures (horizons), dating as
far back as 8,000 to 10,000 B.C.”

“IT suppose one of our stranger
projects involved dating leopard
droppings from Egypt. After 5,000
years they smell just as bad now as
they did back then.”

Dr. Dennis Coleman received his PhD
in Geochenustry at the University of
Illinois, and is Head of the
Geochemistry Section at the Uh
Geological Survey

PHT NG ee Eee TE

“Whose Backyard Is It

Antyway?”’

by Donald Sevener

The battle cry has become almost
tiresomely familiar. In recent months
outraged citizens have organized to
Oppose a new prison in Decatur, the
superconducting super collider near
Batavia, and a low-level radioactive
waste facility almost everywhere.
Blanca Souder of Kaneville summed
up the sentiments of many when she
invoked the battle cry at a U.S.
Department of Energy hearing earlier
this year. “I’m not against the col-
lider,’ Souder said, “but I don’t want
it in my back yard.”

This is NIMBYism — the “Not In
My Backyard” syndrome that has
become so widespread that it has
earned its own acronym. Although
the phenomenon is usually manifest
in complaints about declining pro-
perty values or the hazards of
chemical or radioactive wastes, many
experts believe the roots of NIM-
BYism grow much deeper. “I know
people who oppose the establish-
ment of a state park or children’s
playground near their home,’ says
Tom Kerr, chief of the low-level
radioactive waste division of the II-
linois Department of Nuclear Safety.
“Their lives are comfortable and they
don’t want their lives to change.”

This resistance to change leaves
developers, scientists, and govern-
mental agencies wondering how to
overcome opposition they generally
believe is irrational to build projects
they consider safe. The gap
separating those who want to build a
controversial facility and those who

10

are asked to live next to it generally
is the result of a difference in what is
called “risk perception.”

Defining Risk

“The core problem is definition,’
says Peter M. Sandman, a professor of
environmental journalism at Rutgers
University. “To the experts, risk
means expected annual mortality. But
to the public (and even to the experts
when they go home at night), risk
means much more than that.”
Sandman suggests there are two
dimensions to risk. The first he calls
“Hazard. It is the technical dimen-
sion: how dangerous is it? Will it
damage my health, my property, or
the image of my community? This is
a straightforward, intellectual issue.”

“Risk then is
the sum of hazard and
outrage. The public
pays too little attention
to hazard; the experts
pay absolutely no
attention to outrage.
Not surprisingly, they
rank risks differently.”

Scientists and engineers — the
technical experts — can calculate the
probability that a given facility will
cause death, and because that pro-
bability is usually quite remote they
conclude the risk is quite low. But
the citizens who will live in the
shadow of such a facility draw quite
a different conclusion. When they in-
flate the risk, despite scientific
evidence to the contrary and despite
the fact they ignore even greater
hazards in their own daily lives, ex-
perts dismiss their complaints as irra-
tional. “The classic example,” says
Ken Westlake, Illinois coordinator for
the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, “was the person who com-
plained about emissions from an in-
cinerator while he sat there chain
smoking.”

But, as Sandman points out,
such behavior is not as irrational as it
seems. Ordinary people, he says, tend
to see risk differently than the ex-
perts. He calls the second dimension
of risk “Outrage — all the things
people care about other than what
will kill them.”

“Risk then,” he says, “is the sum
of hazard and outrage. The public
pays too little attention to hazard; the
experts pay absolutely no attention to
outrage. Not surprisingly, they rank
risks differently.”

According to Sandman, at the
root of stated concerns about proper-
ty values and physical safety,
however legitimate and deeply felt,
are issues Of trust, fairness, uncertain-
ty, and control. They are issues,
Sandman and others say, that touch

the heart of the process for determin-
ing where to put environmental
facilities or certain social institutions,
such as prisons or mental health
centers, that are commonly regarded
as LULUs — “‘locally undesirable land
uses.”

LULUs

“People fear the unknown, especially
anything nuclear and anything
classified as hazardous,” says Patti
Cronin, executive director of the
Wisconsin Waste Facility Siting
Board, an agency that mediates
disputes between developers and
citizens. Don Etchison, the director
of the Illinois Department of Energy
and Natural Resources, agrees.
“Anything that’s got nuclear in it has
an image problem,” says Etchison,
who has encountered anxieties that
the superconducting super collider
— the giant atom-smasher proposed
in the far western Chicago suburbs —
would leak radioactivity. “People are
very afraid of anything radioactive,
although it’s often an irrational feel-
ing because they don’t hesitate to go
to the beach and sunbathe despite
doctors’ warnings that sunbathing
causes skin cancer.”

But Sandman has an explanation
for that seeming paradox: “Diffusion
in time and space,” he.says, can
diminish the perception of risk.
Writing last fall in the EPA Journal,
he explains, “Hazard A kills fifty
anonymous people a year across the
country. Hazard B has one chance in
ten of wiping out its neighborhood
of 5,000 people sometime in the
next decade. Risk assessment tells us
the two have the same expected an-
nual mortality: fifty. ‘Outrage assess-
ment’ tells us A is probably accep-
table and B is certainly not.” If
Hazard A is sunbathing and Hazard B
is a radioactive waste dump, Sand-
man is certainly correct.

He also notes that “exotic, high-
tech facilities provoke more outrage
than familiar risks’? and that a
memorable disaster — on the scale of
a Bhopal or Love Canal — generates
lots of publicity and makes “the risk
easier to imagine, and thus ... more
risky.”

“It’s perfectly normal,’ Sandman
says. “You see something as a big
risk, one that’s not fair and not under
your control and you look for
reasons to stop it. Concerns about
health and property values are
legitimate, but there are a whole host

of other reasons that stem from how
you feel about the process under
which that LULU is proposed.”

“Fairness is a major issue. People
feel it’s intrinsically unfair that their
community gets stuck with, say, a
low-level radioactive waste site.
Whether or not the risk is little, they
are getting a disproportionate share
of it. To the extent I feel something is
unfair, I translate that into a feeling
that it’s more risky.”

Control and Courtesy

Another relevant factor is what Sand-
man calls ‘‘voluntariness”’ or, in his
words, “The difference between
deciding to go skiing and having
somebody push you down a moun

“Fairness is a major
issue. People feel it’s
intrinsically unfair that
their community gets
stuck with, say, a low-
level radioactive waste
site. Whether or not the
risk is little, they are
getting a
disproportionate share
of it. To the extent I
feel something is
unfair, I translate that
into a feeling that it’s
more risky.”

tain on slippery sticks. Going down
the mountain is the same; the dif-
ference is who chose that you would
go down the mountain.” Even
rewards or incentives may not
diminish the outrage of being co-
erced. “Incentives are useful when
outrage factors are low; when
outrage is high, they are seen as
bribes. We have a long tradition of

saying ‘Piss on your money’ and it’s
a tradition we care about. It’s the
difference between a kid being told
he has to get a shot and here's a
lollipop and being offered a choice
whether he gets the shot, with a
lollipop as his reward if he decides
he will. These sitings are usually
coercive and that increases the com-
munity’s sense of risk.”

Moreover, Sandman argues,
those who do the coercing —
private developers, the waste
disposal industry, government
agencies — are often perceived as
untrustworthy. “By and large and
with good reason, society sees the
waste industry and the nuclear in-
dustry as not the kind of people you
want to invite to your Thanksgiving
dinner. They are perceived as ar-
rogant, willing to mislead, and hav-
ing a record of less than ideal com-
petence. People want to know: Can I
trust the people who tell me this is
not harmful? Do they listen to me?
Do I have reason to believe they are
telling me everything they know?
For most of these industries, we'd
answer no. Just like you wouldn't
buy a used car from Richard Nixon,
you wouldn’t buy a waste facility
from most of those who are selling
one.”

The extent to which the issues of
fairness, coercion, and trust enlarge
or mitigate citizens’ perception of
risk depends, Sandman and others
say, on public involvement in and
control over the siting process. ‘Most
processes are formal, rigid, and
ritualistic,’ Sandman says. “They us-
ed to be secret, clubby, and guided by
payoffs, so the processes we have
now are an improvement. But they
still are not friendly. People have the
feeling that by the time their opinion
is sought, the fix is already in. People
look at the process and it’s an alien
and alienating one and they translate
that into risk.”

Sandman says students in his En-
vironmental Communication
Research Program at Rutgers are con-
ducting a study to measure the con
nection between the behavior of
governmental agencies and citizen
perceptions of risk. Students wrote
hypothetical news stories about the
siting of a hazardous waste facility. In
each story the actual health hazard
was the same, but the behavior of the
agency in charge of the process dif
fered. “Is the government agency ar
rogant or courteous? Is information
given willingly or as a result of

—————————— i Fl ll

lawsuits? Do they treat citizen con-
cerns as legitimate or say ‘only an
idiot would oppose this’? Agencies
feel that if they have a good technical
case they don’t have to behave very
well. But ordinary citizens read those
articles and there was a tremendous
difference in how they perceived the
risk of the facility.”

Gloria Craven, an environmental
consultant who used to handle public
participation for the Illinois EPA,
says, “Citizens are looking first for
safety, second for equity, and third for
some kind of local control. The
siting entity has got to be flexible in
modifying its plans to meet the con-
cerns of the community. The whole
attitude of people trying to site these
facilities is changing. No longer do
they act like they are the only people
with answers. They are willing to
work with a community and a com-
munity’s experts.” She cites an in-
stance in New Jersey in which lay
citizens were on the committee that
helped devise the criteria for siting a
resource recovery incinerator. “The
people who finally drew the short
straw still didn’t like it,’ she says,
“but nobody complained that the
process was unfair.”

The Right Price

Ken Westlake of the U.S EPA notes,
“The prevailing wisdom is that you
not only need public involvement,
you need it early. People have to have
some opportunity to gain involve-
ment in making the decisions and
even then you may not see any con-
sensus develop.” Indianapolis, he
says, wanted to build a new landfill
for ash from a resource recovery in-
cinerator and for garbage. ““They
hired a consultant adept at public in-
volvement and got a number of dif-
ferent sectors of the community in-
volved, including ‘average’ citizens
from various geographic locations in
the city. They had technical people
advising the committee about the
prevailing scientific attitudes. It seem-
ed a good, upfront process to
develop siting criteria. But when they
put the overlay map down on the ci-
ty showing what areas met the
criteria, the bottom fell out of the
consensus. There was still a lot of
residual feeling of being protective of
your own back yard.”

Which is why the siting of a
sanitary landfill or hazardous waste
dump or radioactive storage facility
or a prison or whatever often boils

12

down to a matter of economics.

Stephen Goldberg, a Northwestern
University professor of law and ex-
pert in dispute resolution, notes, “‘It’s
a rather simple phenomenon.
Whenever any one of us is asked to
bear costs for projects that benefit
many other people but impose more
costs than benefits on us, it is very
natural to say: ‘Why should I bear
these costs?’ ”

His answer is that they shouldn't
— unless the price is right. ‘““There
are two approaches to siting these
things. The first is you require people
to take it; that’s the standard ap-
proach. The other approach is to
treat it like a free market
phenomenon — you encourage
negotiation until you find a price at
which some community is willing to
take it and a developer is willing to
build it. Say you have a hazardous
waste facility. Nobody wants it unless

“It’s a rather simple
phenomenon.
Whenever any one of
us is asked to bear costs
for projects that benefit
many other people but
impose more costs than
benefits on us, it is very
natural to say: ‘Why
should I bear these
costs?’ ”

you talk about putting it in an area
where the mean income is not very
high. Then they’ll not only want it,
they'll compete for it. The best exam-
ple is prisons. People who live in
communities where there is not
much employment welcome prisons.
This approach does have some
undesirable social consequences.

Some people will say, “That’s terrible
because poor communities will
always end up with these facilities’ ”
As Peter Sandman points out: ““You
never see these things going into
wealthy communities.’

You may see one going into Mar-
tinsville, a tiny southern Illinois farm-
ing community in Clark County
about thirty-five miles west of Terre
Haute, Indiana. In January 1988, the
Clark County board, like about two
dozen others around the state, voted
to tell the state Department of
Nuclear Safety that it wanted no part
of the agency’s low-level nuclear
waste disposal facility. But in
February, the Martinsville City Coun-
cil voted unanimously to invite the
nuclear waste dump — with its
estimated 100 jobs and $1 million a
year in fees — to its town. “We need
it, and I hope we get it,’ said Mayor
Truman Dean of Martinsville, where
unemployment has stubbornly
hovered at 11 percent for a decade.
“We've always been a poor county,
and the town’s always been a poor
town.”

Added merchant Jane Brush: “I'd
give ‘em my back yard if they'd take
it. We've got to do something. This
place is dying.”

Groundwater:
The Invisible Resource

By James Krohe Jr.

Water customers in Marquette Heights
near Peoria learned Lesson No. 1 in
groundwater pollution when spent
chemicals used to treat water from
their brand new well leaked back in-
to that well from a storage pit on the
surface, contaminating it. When it
comes to groundwater, they found,
the rule is, “What goes down must
come up.”

Mining For Water

Groundwater is one of geology’s gifts
to Illinois. Today nearly half the peo-
ple in the state rely on water drawn
from beneath the ground for their
drinking water. More than 1,400 ,
community water systems use well
water, as do the homes, schools, and
others who rely on Illinois’ 400,000
private wells.

The very topmost layers of the
earth dry out after a wet spell like a
sponge left out on a counter, but
below this “zone of aeration” enough
water is present in the soil all the
time to supply a family or a farm.
Much greater quantities lie in deeper
water-bearing formations known as
aquifers. For example, buried glacial
drift materials such as sand and
gravel dot much of the state at
shallow depths, mainly along the
beds of the rivers (both ancient and
modern) which deposited them. Such
relatively loose drift deposits can
hold vast amounts of water, much
the way a drinking glass ‘“‘filled” with
crushed ice still has room for a soft
drink.

Below these sand and gravel
deposits, extending in most places
across northern Illinois to a depth of
500 feet or so, are extensive beds of
limestone and dolomite rock; below

them, at depths closer to 2,000 feet,
are strata of sandstone. Such “solid”
rock is in fact suprisingly porous at
the microscopic level, and can also
hold water in quantity.

The potential combined yield of
Illinois’ drift and bedrock aquifers is
estimated to be 7 billion gallons per
day, many times current withdrawals.
But while it is abundant overall,
Illinois’ groundwater is spottily
distributed. There are very few
sizeable aquifers in the southern
counties, for example, where many
communities have to rely for water

The potential combined
yield of Illinois’ drift
and bedrock aquifers is
estimated to be 7
billion gallons per day,
many times current
withdrawals. But while
it is abundant overall,
Illinois’ groundwater is
spottily distributed.

on surface reservoirs. And in crowd-
ed northeastern Illinois, aquifers are
being overpumped.

The Illinois State Water Survey
has been studying the latter problem
in cooperation with the Illinois
Department of Transportation's Divi-
sion of Water Resources. “We're look-
ing at demand throughout the state,’

explains Ellis Sanderson, head of the
Survey's groundwater section.
Preliminary results suggest that
Illinois doesn’t yet need a statewide
plan to manage groundwater
withdrawals, but that some areas
may. About the sandstone aquifers
beneath Cook, DuPage, Lake, Kane,
and McHenry counties, Sanderson
says, ‘It’s a prolific resource, and it’s
extensively tapped for both public
water systems and industry. As a
result, we're ‘mining’ water at a rate
two and a half times what that
system is capable of producing on a
long-term sustainable basis.”

Some communities in suburban
Chicago have switched to Lake
Michigan water, with dramatic
results. ‘Water levels in the formation
have risen a couple of hundred feet
in some places,’ Sanderson
acknowledges. “But in other places
mining goes on, so the net regional
effect is continued decline.”

A Vulnerable Resource

The experience in greater Chicago
has shown that even Illinois’ rich
groundwater resources are not inex-
haustible. “Irrigation is expanding,”
Sanderson notes of another trend
The withdrawal of huge quantities of
water for farm use often puts ir-
rigators at odds with nearby rural
water users, local water supply
systems, even other irrigators drawing
on the same aquifers. Groundwater
withdrawals in Illinois still are subject
to the old “law of capture,’ a doc
trine which holds that a resource
belongs to anyone who can recover it
and put it to beneficial use. The
state’s 1983 Water Use Act, explains
Sanderson, laid the basis for the

Groundwater <

the Wat

<a: Direction of Groundwater Movement

Human induced impacts on groundwater

Natural processes

Transpiration Evaporation

Creviced Limestone

tion of Groundwatet

‘>
‘
—_,

d Land Use in

r Cycle

Precipitation

Porous. Sandstone Acie:

(continued from page 13)

eventual management of groundwater
withdrawals according to the so-
called “reasonable use” doctrine
which distinguished between ar-
tificial wants and natural wants in
allocating this limited resource.

Although Illinois’ groundwater
may be limited, it is not finite, being
constantly renewed. Aquifers are one
phase of the global hydrological cy-
cle, a temporary resting place for
billions of gallons of water as it
makes its way from rain clouds to the
surface, thence to the oceans and (via
evaporation) to the clouds again.
Much of the water which falls on II-
linois as rain or snow runs off the
surface into lakes and streams. But
the rest seeps into the earth where it
gradually replenishes or ‘‘recharges”
aquifers.

The pace of an aquifer’s recharge
varies according to the nature and
depth of geologic materials atop it.
Water may scoot through sandy soils
at a rate of 12 feet per day, while
tightly packed clays will slow water
movement to less than an inch per
day. Shallower aquifers are fed direct-
ly by seepage from the surface, while
deeper ones are fed by water entering
through fissures in the rock above.
About the precise effects of soil type
or ground cover on the process,
however, less is known. ‘““We don’t
really know a great deal about the
mechanism of natural recharge,” says
Sanderson. “There are lots of ques-
tions which have intuitive answers,
but research is definitely lacking.
Research needs to be performed on a
site-specific basis.”

Creep or ooze, water moves
underground much as it does on the
surface. It migrates from higher
places to lower ones, and from wet
places to dry ones, often across con-
siderable distances; some of the deep
aquifers of northern Illinois are
recharged by precipitation which falls
on Wisconsin. These subterranean so-
journs can take a long time. “In the
very, very deep layers in Illinois the
water is very old,’ explains John
Shafer of the Water Survey’s ground-
water section. Radioisotope dating
has put its age at thousands of years,
during which time it accumulates so
much dissolved minerals that it
becomes as brackish as sea water.

“Groundwater” is a temporary
title, because groundwater does not
stay underground forever. Where the
surface dips below the water table (as

16

it does at a natural spring or where a
stream cuts into water-bearing strata)
water in the ground emerges to
become water on the ground again.
In fact, much of the water which
keeps many Illinois streams flowing
during the parched summer months
is actually groundwater.

Nature and Man Pollute

These two aspects of the
hydrological cycle — the movement
of water from the surface through in-
tervening subsoil materials and the
slow speed at which it moves —
combine to make the pollution of
aquifers an especially vexing pro-
blem. Anything dumped on, sprayed
over, or buried in the earth atop an
aquifer’s recharge area can eventually
find its way into groundwater. The
potential sources of groundwater
pollution are thus plentiful and
widespread. Broken pipelines. Hazar-

Aquifers are one phase
of the global
hydrological cycle, a
temporary resting place
for billions of gallons
of water as it makes its
way from rain clouds to
the surface, thence to
the oceans and (via
evaporation) to the
clouds again.

dous waste storage pits. Landfills.
Road salt. Gasoline or fuel oil in
underground tanks. Pesticides and
fertilizers washed off farm fields and
feedlots. Richard Berg, an en-
vironmental geologist with the
Illinois Geological Survey, notes that
while flat uplands composed of
coarse-grained materials are especial-
ly susceptible to pollution —
precipitation lingers on flat ground
the longest, and soaks in the easiest
— the potential for contamination is
not limited to them. “Technically,
every part of Illinois where a river is
not flowing is a recharge area,’ Berg
notes.

Nature does some polluting
itself. Calcium, magnesium, and
sodium dissolved from rock are

among the common contaminants of
Illinois groundwater. They can render
such water unpleasant tasting, even
unhealthful in high concentrations.
Much of the early research done by
the Illinois Water Survey sought to
learn how to treat such water, both to
protect public health and prevent
destructive scaling inside boiler
systems using “‘hard’’ water. Luckily,
most natural pollutants can be
removed by conventional water
treatment.

And manmade pollutants? For a
long time it was thought that ground-
water was purified as it percolated
through soil layers during recharge.
Fine soil particles like clays do in-
deed act like fine sieves, filtering
bacteria and other large con-
taminants. Some contaminating
molecules become strongly attached,
or adsorbed, to these fine particles as
a result of electrostatic attraction,
much the way lint becomes attached
to a static-y sweater, and so do not
travel much past the clay layers near
the surface. Unfortunately, some
manmade chemicals such as solvents
penetrate even clay.

Nature’s armor against ground-
water contamination, alas, is riddled
with such chinks. Abandoned wells
which once brought water out of an
aquifer, for example, can become
routes by which pollutants can enter.
Injection wells sunk deep into
the earth like giant hypodermic
needles dispose certain industrial
wastes into bedrock lying below
aquifers; a faulty or damaged injec-
tion well, however, can leak waste
into shallower adjacent strata as
well. Sand and gravel pits, stone
quarries, sewer lines, oil and gas
transport lines, oil wells, storage
pits, old coal mines — all can
become routes by which pollutants
enter underground water formations.

A Drop Of Prevention

The extent of the resulting con-
tamination is not precisely known
and needs to be evaluated on a case-
by-case basis. While the testing of
Illinois drinking wells for the
presence of such conventional
pollutants as bacteria has been done
for years, testing to find heavy metals
or pesticides has only recently begun
on a systematic basis. The Illinois En-
vironmental Protecton Agency (IEPA)
set up a system to sample and analyze
water from community wells in
1985. The IEPA and the Department

of Public Health (IDPH) also test
drinking water on an occasional basis
for pesticides and other farm-related
pollution such as nitrates.

Test results to date show no
statewide crisis in groundwater
quality, but they are unsettling
nevertheless. By the spring of 1987
more than a thousand samples
drawn from community wells had
been analyzed; eight percent showed
some chemical contamination.
Roughly a quarter of the 15,600
private wells tested by the IDPH in
1986 had higher than desired
bacteria levels and 12 percent had
excessive nitrate concentrations.
Tests conducted in response to
citizen complaints found another
three dozen or so drinking wells
contaminated by either farm
chemicals or gasoline.

Many manmade chemicals are
believed to be toxic at such extremely
low concentrations that only a little
of them can render groundwater un-
fit to drink. Drop a single tablespoon
of TCE, or trichloroethylene — a
common solvent used in dry cleaning
and other operations — into a typical
water tower tank and every drop of it
will exceed by ten times the federal
TCE standard of 5 parts per billion.

Worse, once groundwater gets
polluted it stays polluted for a long
time. Pollutants spread slowty
underground from their point of
origin in a gradually enlarging
“plume.’ Contaminant plumes move
no faster than the water which car-
ries them, and so can take years to
move out of some aquifers. A broken
pipeline spewed gasoline into a sand
and gravel aquifer near Creve Coeur
in suburban Peoria in 1957; water
from a nearby municipal well showed
detectable levels of gasoline during
the next four years.

When it comes to groundwater
pollution, in other words, a drop of
prevention is worth a gallon of cure.
As Department of Energy and Natural
Resources director Don Etchison puts
it, “Groundwater is an extremely
valuable resource that has been too
long neglected and taken for granted.
There is growing recognition here in
Illinois and throughout the nation
that comprehensive groundwater pro-
tection measures are vital.”

Regulation and Research

Until recently, Illinois’ legal protec-
tions against such pollution were
pretty leaky themselves. Not all

things that contaminate groundwater
were regulated, and those that were,
were regulated by different agencies
in different ways. In 1987, however,
the General Assembly passed and the
Governor signed the Illinois Ground-
water Protection Act. Among its
many provisions the new law provid-
ed for cooperation among the half-
dozen state agencies regulating
groundwater, called for new
information-gathering to better
define the problem, widened
regulatory authority over potential
pollution sources, and mandated new
standards for groundwater quality.

Two features of the new law
should provide what the IEPA calls
“baseline” protections. Most of the
recorded instances of groundwater
pollution have been traced to sources
well within recharge areas. Storage
and loading depots for farm

Day “B08

Protection Act

chemicals have often proven to be
culprits, as have buried gasoline tanks
and landfills. The act thus established
“protection zones” through man-
datory setbacks around wellheads.
Setbacks reduce the potential for
pollution by keeping pollution
sources outside aquifer recharge
areas. No new drinking well may be
sunk within 200 feet of an existing
pollution source, according to the
act, and no new facility representing
a potential source of pollution may
be sited within 200 feet of an ex-
isting well. The act also established
the legal authority by which local of-
ficials or the IEPA (acting through
future regulation) may set up larger
protection zones extending up to
1,000 feet from community wells.
Much of the responsibility for
groundwater assessments and other
research needed to implement the
new groundwater protection act falls

on the Water and Geologic Surveys.
“Where are the vulnerable recharge
areas? What upland areas are
especially susceptible?” asks the
Geological Survey's Berg. “What we
have to do is map the state’s geology
in detail, on a 1:24,000 scale.”
Waterwell logs provide much infor-
mation about subsurface materials —
Berg compiled a map of the state’s
shallow aquifers in 1984 using data
from 25,000 such records — as do
records of engineers’ test borings.
“We may have to drill our own wells
in some places. Then we can classify
areas according to whether thay have
permeable materials with a high
potential for contamination.”

John Shafer at the Water Survey
adds that combining geologic data
with data compiled for other pur-
poses by environmental regulators,
hydrologists, and others can reveal
those parts of the state where
dependence on susceptible aquifers
combined with high densities of in-
dustrial operations suggest a high risk
of groundwater problems. Shafer
notes that preliminary work by the
Surveys show the Rockford, Metro
East, and Peoria areas to be among
those with the highest potential for
groundwater pollution.

Referring to hydrogeologic
assessments of those metropolitan
areas plus other similar work in
Kankakee and Kane counties, Sander-
son says, “We hope to establish some
framework for understanding
regional contamination. For example,
we don't yet know what kind of net-
work we need to monitor ground-
water on a regional scale.” In addi-
tion to mapping, monitoring, and
assessment, the Surveys are required
by the new act to look specifically at
the effects pesticide use is having on
groundwater. “There's really been on-
ly a little work done in Illinois in
that area,’ Sanderson notes.

Like any regulatory scheme, the
state’s new groundwater protection
programs will only be as good as the
information used to implement them.
Sophisticated computer models have
been devised which predict the effect
of management decisions on aquifer
draw-down, for example, or simulate
the movement of contamination
plumes underground, but their suc
cess depends on how much informa
tion is available to put into them

“We're going to take a look at what
we know and what we don't know
explains Sanderson, ‘‘and how to go
about learning what we don't kn

_

RES © UU KR C ES

DIGEST

WILDLIFE

The Losing
Edge:
Woodland
Birds In
Illinois

Two hundred years ago as
much as 40 percent of the
Prairie State’s land was
covered with forests — in
the south, in the northeast,
and along its major rivers.
The pioneers arrived and
began clearing away the
forests for timber and
agriculture. As those settlers
arrived, many Illinois
species departed. Woodland
birds like the Carolina
parakeet became extinct,
while the pileated
woodpecker retreated far-
ther and farther.

Now less than 10 per-
cent of Illinois is forested,
with the only major un-
broken tracts of timber
located in the southern part
of the state in the Shawnee
National Forest. Even these
tracts are less than a few
thousand acres each. Most
of Illinois’ wooded areas
are found in woodlots scat-
tered throughout the state.

18

The Fragmented
Forest

Ornithologists have long
been worried about the fate
of those birds that breed in
Illinois in the spring and
summer and migrate to the
tropics in the winter. Their
concern originally focused
on habitat destruction in
Central and South America,
where tropical deforestation
is accelerating at a frighten-
ing pace. Further study
revealed dangers closer to
home, in the breeding
grounds of woodland birds
throughout North America.
Wildlife management
specialists once believed
that habitat heterogeneity
benefits wildlife through
the “edge effect.” These
managers tried to break up
large homogeneous patches
of forest to improve wildlife
habitat. Game animals thriv-
ed because of this practice,
since they needed a mixture
of habitats throughout the
year. In addition, studies of
forest succession showed
that bird species reached
maximum diversity in a
fragmented forest, and
many non-game species
depended upon forest edge.
Part of this effect was
thought due to an increased
local diversity of foraging

and nest sites. Evidence also
suggested that migrating
birds concentrate along
habitat edges and in disturb-
ed areas.

Over the last decade
this view of bird species
management has come in
for questioning, particularly
from those scientists study-
ing non-game animals. Two
patterns have emerged
which bolster their case.

First, the population
densities of non-game birds
are declining in small
woodlots. Many birds that
winter in the tropics, such
as warblers, tanagers,
thrushes and vireos, have
declined by as much as 90
percent in woodlands scat-
tered throughout North
America.

The second pattern
yields evidence that tropical
deforestation is not yet hav-
ing a major impact on bird
population, although this
will almost definitely be a
problem in the future. The
evidence suggests that
woodland species’ greatest
enemy is forest fragmenta-
tion in their breeding
grounds. The irony, of
course, is that forest
fragmentation is exactly
what wildlife managers are

promoting when they
manage for more forest
edge.

A Suite of Birds

Scientists like Dr. Scott
Robinson of the Illinois
Natural History Survey
(NHS) are discovering ‘that
the entire suite of birds that
one should see in a forest is
lacking in forest fragments.
The birds that are suffering
the most are’ woodland
birds, Illinois’ songbirds.
They are suffering for a
variety of reasons.

First, small habitat pat-
ches contain a dispropor-
tionate number of generalist
species, non-forest birds like
the grackle and cowbird.
These birds, which can just
as easily live in farming
areas, invade the areas of
habitat specialists like the
wood thrush and compete
with them for food or act
as predators.

Second, nest predators
which live in farms or in
the suburbs and other areas
with non-continuous forest
also thrive in woodlots at
the expense of specialized
woodland birds. These in-
clude raccoons, opossums,
and squirrels, as well as
neighborhood cats and blue
jays. The jays are a special

problem, with their
numbers increasing nation-
wide as a result of the in-
creased popularity of bird
feeders. Recent studies have
shown an astonishingly
high — up to 80 percent —
rate of nest predation in
forest birds. Nest predation
is higher along habitat
edges than in the forest in-
teriors, mostly because
many potential nest
predators favor habitat
edges.

Third, many woodland
species nesting in small
woodlots fall prey to the
brown-headed cowbird, a
brood parasite that lays its
eggs in the nests of other
species. Cowbirds parasitize
more than 200 species of
birds including about two-
thirds of Illinois’ woodland
songbirds. Some species
simply throw out any
foreign eggs deposited in
their nests, but most accept
the cowbirds’ eggs as their
own and thus lose
reproductive success.

“Sixty-five percent of
all nests we have looked at
have at least one cowbird
egg.’ relates Dr. Robinson.
“The average in Illinois is
two and one-half cowbird
eggs per nest, and some
species’ nests have been
completely parasitized.
Birds like the scarlet tanager

A wood thrush nest with 10 cowbird eggs.

have been very hard hit.
Larger woodlands offer pro-
tection from cowbirds, forc-
ing them to travel farther to
and from foraging areas.
Neotropical migrants need
large homogenous un-
broken patches of
forestland. Many game birds
need the opposite. Wildlife
managers need to look at
game and non-game
animals and take both into
account.”

New Management
Needed

In a two-year study funded
by the Army Corps of
Engineers to explore the ef-
fects of recreational and
game management on non-
game birds, Dr. Robinson
and his research team
worked to determine the
effect of edge on woodland
birds along Lake
Shelbyville. The areas of
land managed by the Army
Corps and the Illinois
Department of Conserva-
tion along the border of
the lake contain over
15,000 acres of upland
habitat, making the lake
one of the two or three
largest areas available for
wildlife management in
central Illinois. Small
woodlots and thickets

border the lake and form

-

Dr. Scott Robinson — INHS

an archipelago of small
habitat islands in a sea of
corn and soybeans.

The NHS researchers
used three methods to
measure frequency of bird
species: bird censuses,
mist-netting (a very fine
nylon mesh net six and
one-half feet tall and 40
feet long is spread across
the forest, and birds fly
without harm into bags
enmeshed in the net), and
nest monitoring.

The results confirm the
fears of many or-
nithologists. The overall
predation rate on 145 nests
located in 1985 and 1986
in the research area was
over 80 percent, a figure
twice as high as the usual
predation rate for songbird
nests. Sixty-six percent of
all nests that accept
cowbird eggs were
parasitized, one of the
highest rates ever recorded.
Most nests were, in fact,
multiply parasitized: they
averaged 2.6 cowbird eggs
and only 2.3 host eggs per
clutch.

“The wood thrush, a
bird with a very beautiful
song, presented one of the
grimmest pictures in our
study,’ Robinson states.
“Wood thrushes nest in
most woodlands, but ac-
cept cowbirds and have on-

The brown-headed
cowbird, which lays its eggs
in the nests of many of II-
linois’ songbirds.

Dr. Scott Robinson — INHS

ly one or two oppor-
tunities to breed before
they return to their winter
grounds in the tropical
forests of Central America.
In 1985 we made a con-
certed effort to find wood
thrush nests in two small
woodlots. Of the 15 such
nests located, each contain-
ed at least one cowbird
egg. One nest had 11
cowbird eggs, the world
record for this species. The
female wood thrush in-
cubated the whole clutch
and hatched only a single
cowbird. Overall, these
nests averaged 3.8
cowbirds and only 1.1
thrush eggs per nest. They
fledged 11 cowbirds but
only two wood thrush
young.”

“Given these condi-
tions, it is remarkable that
any songbirds survive
around Lake Shelbyville.
The best way to avoid the
regional loss of bird species
diversity that we are facing
may be to develop manage-
ment plans centered around
native habitat specialists like
the wood thrush. Managing
for species restricted to a
particular habitat should
help guarantee the con-
tinued existence of all the
species that depend on that
habitat. In any event, we
need to completely re-think
the management strategies
we have used over the past
forty years.”

This article is excerpted
from the work of Dr. Scott
Robinson, an ornithologist
and assistant wildlife
ecologist who joined the II-
linois Natural History
Survey in May of 1984. He
received his PhD in Biology
from Princeton University.
In addition to his work on
woodland birds in Illinois,
he has conducted extensive
research on migrant birds in
their wintering grounds in
the tropics

BIORHYTHMS

Squelching the
Squash Bug

A computer model that
simulates the growth of a
squash bug population dur-
ing a growing season has
been developed. The squash
bug is a major pest of pum-
pkins and squash in Illinois,
the leading state in produc-
tion of pumpkins for pro-
cessing. Data gathered from
three years of research into
the biology of the squash
bug was used to construct
the model. The model was
used to predict the impact
of various planting dates on
bug populations and to
determine the most efficient
timing of insecticide
applications.

Researchers Share
Information on
Migration and
Dispersal of Insects
and Other
Organisms

NHS researchers have taken
the lead in organizing a
north central regional com-
mittee to study the migra-
tion and dispersal of insects
and other biotic agents. In a
recent meeting 27 scientists
from 12 states gathered in
Chicago to share research
experiences and formulate
operating objectives. The
group is comprised of a
unique mixture of en-
tomologists and
meteorologists. The en-
tomologists are interested in
movement of arthropod
vectors of plant or human
pathogens, or of major
direct pests such as the

potato leafhopper or
various noctuid moth pests
of corn. The meteorologists
provide the integral link for
understanding the en-
vironmental forces that act
upon target pests.

A Case of Mistaken
Identity

When is a blacknose shiner
not a blacknose shiner?
When it’s in Tennessee. A
study by Dr. Lawrence Page,
ichthyologist at the NHS,
was recently conducted to
determine why the
blacknose shiner fish was
thriving in Tennessee, but
was an endangered species
in Illinois. The results of the
study showed that the Ten-
nessee population is
genetically different from
other populations and in
fact, is not even the
blacknose shiner. It is a
distinct species, similar to
and closely related to the
blacknose shiner, but it dif-
fers in a number of mor-
phological characteristics
including body shape, and
numbers of scales and gill
rakers. The Tennessee
species, now described and
named the bedrock shiner
by Dr. Page, also differs
from the blacknose shiner
in its ecological
characteristics.

The study resulted in
the recognition and naming
of a new species, and
revealed that researchers
cannot look to the Ten-
nessee population for
Management suggestions
applicable to Illinois

populations. Researchers
also learned that all of the
southern populations of the
blacknose shiner are declin-
ing and there is an even
greater urgency in protec-
ting those that remain.

Pheasants
Considered
“Homewreckers,”’
Especially by
Prairie-chickens

The threat by pheasants to
the preservation of Illinois’
remaining prairie-chickens
continues to prompt phea-
sant control on sanctuaries
in Jasper County. A suc-
cessful controlled shoot was
conducted by the Ill. Dept.
of Conservation in January
of 1987, followed by oppor-
tunistic shooting of
pheasants.

Subsequent censuses
and intensive nest studies
showed that the count of
crowing pheasant cocks was
down and the density of
pheasant nests on sanc-
tuaries also declined, while
the decline in number of
prairie-chicken cocks and
nest density was not as
great.

Despite intensive con-
trol efforts, however, the
pheasants continued their
home-wrecking ways by
depositing their eggs in
prairie-chicken nests. This
continued high level of
parasitism was due to a
reported release by local in-
dividuals of 56 hen
pheasants in early April.
Typically, the survival of
released pheasants is low,
but the released birds
evidently survived long
enough to do what
pheasants do best —
parasitize nests of their own
kind, plus those of other
species.

Six of the nine
parasitized prairie-chicken
nests in 1987 were found in
time to remove the phea-
sant eggs before the
ultimate nest fate was deter-
mined. One chicken hen
was found trying to cover
26 eggs, 15 of her own,
plus 11 pheasant eggs. This
hen, plus four others of the
six cleaned up nests, were
successful in producing
young prairie-chickens.

Presto! Chango!
Fossil Charcoal
Turns into
Manganese Dioxide

Nodules of manganese
dioxide are common in the
Franciscan Complex soils
located in the coastal areas
of California. Formation of
the nodules is usually at-
tributed to bacterial ac-
tivities or combined
hydrothermal-volcanogenic
activities. The possibility of
another alternative is being
studied by Dr. K. Robert-
son, a member of the NHS’s
section of Botany and Plant
Pathology, and Dr. D.
Johnson, from the Universi-
ty of Illinois’ Dept. of
Geography.

In soil samples contain-
ing both fossil charcoal and
manganese dioxide nodules,
the researchers, using light
microscopic and scanning
electron microscopic
techniques, have shown that
the fossil charcoal is
transformed into manganese
dioxide. Through continu-
ing research, the in-
vestigators are attempting to
identify the specific pro-
cesses responsible for the
transformation.

NHS Pathologists
Find the Cause of a
Leaf-Spotting
Disease

The fungus that causes a
leaf-spottng disease that
results in annual severe
defoliation of red and
yellow-twig dogwood
shrubs has been identified
by NHS plant pathologists.
Mycological and biological
studies of the disease and
its causal organism were
conducted from 1985
through 1987 by Dr. D.
Neely and graduate student
D. Nolte.

The causal fungus has
been identified as Septoria
cornicola. The disease is
first noticed in June. By July
most of the leaves are af-
fected and in August, the
leaves drop from diseased
shrubs. The outer canopy
leaves are affected first and
most severely.

The disease can be
controlled by fungicide
application.

Personnel Notes

Dr. Frank Bellrose, prin-
cipal scientist at the Natural
History Survey, recently
celebrated 50 years of ser-
vice. On February 1, 1988,
the NHS held a reception to

CURRENTS

Acid Rain Effects
Overestimated

Effects of acid rain on the
environment have been
overestimated, according to
Edward Krug, Water Survey
researcher. “In fact,’ said
Krug, “the very soil said to
be tainted with high levels
of acid from acid rain ac-

recognize Bellrose’s record.
Although semi-retired as of
August 31, 1982, Bellrose
continues to work on a
part-time basis to complete
several of his long-term
research projects, especially
a book based on nearly 50
years of research on the
wood duck.

What Do You Call It
When Feathered
Friends Get
Together?

A bank of swan.

A bunch of widgeon.

A brood of grouse.

A bevy of quail.

A band of jays.

A coil or spring of teal.

A covey of partridge.

A crowd of redwings.

A fall of woodcock.

A fleet of coots (mudhens).
A flight of plover.

A gaggle of geese.

A paddling of mallard.

A rafter of turkeys.

A sedge of herons.

A tribe of sparrows.

A whisp of snipe.

tually produces its own acid
during natural soil forma-
tion. The results of this
natural soil formation are
those attributed to acid

rain: leaching of nutrients,
release of aluminum, and
acidification of soil and
water.’

Krug maintains that
data are often interpreted
and presented in such a way
as to Overestimate the ef-
fects of acid rain on the en-
vironment. Of the 1,620
lakes in the eastern United
States that were examined
by the Environmental Pro-
tection Agency to determine
how widespread the pro-
blem of lake acidification is,
only 75 were found to be
acidic (pH less than 5). This
is a surprisingly low percen-
tage, according to Krug,
especially considering that
only the areas most likely to
have acidic lakes — such as
the Adirondacks in nor-
theastern New York State —
were studied.

Krug believes that
when proposed federal acid
rain legislation requiring
reductions in emissions of
acid-forming sulfur is being
considered, the extent of
acidification of soils and
water due to natural causes
must be taken into account.

Oil Spill not Detec-
table in Illinois

Diesel fuel from a January
tank collapse at Jefferson,
Pennsylvania, was not
detectable in water samples
taken from the Ohio River
in southern Illinois at the
beginning of February.

After the tank collapsed
on January 2, one million
gallons of fuel oil spilled in-
to storm sewers and even-
tually entered the
Monongahela River, and
then the Ohio River.

By January 20, officials
were having difficulty
visually tracking the spill.
They lost track of it
upstream of Illinois, but
predicted that it would
reach the state by February 1.

From January 31
through February 3, Water
Survey hydrologists col-

lected water samples from
the Ohio River at
Shawneetown. Lab analyses
showed no indication of
elevated levels of
naphthalene, a component
of the fuel oil.

“We couldn't collect
samples after February 3
because of rising water
levels.” said William Bogner,
hydrologist. “Traces of the
oil may have arrived later.
In any case, the oil would
no doubt have been too
diluted to detect. Before
reaching Illinois, the spill
traveled 850 miles and pass-
ed through 20 locks and
dams.”

Stabilizing the Bluffs

One of the major causes of
sediment buildup in Peoria
Lake is severe erosion of the
bluffs bordering the Illinois
River. A new state-funded
project is aimed at stabiliz-
ing these rapidly eroding
bluffs with low-cost
methods.

“Several types of
stabilizing techniques are
being used,” said Don
Roseboom, head of the
Water Survey's monitoring
effort. “These techniques
rely heavily on manpower
and low-cost materials.
They include strategically
placed railroad ties, rock,
used tires, and gabion
baskets.’ Gabion baskets are
wire cages Containing rocks.

The test structures
were designed by Owne In-
gram, a retired Soil Conser-
vation Service district
conservationist.

Volunteers affiliated
with Project Chance, ad-
ministered by the Illinois
Department of Public Aid,
installed the structures. Pro
ject Chance gives in-
dividuals an opportunity to

develop work skills and ob-
tain experience to help
them re-enter the labor
force in their area.

Vegetation also will be
used to control erosion.
Thick, well-rooted vegeta-
tion such as willows,
sycamores, perennial
grasses, and legumes will be
planted.

Water Survey staff
members conducted an in-
itial survey of the bluff
areas before the stabilization
work began. In another
three to four years another
survey of the area will be
done to determine the ef-
fect of the various stabiliza-
tion techniques on the ero-
sion of the bluffs.

Keeping Their Eyes
on the Skies

Nearly 175 National
Weather Service cooperative
weather observers located
throughout the state pro-
vide a valuable public ser-
vice by faithfully recording
daily weather conditions.

CENTERING ON WASTE

Incentives Offered
To Illinois
Businesses And
Others For Reducing
Hazardous Wastes

The Governor’s Innovative
Waste Reduction Awards
and the Recycling and
Reduction Technologies
(RRT) Matching Funds Pro-
gram are two of the most
vital components of the
Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center’s
waste reduction program.
The latter is a program that
awards matching funds to
industries for developing
methods that reduce or
recycle hazardous wastes.

N
No

The observers, all train-
ed and certified by the Na-
tional Weather Service, are
farmers, government
employees, retired persons,
lock and dam workers, and
other Illinois residents who
represent many occupa-
tions. “Thanks to weather
observers, we have good
quality, dense weather
records for Illinois since
about 1900,” says Water
Survey climatologist Wayne
Wendland, who is also the
Illinois State climatologist.
Wendland’s repository of
information on Illinois
weather dates back to the
1880s, but “when we con-
sider modern records and
our Own experience, we see
that some early reports are
not believable.’ Wendland
uses the weather data from
observers to help answer
questions and interpret
weather data. He also
prepares a monthy weather
summary based on the
observers’ reports.

The Governor’s Awards are
presented to industries that
have already incorporated
waste reduction
technologies into their pro-
duction facilities and have
significantly reduced the
amount of hazardous waste
they generate.

HWRIC is currently
soliciting applications for
both the 1988 Governor’s
Awards and the FY’89 RRT
Matching Funds Program.
Interested persons and com-
panies are encouraged to
apply as soon as possible.

The goal of these pro-
grams is to encourage waste
reduction, according to
HWRIC Director David L.
Thomas.

“Both of these pro-
grams are aimed at en-
couraging companies to
reduce their waste. And
both are providing the state
with information on cur-
rent and new waste reduc-
tion practices; this informa-
tion will in turn be
disseminated to others in
the state to encourage them
to do likewise,’ Thomas
said.

Recycling, Reduction,
and Technologies Mat-
ching Funds Program

The Center’s RRT matching
funds can help Illinois in-
dustries improve or develop
their own waste reduction
or recycling technologies.
These funds are awarded to
industries and other
generators of hazardous
wastes, such as hospitals
and laboratories; engineer-
ing consultants; and private
and public research institu-
tions. In the past HWRIC
has funded projects up to
$20,000 each and has
allocated a total of $100,000
a year for these projects. In
Fiscal Year 1989, HWRIC
will consider proposals for
projects up to $50,000
each. The matching fund
program emphasizes ap-
plied, practical research.

“Our goal is to end up
with a product that
businesses can use in their
own production processes,’
says HWRIC Industrial
Assistance Engineer Dan
Kraybill.

“For example, Bill
Smith Inc. (BSI), a Cham-
paign consulting firm, has
made modifications to a
small still purchased by an
analytical laboratory for
distilling solvents. The
modifications permit the
recovery of technical-grade
solvents for use in

laboratory analyses. By

distilling these solvents, the

lab can reduce the amount
of hazardous wastes it pro-
duces; this in turn saves the
lab high hazardous waste
disposal fees. In addition,
the lab saves money by
reducing the amount of
new solvent it must buy,
he said.

The BSI project is just
one example of the types of
research that may be con-
ducted using these funds.
Other eligible projects in-
clude those that:
¢ detoxify hazardous

wastes;

¢ reclaim hazardous wastes
on or Off site;

¢ recycle hazardous wastes
on or Off site;

* minimize the amount of
hazardous waste
generated through pro-
cess modification or im-
proved housekeeping; or
achieve a high degree of
innovation in hazardous
waste treatment.

:

1988 Governor’s In-
novative Waste Reduc-
tion Awards

This is the third year that
the Governor's Awards will
be presented. These awards
were created to recognize
the efforts Illinois industries
and others are making to
minimize the volume of
hazardous wastes they
generate,” Thomas said.
“They also encourage II-
linois industries, both large
and small, to develop and
use new waste reduction
technologies or improve ex-
isting methods.”

Those who would like
more information about
either of these programs or
who have questions about
applying for the awards or
the grants, are encouraged
to call HWRIC at
217/333-8940.

Contamination
Found in Chicago-
Area Waters

According to two studies
recently released by
HWRIC, Lake Calumet in
Cook County and
Waukegan Harbor in Lake
County are contaminated
from past industrial activity
with chemicals toxic to
various microorganisms.

The area in and around
Lake Calumet has become a
“severely disturbed
ecosystem” and could pre-
sent a danger to the sur-
rounding environment, ac-
cording to one report.
Researchers in this multi-
disciplinary study found
that concentrations of toxic
metals and organic
pollutants were higher in
Lake Calumet than in near-
by water bodies, and sedi-
ment extracts collected at
lake sampling stations were
found to be toxic to
organisms similar to those
found in the lake.

Waukegan Harbor, one
of Illinois’ most important
Lake Michigan ports, is con-
taminated with PCBs
(polychlorinated biphenyls)
and its contaminated
sediments are toxic enough
to pose a potential threat to
the harbor’s ecosystem, ac-
cording to researchers in
the HWRIC-sponsored
study. But this study, head-
ed by Dr. Philippe Ross of
the Illinois Natural History
Survey (INHS), has also
revealed that PCBs may not
be the only source of toxic
contamination in the harbor
— a number of complex
factors may be causing the
toxicity.

Further studies on
Waukegan Harbor and Lake
Calumet are being planned
by HWRIC.

“The results of these
studies will give us a much
more complete picture of
the effects of the con-
tamination in Waukegan
Harbor and Lake Calumet
and will therefore be of
value for making decisions
about cleaning up these
areas in the future’’ HWRIC
Director Dr. David L.
Thomas said.

Copies of these two
reports, “Assessment of the
Ecotoxicological Hazard of
Sediments in Waukegan
Harbor” (HWRIC RR 018)
and “‘A Preliminary En-
vironmental Assessment of
the Contamination
Associated with Lake
Calumet, Cook County, II-
linois” (HWRIC RRO19) can
be obtained by calling
HWRIC at 217/333-8940.

Ground Breaking
For Hazardous
Materials Laboratory
Set for May 1988

Ground breaking for ENR’s
state-of-the-art Hazardous
Materials Laboratory (HML),
which will house the Hazar-
dous Waste Research and
Information Center, is
scheduled for late May 1988
on the Champaign campus
of the University of Illinois.
The new laboratory,
which should be completed
in the fall of 1989, will pro-
vide facilities where Illinois

GEOGRAMS

Map Series 60 Years
in the Making!

Initial completion of
7.5-minute, 1:24,000-scale
U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS) map coverage of
Illinois, a milestone in map-
ping, was celebrated on
March 11 in Springfield.

researchers, scientists, and
engineers can safely study
and handle hazardous
materials and wastes.

The importance of the
HML will eventually extend
beyond Illinois’ borders, ac-
cording to HWRIC Director
Dr. David L. Thomas.

“The lab will focus on
Illinois and regional issues,
but many of these will
apply at the national level
as well. The federal govern-
ment is attempting to work
more cooperatively with
the states, and there is a
possibility that the U.S. En-
vironmental Protection
Agency will use the
laboratory and provide
some funding in the future,’
Thomas said.

Work carried out in the
lab will benefit a broad
spectrum of Illinois’
citizens, says HML Manager
Marvin D. Piwoni.

“The motivation for
constructing the HML is to
provide a research facility in
which the state’s various
public- and private-sector
research groups can work to
solve the crucial problems
of hazardous waste con-
tamination and waste reduc-
tion. This will ultimately
improve both the environ-
ment and the quality of life
for Illinois citizens,’ he
said.

Twenty-four recently
published topographic maps
of an area in east-central
Illinois round out the
1,071-map series, which
began in 1928, asa
cooperative effort of the
Illinois State Geological
Survey (IGS) and the U.S.

Geological Survey.

“Such detailed, ac-
curate, up-to-date maps are
essential tools for planning
and managing the state’s
economic and natural
resource base,” said Lowell
E. Starr, Reston, Va., chief
of the U.S. National Map-
ping Division. The maps
will be revised as required
to document changes in
uses of land and in
topography, or to meet
changing requirements of
resource planners and
managers. Approximately
$100,000 a year will be re-
quired from the State of Il-
linois for the topographic
map maintenance program.

Copies of the Illinois
maps can be purchased
from the Illinois State
Geological Survey, 615 E.
Peabody Dr., Champaign, IL
61820 or 217/333-4747 and
from other map dealers in
Illinois. To obtain a
topographic map index,
free of charge, call or write
the Geological Survey,
which will send an order
form price list along with
the index.

Research Presented
at International
Conclave

Research efforts on the
“Abundance and Origin of
Major Minerals in the Her-
rin Coal of the Illinois
Basin’”” show that the greater
portion of minerals appear
to be derived from the
original plants from which
the coal was made. The
absence of characteristics
and properties typically
found in river-deposited
sands and muds led to this
conclusion, according to
Dr. Richard D. Harvey,
senior geologist in the coal
section of the Illinois
Geological Survey.

Harvey shared his find-
ings and those of his col-
leagues Drs. Ilham Demir
and Chen-Lin Chou, also
IGS geologists, at a
technical session during the
international conference on
the Mineral Matter in Coal
Ash.

The Survey’s research
focused on the quantity of
various minerals in Illinois’
principal coal seam and
how concentrations of cer-
tain deleterious elements
can be predicted in areas of
the state. Using many
samples, IGS researchers
sought the geological
reasons for mineral occur-
rences on a regional basis
and looked for distribution
patterns as well.

Damage to Chicago’s
Shoreline Assessed

The record-high water in
Lake Michigan in the spring
of 1987 created heavy
demands at the Geological
Survey for information
about shore protection
measures and other aspects
of the geology of the Lake
Michigan shoreline. A U.S.
Geological Survey/Ilinois
Geological Survey
cooperative pilot study dur-
ing the fall of 1987, using
side-scan sonar devices
aboard the USGS’ research
vessel R/V NEECHO showed
significant undermining and
other hidden damage to
shore protection structures
in the Chicago region.

The IGS has reported
to the Chicago Shoreline
Protection Commission
that, of the 25 miles of
shoreline in the Chicago
region, 11 miles of shore
protection structures are so
severely damaged that they

require immediate remedial
action to prevent severe
damage to shore structures,
and five more miles of
structures will require
reconstruction in the near
future to prevent further
destruction and undermin-
ing. More than nine miles
of beach should be rebuilt
through replenishment of
sediments, and at least three
miles of new breakwaters
should be constructed.
Although the remainder of
the 63 miles of Lake
Michigan shoreline in
Illinois is fairly well pro-
tected, the shoreline
damage inventory showed
that a total of approximately
one more mile of rehabilita-
tion work should be added
to each of the damage
assessment categories to
properly protect the entire
Lake Michigan shoreline in
Illinois.

Personnel Notes

Dr. Robert A. Griffin,
Ph.D., has been named
principal chemist and head
of the Chemistry and
Minerals Engineering Group
at the Illinois Geological
Survey (IGS). In that posi-
tion, he succeeds Dr. Neil
FE. Shimp, Ph.D., who
retired after 30 years of
service.

Griffin, who most
recently was geochemist
and head of the Ground-
water Section at the IGS,
received B.S. and M.S.
degrees in soil science from
the University of California
at Davis and a Ph.D. in soil
chemistry from Utah State
University at Logan. Joining
the Survey in 1973 asa
research associate, Dr. Grif-

fin was named associate
geochemist three years later.
In 1978, he was promoted
to geochemist and head of
the Geochemistry Section.
Dr. Shimp, who joined
the IGS as an analytical
chemist in 1957, received
his master’s from Michigan
State and his doctorate in
soil chemistry from Rutgers
University. He was named
head of the Analytical
Chemistry Section in 1963.
Among his ac-
complishments, the recent
retiree planned for and in-
stalled the first generation
of instrument-trained
chemists and their equip-
ment. Ten years later, he
was named head of the
Chemistry and Minerals
Engineering Group. Con-
vinced that successful
laboratory research often
dies for lack of adequate
engineering and process
development, he worked
toward expanding the
Survey’s applied research

capabilities to enable the
IGS to carry out small-scale
demonstration projects.

Shimp supervised the
establishment of the
Geological Survey’s first en-
vironmental chemistry
laboratory and maintained a
strong interest in research
on the accumulation and
distribution of potentially
hazardous trace elements.
He was actively involved
with coal research and
played a leading role in the
Survey’s cooperative efforts
with the American Society
for Testing and Materials
and the International Stan-
dards Organization to
establish quality standards
for coal. Dr. Shimp was in-
strumental in establishing
the Center for Research on
Sulfur in Coal, a
cooperative research center,
and served as its first (ac-
ting) director in 1982.

SHORT TAKES

SSC Representatives
Visit Illinois’
Proposed Site
Superconducting Super Col-
lider representatives from
the U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE), and its con-
tractors completed a visit in
March to Illinois’ proposed
site as part of their work in
preparing an Environmental
Impact Statement. More
than 30 DOE staff and con-
tractors spent a week learn-
ing about the state and in-
dependently gathering in-
formation about the Kane,
DuPage and Kendall coun-
ties area where the SSC
would be located.

DOE is visiting each
state listed as best qualified
for siting the SSC: Illinois,
Arizona, Colorado,
Michigan, North Carolina,
Tennessee and Texas. An-
nouncement of the
preliminary site for the SSC
is expected from DOE in
November 1988, with final
confirmation in January
1989. Construction is ex-
pected to be complete in
1995.

The SSC is a particle
accelerator to be built in a
10-foot diameter, 53-mile
racetrack-like tunnel. If the
SSC is built in Illinois, it

would be located in
bedrock about 400 feet
beneath Kane, DuPage and a
small portion of Kendall
counties, and would be bas-
ed at Fermilab near Batavia.
The $4.4 billion project
would accelerate particles
of matter to nearly the
speed of light and force col-
lisions with an energy of 40
trillion electron volts. Scien-
tists would study the fun-
damental nature of matter
and energy through obser-
vation of the subatomic par-
ticles created by the
collisions.

=O)CE

Site Near
Martinsville
Undergoes Suitabil-
ity Studies for a LLW
Disposal Facility

The Illinois Department of
Nuclear Safety (IDNS) an-
nounced it will begin
Studies to determine if a site
near Martinsville in Clark
County is suitable for a low-
level radioactive waste
(LLW) disposal facility. Sup-
port for establishing the
facility in that portion of
Clark County has gradually
increased, as four
townships and two school
boards in the Martinsville
Vicinity joined the village
board in passing favorable
resolutions. The decision to
undertake suitability
studies, which are expected
to take about 18 months,
followed successful
preliminary tests of three
potential sites near Mar-
tinsville. A decision on
whether the Martinsville
Site is suitable for Illinois’
planned LLW disposal facili-

ty is expected by late 1989.

Illinois, which joined
Kentucky to form the Cen-
tral Midwest Interstate LLW
Compact, is required to
have a new disposal facility
in operation by 1993, when
the country’s three existing
facilities will no longer be
accessible to LLW generators
in the two states.

Standards for the facili-
ty’s operation call for no
additional radioactivity to
be released into the en-
vironment. IDNS Director
Terry Lash said these rules
are the “most stringent of
their kind promulgated by
any government agency in
the country.”

Prairie Volunteers
Celebrate 10 Years of
Hard Work

The North Branch Prairie
Project, the first volunteer
prairie management group,
celebrates its ten year an-
niversary this spring. Since
its inception the group has
restored and managed more
than 150 acres. Their exam-
ple has also fostered an in-
fovative partnership bet-
ween The Nature Conser-
vancy and the Nature
Preserves Commission call-
ed the Volunteer Steward-
ship Network. The Network
consists of 400 volunteers
that manage 88 nature
preserves in the six-county
Chicago area. This diverse
group works outdoors year
round monitoring and
maintaining the wildlife in
the preserves, educating
their communities about
the importance of natural
areas and lobbying local
government for protection
of local natural areas.

Hazardous Waste
Cleanup in Chicago
Warehouse

Cleanup operations are
underway inside a
warehouse located at 5800
South Throop Street in
Chicago to remove aban-
doned hazardous waste.
More than 700 55-gallon
drums, containing assorted
hazardous materials, are
packed inside the
warehouse which is located
in a residential
neighborhood across the
street from the Arnold W.
Bontemps elementary
school. The cleanup is ex-
pected to last several
months and will cost ap-
proximately $350,000.

The Illinois En-
vironmental Protection
Agency sealed the building
on June 24, 1987 after the
Chicago Department of En-
vironmental Control
discovered the unsecured
warehouse full of abandon-
ed waste. Since the
discovery, several agencies
have become involved with
the cleanup including: the
Chicago Board of Educa-
tion, the Metropolitan
Sanitary District, the
Chicago Department of
Public Health and the
Chicago Department of
Environmental Control.

Unravelling the
Mystery of Illinois
Savanna

Savanna, grasslands with
scattered trees, once
covered northeastern
Illinois and much of the
Midwest. But the names
Downers Grove, Elk Grove
and Long Grove may be all
that is left of this native II-
linois landscape. If some
savanna still exists today, we
may not know it because

researchers are just now
learning what it looks like
Prairie volunteers have
found that savanna is not
just prairie with interspers-
ed trees, but a distinctive
ecosystem. The mysterious
savanna is being pieced
together with the help of
the notes of Doctor Mead
from Hancock County, writ-
ten in 1846. He left a
description of savanna that
can now be deciphered. His
findings have confirmed the
description recently
developed by ecologists.
Little by little a vision
of native northeastern II-
linois is becoming clear.
Through intensive ex-
perimental management
work, the rarest of our
grassland types may be
brought back from oblivion.

Funding Available to
Research Illinois
Coal

More than $2 million is
available this year for
research on the scientific
properties of Illinois’ high
sulfur coal. Money for the
research program, now in
its seventh year, is provided
by the Illinois Department
of Energy and Natural
Resources through its Office
of Coal Development and
Marketing (OCDM).

Research categories in-
clude coal cleaning, com-
bustion, fuels and chemicals
derived from coal, coal
characterization, related
desulfurization studies and
gas cleanup.

John Mead, OCDM
director, said increasing the
base knowledge of coal
stimulates process and
engineering developments
that are based on research
findings.

Last year, 27 research
projects were funded
through a similar allocation

Joint Environmental
Investigation in
Atlanta

Occidental Chemical Cor-
poration in Atlanta, and the
Illinois Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (IEPA) have
reached an agreement on
work to be conducted in an

environmental investigation.

From 1962 to 1977, the
company (formerly known
as Diamond Shamrock Cor-
poration) owned and
operated a pesticide and
fertilizer plant in Atlanta
where pesticides containing
heptachlor, chlordane and
aldrin were formulated.
Occidental has agreed
to perform several tasks in-
cluding (1) an investigation
of soil, sediment, surface
water, and groundwater at
select locations throughout
Atlanta to determine if they
contain pesticides for-
mulated at the plant from
1962 to 1977, breakdown
products of these
pesticides, and/or solvents
which acted as carriers for
the pesticides; (2) a deter-
mination of the nature and
extent of contamination; (3)
an assessment of the risk
that detected contaminants
may pose to the citizens in
Atlanta and the environ-
ment and; (4) if needed, an
evaluation of alternatives to
minimize human exposure
to excess levels of these
substances found in the
soil, water and sediment.
The IEPA will oversee all
work conducted by Oc-
cidental to verify that it
meets strict criteria and that
the data collected are valid.
In 1986, the IEPA con-
ducted soil, bird, and
garden produce sampling
within a three-block radius

of the former Diamond
Shamrock facility in Atlanta.
The results indicated the
need for more sampling of
certain substances to deter-
mine potential long-term
risks. From information
gathered thus far, these con-
centrations do not appear
to present a significant risk
for short-term exposure.

IEPA Launches
Agency Recycling
Program

The Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency launched
an in-house recycling pro-
gram in February that en-
courages Agency employees
to recycle waste which is
generated at work and at
home. A limited recycling
program had been in place
since the 1970’s. Now IEPA
recycles aluminum,
newsprint, cardboard, com-
puter paper and all types of
office paper. The IEPA’s goal
is to recycle two-thirds of
all waste paper. Eventually,
the Agency hopes to in-
clude the collection of glass
and plastic for recycling.

The Solid Waste
Management Act, approved
by Gov. Thompson in 1986,
is intended to reduce
reliance on land disposal
and promote the develop-
ment of disposal alter-
natives. Recycling is one
such alternative and the
market has developed over
the past two years to the
extent that recycling is both
feasible and profitable.

Other state agencies
and organizations are en-
couraged to adopt similar
recycling programs. If
organizations would like
IEPA’s assistance in
establishing or expanding a
recycling program they can
contact the IEPA’s Office of
Public Information at (217)
782-5562.

The Soil Erosion
Battle

Every year in Illinois 200
million tons of soil are lost
from 32 million acres of
rural land (any land outside
of urban areas excluding
bodies of water), according
to the Illinois Department
of Agriculture. That breaks
down to about 6.3 tons of
soil lost per acre each year.
The numbers sound dismal.
However, progress is made
in soil conservation every
year. Illinois is a leader in
overall conservation tillage,
and ranks number one in
“no till” practices.

Natural Lands Not
Enough to Save
Native Wildlife: Look
to Illinoisans for
Help

Large parks and refuges are
not working to preserve
native birds and mammals
in Illinois or throughout the
United States, according to
Dr. Larry Harris, University
of Florida. ““We are ap-
proaching a ‘silent spring.”
Harris said that 20
years ago there were 20,000
species of birds in the
world. Only 9,000 species
exist today. In Illinois, 23
nongame wildlife species
are threatened with extinc-
tion while 58 species are

endangered including the
bald eagle, the great egret
and the lake sturgeon
whose numbers have
seriously decreased. Harris
pointed to the fragmenta-
tion of wildlife habitat as
the reason large mammals
and native migratory birds
are on the decline.

“We need to develop
wildlife easements to link
isolated natural areas for
migratory species.” Harris
advocates the development
of streamside buffers, grass
waterways and vegetated
fencerows in agricultural
areas. ‘“These things are
good for agriculture, too,”
he said.

Such protection takes
money. State researchers
look to Illinoisans to help
wildlife by donating up to
$10 of their state income
tax return by checking line
11a on Illinois income tax
forms. Money raised
through the Nongame
Wildlife Conservation Fund
Checkoff is used to restore
habitat and manage en-
dangered species.

In 1987, Illinoisans
contributed $199,000 to
save wildlife through the _
program. Funds have been
used in the past for more
than 120 projects including
such diverse subjects as
wetland and grassland
restoration, bluebird re-
establishment, Bald Eagle
Appreciation Days and the
re-establishment of
peregrine falcons in
Chicago.

In addition, individual
donations may be made to
the Fund by sending checks
to the Nongame Wildlife
Conservation Fund, Ill.
Dept. of Conservation,
Division of Natural
Heritage, 600 N. Grand Ave.
West, Suite 4, Springfield,
IL 62700.

——

Listening for the
Song of the Frog

For several years the Illinois
Department of Conserva-
tion (DOC) has conducted a
survey of frogs and toads by
having volunteers make a
circuit of stops on spring
evenings to listen for the
familiar croaks sounded by
males during the mating
season.

“A decline in frog
populations is a first-line
warning of environmental
degradation, like pesticide
runoff in rural streams,’ ac-
cording to Carl Becker,
DOC’s Natural Heritage
Division chief. “By paying
attention to frogs and toads
we can tell when our en-
vironment may become
compromised.”

According to Becker,
frog and toad calls are very
distinctive. The cricket frog
is only 1% inches as an
adult but has one of the
loudest calls of the 20 or so
species in Illinois.

The bull frog has a very
long, slow croak, and the
spring peeper of northern
Illinois sounds like its
name. One frog is even call-
ed the chorus frog. It oc-
curs only in the Midwest
and is a threatened species
in Illinois.

In addition, some frogs
have very fancy markings
like the leopard frog. The
green tree frog is a beautiful
color. It is distinguished by
toes that look like suction
cups used to grip tree
branches.

Toads are a little dif-
ferent from frogs in their
habitat requirements. They
can live on land and are
often found in gardens, but
like frogs, they need to
deposit their eggs in a
watery environment.

Frog surveys started
March 15 and end in June.

Eagle Count Soars to
1016

A midwinter survey
counted 1016 bald eagles in
Illinos, according to the II-
linois Department of Con-
servation. The bird count
included 659 adult bald
eagles, 342 immature birds
and 15 eagles of unknown
age. One adult golden eagle
was seen at Crab Orchard
National Wildlife Refuge in
southern Illinois.

The survey provides a
good estimate of the
number of bald eagles
wintering in the state. The
same sites are checked
every year and aerial checks
are made by the Illinois
Natural History Survey.

Bald eagles are a state
and federally endangered
species due primarily to
habitat loss and past use of
pesticides. However, since
the ban against DDT use in
1972, eagle populations
have been recovering and
the birds winter in large
numbers in Illinois every
year.

The majority of eagles,
or 54 percent, were observ-
ed along the Mississippi
River. The survey shows
how important the river is
to eagles. The unfrozen
waters at locks and dams
near Keokuk and Rock
Island provide feeding
grounds all winter.

The greatest concentra-
tion of eagles was in an area
north of the Quad Cities
and the Chautauqua Na-
tional Wildlife Refuge. In
addition, 23 bald eagles
were counted at Crab Or-
chard National Wildlife
Refuge, 24 on the Ohio
River at Pulaski County, and
15 on the downstream por-

tion of the Kaskaskia River.
Another 24 eagles were
counted on refuges, lakes
and reservoirs in the state.

Building Illinois’
Mussel

A proposal to establish
seven sanctuaries along the
Mississippi River for certain
species of commercially
harvested freshwater mussel
populations in 1982 and
1985 prompted a study by
the Illinois Natural History
Survey, which showed that
34 percent of all the
mussels collected in 1983
and 12 percent of those col-
lected in 1985 died without
a known cause and that
sanctuaries are needed for
further study.

The sanctuary beds
could serve as a source of
seed populations for the
commercially harvested
mussel populations, Carl
Becker, Department of Con-
servation Natural Heritage
Division chief, said. “To
protect both the health of
our aquatic environments
and our commercial mussel-
ing industry, it is essential
to determine the cause of
major mussel losses.”

Becker added that a healthy
mussel population is often
indicative of the general
health of other aquatic
species, as well as commer-
cial fish species, and the
quality of our rivers and
streams.

Since the 1950's
freshwater mussels have
been harvested from the
Mississippi drainage for use
in the cultured pearl in-
dustry in Japan. Prices for
the shells climbed in 1984
stimulating exceptionally
heavy harvesting with com-
mercial shellers coming
from as far away as Texas
and Oklahoma, according
to study findings.

Also, the discovery of
pearls of exceptional value
in Wisconsin and near Graf-
ton, Illinois, caused many
shellers to open every
mussel instead of returning
undersized individuals back
to the rivers. These events
may not have been directly
responsible for the die-offs,
said Becker, but may have
indirectly weakened the
population to withstand
other impacts.

Mussel sanctuaries are
proposed along the
Mississippi at the following
locations: above Lock and
Dam 12; at Sylvan Slough
from the I-74 highway
bridge west to the lower tip
of Arsenal Island; an area
north of New Boston boat
launching ramp; at Pon-
toosuc Bay; an area at the
mouth of the Des Moines
River to the U.S. Route 136
bridge; upstream from Han-
nibal, Missouri; and near
Hasting’s Landing and West
Point Landing boat ramp.

Notice Sent to Public
Water Supply
Customers

Every public water supply
customer can expect to
receive notice of the
dangers posed by lead in
drinking water. The Safe
Drinking Water Act amend-
ments of 1986 require every
public water supply in the
United States to distribute
such notification by June
19, 1988, whether or not
the supply has ever exceed-
ed the federal lead standard,
currently set at 50 parts per
billion (ppb).

Suppliers may notify
customers by one of two
methods. Hand delivered or
mailed notices are to be
delivered once; newspaper
notices must be published
for three consecutive
months, starting no later
than June 19.

No public water supply
in Illinois distributes water
which exceeds the lead
standards when it leaves the
treatment plant, according
to Richard J. Carlson, direc-
tor of the Illinois En-
vironmental Protection
Agency. Lead contamination
can occur when water
stands for a period of time
in plumbing systems which
contain lead, Carlson said.
The primary preventive
measure is to allow water to
run for a short time to flush
the plumbing system, if
water has not been run for
several hours (overnight, on
weekends or during holiday
periods).

Lead is found in food,
dust and soil, as well as
drinking water, and can be
inhaled from the air. When

ingested it can cause
physical damage. Sensitivity
levels vary. Persons con-
cerned about lead levels in
their drinking water can
have samples tested by
qualified labs. Fees range
from $20 to $100. To help
users understand the pro-
blems, the IEPA has
prepared a booklet, ‘‘Illinois
Drinking Water and Lead”,
which is available from the
IEPA, 2200 Churchill Rd,
P.O. Box 19276, Springfield,
IL 62794-9276. The booklet
also lists labs which have
been certified as competent
to test for lead.

Recycling Direc-
tories Available

The latest information on
recycling markets is
available in two directories
recently published by the II-
linois Department of Energy
and Natural Resources
(ENR).

The Directory of Il-
linois Recycling Centers is
designed to help consumers
locate recycling collection
centers. Both a Chicago area
edition and a down-state
edition are available. The
second publication, The II-
linois Recycled Materials
Market Directory, is a guide
for recyclers who want in-

formation on companies
that buy recyclables.

Both directories in-
clude markets for aluminum
and steel cans, glass, motor
oil, paper and plastic.
Businesses accepting scrap
metal and tires are also in-
cluded in the directory for
consumers.

Recycling can conserve

a lot of landfill space since
about 50 percent of
municipal household trash
has the potential to be
recycled.

Call ENR’s Information
Clearinghouse at
1-800-252-8955 to receive
one of the free directories.

TRANSITIONS

IEPA Director
Resigns

Governor James R. Thomp-
son has announced the
resignation of Dr. Richard J.
Carlson, director of the
Illinois Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (IEPA).
Carlson, who had the
longest tenure of any IEPA
director, resigned to form
an environmental con-
sulting firm based in
Chicago. The resignation
was effective May 3.

“Rich’s leadership
helped enact a strong
groundwater protection
plan and establish the Ad-
ministration’s Clean Illinois
program, a very ambitious
abandoned hazardous waste
cleanup program,” Gover-
nor Thompson said. ‘And
his tenure also will be
remembered for improved
enforcement of solid and
hazardous waste
regulations.”

Dr. Richard J. Carlson

Prior to his appoint-
ment as IEPA director,
Carlson served as the
Governor’s advisor for En-
vironment and Natural
Resources, and Government
Reorganization from 1977
to 1981.

Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley

Chairman, Society for the Surveys
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton

Vice-Chairman, Society for the Surveys

Ottawa Silica Company Foundation
Ottawa

Walter E. Hanson

‘Treasurer, Society for the Surveys
‘Founder, Hanson Engineers, Inc.
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals Company
‘Hinsdale

‘Henry N. Barkhausen
Jonesboro

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie
Bloomington

Clayton Gaylord
Ingersoll Milling Machine Company
Rockford

Ralph E. Grim
Professor Emeritus/Geology
University of Illinois
Urbana

Richard C. Hartnack
: The First National Bank of Chicago
| Chicago

John Homeier
Bi-Petro
Springfield

Richard A. Lenon

International Minerals & Chemicals
Corporation

Northbrook

Richard A. Lumpkin

Illinois Consolidated Telephone
Company

Mattoon

Albert Pyott
| Director, Nature Conservancy
Winnetka

John Rednour
R. & H. Construction
DuQuoin

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

William L. Rutherford
Forest Park Foundation
Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
Coffield, Ungaretti, Harris & Slavin
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.
J.R. Short Milling Company
Chicago

Joseph Spivey
Illinois Coal Association
Springfield

Harold B. Steele
Green Prairie Products, Inc.
Princeton

Susan Stone
Champaign

Warren Trask
A.E. Staley
Decatur

Leo Whalen
Whistling Wings
Hanover

Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director

Estie Karpman
Assistant Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Illinois Scientific Surveys

Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

The Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys
Scale of Contributions

Personal Memberships

Founding $1,000 per year
Contributing 100 per year
Family 50 per year
Individual 25 per year
Corporate/Business
Memberships
Founding $10,000 per year
Benefactor 5,000 per year
Associate 1,000 per year
Sponsor 500 per year
Patron 250 per year

Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys Non-Profit Org.
607 East Peabody Drive US. Postage Paid
Champaign, IL 61820 Springfield, IL
Permit No. 453

CARLA HEISTER 62L340
NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY LIBRARY #02918
196 NATURAL RESOURCES BLOG

607 E£ PEABODY DR

CHAMPAIGN IL 61820

MEMBERSHIP FORM
Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

(1) Yes, I want to become a member of the
Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys. A
check made out to the Society for the Illinois
Scientific Surveys is enclosed.

Scale of Contributions (check one)

Personal Memberships

Founding 1,000 per year
Contributing 100 per year
Family 50 per year
Individual 25 per year

Corporate Memberships

Founding 10,000 per year
Benefactor 5,000 per year
Associate 1,000 per year
Sponsor 500 per year
Patron 250 per year

Name (Individual or Business)

Address

Phone Number

Send this application to the Society for the Illinois
Scientific Surveys, 1525 S. 6th St., Suite B,
Springfield, IL 62703. Inquiries by telephone will
be handled at (217) 522-2033.

Understanding Our Natural Heritage

‘all 1988
OF ILLINOIS Fall 198

NATURAL HISTORY Sup HEY

OC] live: 1986

LIBRARY

The Society Page

You'll notice some new things in this
issue of The Nature of Illinois. We
decided to celebrate fall with more
color — 16 pages of it. We've added
a new feature called “The Art of
Nature”’ to profile Illinois artists. We
have expanded our Natural Resources
Digest to include news briefs ranging
from Amazonian birds to European
bees. And we are reaching more and
more of you — now 10,000 — with
the message that Illinois is a state of
amazing natural diversity.

Galena in northwestern Illinois
is one of those hilly areas that seems
such an anomaly to those of us used
to thinking of Illinois as flat, flatter
and flattest. Follow this fascinating
city as Jim Krohe chronicles its rise
from a lead-mining town, river port
and home to Ulysses S. Grant
through a century of decline to its
resurgence as a center for tourism
and recreation.

Science has its historical
monuments too, and in Illinois one

Supporters *

Corporate and Foundation:

Amax Coal Foundation; Amoco
Foundation; Arthur Andersen &
Company; James and Marjorie
Anderson Foundation; Archer Daniels
Midland; BASF-Wyandotte; Bell &
Howell Foundation; Bi-Petro; Borg-
Warner Foundation, Inc.; Boulevard
Bancorp, Inc.; Chicago Community
Trust; Chicago Title & Trust; Coffield,
Ungaretti, Harris & Slavin; Collins &
Rice; Commonwealth Edison;
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly; Arie &
Ida Crown Memorial; Dames and
Moore; Gaylord Donnelley Trust;
Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley
Foundation; R.R. Donnelley & Sons;
Dow Chemical; Draper & Kramer
Foundation; Du Quoin State Bank;
Farnsworth & Wylie; Field Founda-
tion of Illinois; Jamee & Marhall Field
Foundation; First Chicago Corp.;
Forest Fund; Freeman United Coal
Mining Company; William B. Graham
Foundation; Greeley and Hansen;
Hamilton Consulting Engineers;
Hanson Engineers; Harris Founda-
tion; Henry, Meisenheimer & Gende;
Claude H. Hurley Company; Hurst-
Rosche Engineers; Illinois Bell;
Illinois Coal Association, Illinois

of them is the Havana River
Research Station, built in 1894 and
one of the oldest field laboratories in
the country. We take you through a
day in the life of the station and the
scientists who work there.

The dog days of August and the
drought of 1988 may seem like an-
cient history to you by now, but in
this article Survey scientists caution
that the drought’s effects are far from
over.

As a printer, maps have long held
a fascination for me. Map-making
enters the computer era with the
advent of the state’s Geographic
Information System, profiled in
this issue.

There is art in nature, and in this
issue we look at an Illinois artist who
has found his Paris on the prairie.

Although I am a “dog” man
myself, for cat-lovers we have includ-
ed an article on the domestic
feline, the animal who knows a
thousand secrets and will tell none.

Farm Bureau; Illinois Mine Sub-
sidence Insurance Fund; Illinois
Power Company; Illinois Soybean
Program Operating Board; Interna-
tional Minerals & Chemicals Corp.;
Joyce Foundation; Kankakee Water
Company; Klingner & Associates;
Lester B. Knight & Associates, Inc.;
Kraft, Inc; Marine Bank of
Springfield; Brooks and Hope
McCormick Foundation; Robert R.
McCormick Charitable Trust; Midwest
Consulting Engineers; Mobay
Chemical; Peabody Coal Company;
Abbie Norman Prince Trust; Rand
McNally & Company; Randolph &
Associates; R & H Construction;
Regenstein Foundation; Rhutasel &
Associates; Sheppard, Morgan &
Schwaab, Inc.; J.R. Short Milling
Company; Staley Continental, Inc.;
Tornrose, Campbell & Associates;
Union Carbide; Whistling Wings.

Individuals: James Anderson, E.
Armbrust, Henry Barkhausen, Jane
Bolin, Wesley M. Dixon, Jr., Gaylord
Donnelley, James & Nina Donnelley,
Mr. & Mrs. Thomas E. Donnelley II,
Clayton Gaylord, Walter Hanson, Ben
W. Heineman, Frederick Jaicks, Dr.

Finally, our thanks go to Director
Jay Hedges and the Illinois Depart-
ment of Commerce and Community
Affairs for their help in presenting
this new, improved version of our
magazine

Enjoy a colorful fall!
Sincerely,

Pr fd Mme ey

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Michael Jeffords, Estie Karpman, Dr.
Morris Leighton, Richard Lenon, Al
Pyott, John Shedd Reed, Robert P.
Reuss, William Rooney, William
Rutherford, Michael Scully, Edmund ~
B. Thornton, Leo Whalen, William
W. Wirtz, Louise Young.

*Contributions of $200 or more

OF ILLINOIS

2

The Alchemy of Galena

The citizens of Galena have mastered
the art of turning lead into gold.

5

Putting Illinois on the Map
The computer-driven Illinois
Geographic Information System

produces a renaissance in map-
making.

=

Paris on the Prairie

“The Grand Maurice’ paints Eiffel
Towers on Illinois prairies.

9

Natural Resources Digest

Biorhythms Geograms
Currents Short Takes
Centering on Waste Transitions

Published by the Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys

Volume III, Number I
Fall, 1988
Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Editor

Jane Christman
Assistant to the Editor

Ben Halpern
Photographer

ComUnigraph
Design and Production

17

Hot and Dry

The drought of 1988 isn’t over yet.

20

A Day in the Life of the Havana
River Research Laboratory

The conditions aren’t plush, but
Survey scientists work where they’re
happiest - in the field.

Wildlife

Survey scientists bell the cat to deter-
mine its impact on wildlife.

About the Cover

Galena, Illinois.

The Society Offices

Correspondence about memberships,
magazine deliveries, contributions
and general information should be
addressed to the Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys, 319 W.
Cook, Springfield, IL 62704.

The Society encourages readers to
submit letters to the editor of The
Nature of Illinois at the address
above.

Copyright 1988 by the Society for
the Illinois Scientific Surveys. All
rights reserved.

by James Krohe Jr.

Graiena, promises a tourism brochure,
“isn’t like the rest of Illinois.’ For
once the brochures do not exag-
gerate. This restored Jo Daviess Coun-
ty town is a fascinating mix of 19th
century architecture and 20th cen-
tury recreation, the home of the na-
tion’s first mineral boom whose
citizens mastered their own con-
jurors’ trick and turned lead into
bricks and tourist cash. Galena is also
a textbook illustration of the oppor-
tunities and the risks of basing local
economies on exploitable natural

The
Alchemy

Galena

The Lead Rush

Galena was founded in the 1820s on
the banks of the Fever (later renamed
Galena) River less than three miles
from where that stream enters the
Mississippi. Its real founding,
however, may be said to have begun
millions of years earlier when
mineral-rich brines deposited lead
and zinc sulfides in the fractures of
Ordivician rocks. Lead sulfide —
“Galena” to the Romans — is the ore
from which the metal is smelted, and
thousands of tons of it accumulated
in cracks and crevices, some quite
near the surface.

The Sauk, Winnebago, and Fox
Indians all mined lead from deposits
in the upper Mississippi Valley, using
the malleable gray metal to make or-
naments or trading it to the French.
To most whites, lead was a work-a-
day metal used in paints and food
tins. But lead also was used to make
musket ball and cannon shot, much
of the lead for which had to be im-
ported to the U.S. until 1822 for lack
of indigenous supplies.

N

The discovery of mineable
deposits of lead in the upper
Mississippi excited not just get-rich-
quick prospectors but federal
authorities. Lead mining became one
of the fledgling nation’s first defense
industries. While it may have lacked
the romance of subsequent mining
rushes in California and Alaska, the
“lead rush” which began at Galena in
the 1820s was just as frenzied. The
town was the shipping and supply
point for the Federal Landmine
District which reached into Wiscon-
sin and which at its peak may have
contained as many as 10,000 men
digging ore. In 1845, when produc-
tion was at its peak, 53 million
pounds of lead were shipped out of
Galena, more than four-fifths of the
entire U.S. output.

Mining at first required little
more than a pick, some powder, and
a mule. The easiest diggings were
from the “float” deposits left in un-
consolidated surface layers; some
pastures around Galena are still
pockmarked by such diggings.
Deeper “flat and pitch” deposits had
to be reached by shafts dug into

bedrock for distances of up to 60
feet, which was as far as man could
hoist ore buckets without the help of
a steam engine. Eventually, even
deeper veins of lead ore, and, later,
zinc were tapped as mines and
machines got bigger.

The ores at first seemed rich
beyond exhaustion. “It seems not
unlikely that these mines may supply
the world,’ wrote one Galenan with
the timeless optimism of the boom
towner. But the deeper one had to
dig for it, the more expensive
Galena’s lead became. Metals markets
are notoriously unstable, and even in
its robust early days Galena suffered
slumps. The town’s fortunes were
usually revived by war (a lot of Con-
federate soldiers were buried with
Galena lead in their bodies), with
federal price incentives sparking a
boomlet among independent
operators as recently as World War II.

Lead was not the only valuable
mineral mined in them thar hills.
Those ancient cracks were also filled
with sphalerite, the parent ore of
zinc. “It was a nuisance to most
miners until the Civil War,’ explains
Daryl Watson of the Galena/Jo
Daviess County Historical Society. A
new processing technique made
recovery of zinc profitable and a new

The 1857 Belvedere House

Jo Daviess County farm

boom was born. (Some old lead mine
tailing piles were even re-mined for
the zinc they contained.) “Sometime
after the Civil War, the value of zinc
mining in Galena exceeded that of
lead for the first time,’ notes Walton.
“By the late 1800s, more than 80
percent of the area’s entire mine out-
put was zinc.”

The last modern mines such as
the Eagle Pitcher and the Blackjack
mine outside Galena did not close
until the 1970s (At its peak, Watson
estimates, the tailing pile at the Eagle
Pitcher site would have qualified as
the highest point in Illinois.) But
metals had not anchored the local
economy for decades. Price, not
supply, caused mining’s demise.
“There is still ore in the ground up
there,’ explains Jim Bradbury. Brad-
bury, now retired, worked in Galena
in the 1950s for the Illinois
Geological Survey, studying drilling
records (a principal means of pro-
specting) and mapping the local
rocks. “But there are no big ore
bodies that anybody knows about.’

Steamboat Trade

But Galena was never just a mining
town. The miners arrived before the
farmers and the sawyers and the cob-
blers, and for years all of the food
and equipment needed to run the

camps had to be shipped in. Mining
miners was as profitable as mining
lead, and those profits supplied
capital for other, more durable enter-
prises. “Galena reached its apex as a
commercial center in the 1850s,”
Watson says, a decade after lead pro-
duction peaked. The town had a
monopoly on upper Mississippi
steamboat trade, and was a major
port with St. Paul and St. Louis.

That trade floated on the river.
The Galena in the heyday of the
small upper-river steamers was at
least 200 feet wide off the town’s
docks. The river eventually took its
name from the town just as the town
had taken its name from the ore, but
the town took its location and its
livelihood from the river. Galena sits
as far up the Galena (and as close to
the lead diggings) as steamers could
dependably travel. “Galena was the
doorway to the mining district,’ says
local historian Dick Vincent. “If it
wasn’t for the river, Galena would be
just like the other lead mining com-
munities in the area.”

Its merchants were quick to ex-
ploit the river’s access to the
Mississippi and thence to St. Louis
and St. Paul. The
town became the
shipping and
wholesaling cen-
ter for the whole
burgeoning region.
The coming of the

railroads in the 1850s, however, took
cargo from the steamboats and even-
tually business from Galena, leading
some locals, then and now, to blame
Galena’s subsequent long economic
slumber on the railroads. But even if
steamboating hadn’t died, Galena’s
future as a river port would have been
doubtful. The villain wasn’t the steam
locomotive but the ax.

In 1820, Jo Daviess County was
nearly all trees. Only a handful of
spots in all of Illinois had so much of
their land in forest, and wood was
the petroleum of the early 19th cen-
tury. Steamboat boilers were fired
with wood. So were the lead
smelters. Galena’s lead boom in fact
depended as much on plentiful local
supplies of wood as it depended on
plentiful lead ore. “Even in the In-
dian period, tremendous numbers of
trees were cut to run the smelters,”
explains Daryl Watson. “The early
superintendent of the lead district
prohibited the indiscriminate cutting
of trees, ordering the best ones
reserved for smelting. That suggests
that even then there were not a lot of
good trees left.”

Farmers felled trees, too. Local

Terry Farmer — DCCA

Elevations of Galena

agriculture expanded with popula-
tion, so that the value of farm pro-
ducts produced in the area exceeded
that of lead as early as 1850. The
combined effects of smelting and
farming on the forests were
devastating. Old photos show whole
hillsides so denuded that they
resembled (in Watson’s words) goat
pastures in Greece.

The hillsides above the Galena
thus exposed, eroded badly. Even in
1849, local steamboat captains were
warning that the Galena was silting
up. The stream had to be dredged
that year and again in 1856; by th
Civil War it was already reduced to

what Watson calls “a pathetic little
stream’ which was more mud than
water in summer. More dredging,
even eventual construction of a lock
and dam downstream, could not
restore the river as a dependable
navigable stream.

A river which didn’t have room
for a steamboat didn’t have room for
flood waters either. Flooding was
common. When the Market House
was built in 1846 on the alluvial ter-
race between Commerce and Water
streets, the entire block was filled in
and raised by nine feet, although
even that proved to be not enough.
The worst flood, in 1937, reached
higher, and damage to low-lying
buildings was substantial. Restoration
of the town’s historic buildings could
not begin in earnest, in fact, until
1951, when the present system of
levees and flood gates was installed.

Today the Galena River ambles
between grassy banks, and boys sit
fishing on the spot where steamboats
used to churn. The only paddleboats
on the river are canoes, rented by
tourists for a jaunt downriver to the
Mississippi.

Main Street — Galena, Illinois

“Quality Hill”

The commodious warehouses and
other commercial structures which
still line Galena’s riverbank are
reminders of the volume of goods
which the river trade once brought
to town, just as the hotels and man-
sions which grace the sides of
“Quality Hill” testify to the wealth
which moved through the pockets of
its citizens. (Galena even Owes its
claims to its most famous son,
Ulysses S. Grant, to trade: Grant
found refuge from his failed early
career in his family’s Galena leather

goods store in 1860 when the world
still needed store clerks more than
Civil War generals.)

Galena’s architecture was as
grand as its wealth could afford and
as pretentious as the pride of its self-
made men could imagine. Most of its
buildings are stone or brick, the
result of a ban on wood construction
in 1850 which followed fires along
its crowded docks. New buildings
went up with each successive
economic boom, and each era built
in the fashion of its day. Log houses
were succeeded by churches, man-
sions, schools, and public buildings
in Greek Revival or Federal styles,
which in turn were followed, in
overlapping waves, by Italianate,
Queen Anne, Second Empire, Gothic
Revival, and Romanesque Revival
concoctions. Galena’s largest man-
sion, the 1857 Belvedere, has been
likened to a Tuscan villa and a wed-
ding cake but probably most deserves
the label ‘Steamboat Gothic.” Built
for a local steamboat magnate, it
looks like a landlocked river palace.

The long economic dormancy
into which the town slipped in the
century after the Civil War meant
that most of its old buildings were
not remodeled or replaced but sur-
vived remarkably intact. The result
was an outdoor architecture museum,
a ghost town of uncharacteristic
substance. What had been useless
became unique; in 1969, no less than
85 percent of the old town was
deemed worthy of listing on the
Department of Interior’s National
Register of Historic Places.

Today dozens of Galena’s period
buildings have been restored as
monuments to its own past. The
Customs House which once oversaw
the steamboat trade is now the local
post office. The old Market House
was restored by the State of Illinois as
a museum. The former Illinois Center
Depot now houses a tourist center.
Many houses have been converted to
bed & breakfast facilities and guest
houses, and shops which once ped-
dled picks and oil lamps now house
antique shops, craft studios, and
restaurants. And — perhaps most
symbolic of Galena’s revival as a
tourist center — the 1853 DeSoto
House hotel on Main Street is now a
hotel again after years of hosting

such varied tenants as the Illinois
Geological Survey field office.

Boom Town

Galena’s historic buildings are to a
large extent both the means and the
ends of its career as a tourist attrac-
tion. But those buildings owe much
of their charm to their setting. To-
day’s tourism boom, like the mining
and shipping booms before it,
depends on Galenans’ ability to ex-
ploit the region’s unique natural
resources of hills, forest, and water.
Galena lies at the southernmost tip of
the Wisconsin Driftless Section, a
region whose Ordivician limestones
and dolomites have been incised by
streams into deep valleys. Successive
glaciation modified, indeed
obliterated the early landscape of
much of the rest of Illinois, but the
ice never plowed across Galena. The
result is a distinctly un-Illinoisan vista
of rocky prominence separated by
pastoral valleys. Illinois’ highest point
is nearby; so are some of its most
beautiful.

The crumpled-up terrain around
Galena was an impediment to pro-
gress in horse and wagon days but to-
day it has helped turn Galena into a
year-round vacation and resort spot.
Illinois’s sole downhill ski run is near
Galena. The nearby Mississippi offers
hunting, fishing, and boating in all
seasons; its forested hillsides offer
hiking, cross-country skiing, and
camping. Galena has become a
regional economic center again, this
time serving not outlying mines and
farms but the marinas, ski lodges,
riding stables, campsites, and golf
courses which dot the countryside.
Galena and environs are seeing
another spurt of building, this time
in time-share condos and summer
houses, and it is again doing trade
with faraway places: Stop at any local
gas station in summer and you will
see cars bearing license plates from
Texas or Virginia as well as Illinois,
Iowa, and Wisconsin.

Galena, in short, is a boom town
again. On certain weekends today its
streets are as crowded as they must
have been 150 years ago, and local
tourism officials are wondering aloud
whether booked-up hotels and traffic
jams may not be too much of a good
thing. Space and unencumbered
views can be ruined as quickly as
metal ores and forests and rivers.
Galena’s past is not just a commodity,
but a useful warning.

Putting
Illinois
On The
Map

Oe Illinois is well known for
its corn and soybean crops. It may
soon be known as the center of a
remarkable computer-driven renais-
sance in map-making.

The three Illinois Scientific
Surveys, with the aid of a computer
system called the Geographic
Information System (GIS), are
creating multi-color, multi-
dimensional natural resource maps
that would make Amerigo Vespucci
hang his head in shame. Art and
technology have come together to
reprove the old axiom that a picture

f Red: Urban is worth a thousand words.
y The map shows that the area Green: Forests | Phy sically housed in the Natural
_ immediately south and west of Peoria Blue: Water or wetlands Resources Building in Champaign,
- contains minable coal deposits and Black: Barren or mines the system had its genesis in a
: areas of abandoned underground Stripes: Coal deposits (minable) federally-mandated program that 2
- mines. Black lines: Underground mines required states to develop scientific
: Dashed lines: Surface mines data bases on resources particularly
: Red line: Interstate 74 vulnerable to coal mining. From
“ike there Illinois’ GIS expanded to a
He Large blue area running from statewide natural resources library,
4 top to bottom is the Illinois with information on everything from
eS River woodlands to geological structures to
ae archaeological sites
mids ; The system consists of map
7 re

processing software that runs on a

network of four PRIME computers.
Terminals located in Springfield,
Champaign and Marion allow the GIS
to be used by the Surveys, other
divisions of the Illinois Department
of Energy and Natural Resources
(DENR), the Illinois Department of
Conservation, the Illinois
Department of Mines and Minerals,
and the Illinois Department of
Commerce and Community Affairs.

A few years ago GIS was a single
PRIME computer with only two
megabytes (two million bytes) of
main memory and 300 megabytes of
disk storage. The system was soon
overloaded as the state poured in vast
amounts of natural resources data,
necessitating acquisition of an
additional PRIME computer with 32
megabytes of main memory and 10
gigabytes (10 billion bytes) of
information.

The Flow of Information

The GIS standardizes cartographic
information by converting it into a
digital representation of that data. A
map is mounted on an electronic
drafting board, where it is digitized
by a computer “mouse’’ that is used
to enter map features. GIS users also
purchase previously digitized
information. To that layer of
information the GIS uses files that
add intelligence to these digitized
map lines, associating them with real-
world features, like a geologic fault.

The ultimate product is a variety
of maps that show the presence of
aquifers, soil types, streams,
woodlands, vegetation types, and the
list goes on.

gn

> er
a

6

Best of all the GIS is able to take
one map and overlay it with another.
If a company wants to site an
industrial facility in a specific county,
the location of the proposed facility
and associated features such as sewer
lines can be compared to locations of
roads, electric lines, geological faults,
water wells and many other features.
In essence the GIS manipulates data
by putting one map on top of
another and analyzing the results.

Mapping Minerals

One area that is being extensively
mapped on GIS is Hicks Dome,
located in Hardin County in southern
Illinois. About 250 million years ago,
when Illinois was literally shaking
with earthquakes, violent gaseous
explosions pushed up sedimentary
rock layers laid horizontally on the
ocean bed into a giant dome. That
was Hicks Dome, once as high as
2,000 feet, but now eroded to a
shadow of its former self. Seen by air,
it is an obvious circular structure
ringed with faults that covers a
12-mile by 12-mile area.

It is part of a larger geological
area known as the Paducah
Quadrangle, covering one degree of
latitude and two degrees of
longitude, cutting through Illinois,
bits of Indiana and Kentucky and a
goodly part of Missouri.

“It is a vast area with complex
geological structures and abundant
mineral resources. It’s a natural for
GIS mapping,’ according to Rob
Krumm of the Illinois Geological
Survey. ‘““Two years ago the U.S.
Geological Survey and the geological
surveys in Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana
and Missouri,began the
Conterminous U.S. Mineral
Assessment Program (CUSMAP) to
provide detailed geological mapping
in regions like the Paducah
Quadrangle, where we know there
are abundant mineral resources.”

Picked as a pilot program
because of its complex geology, its
interstate geography, and its mineral
resources, the Hicks Dome project
began with surficial geology maps
that showed the uppermost glacial
and stream deposits. Maps showing
the bedrock hidden below the
surficial deposits were added, and
the final product was a map showing
bedrock outcrops. The final
ingredient was the addition of U.S.
Geological Survey maps to the

outcrop map showing power lines,
railroads and other reference points.
Any field observer can now go to the
area and, using the reference points
provided by the GIS map, can locate
and identify the type of bedrock
outcrops in the area.

“We are well on our way to
completing bedrock mapping for the
entire CUSMAP area. More
importantly, we were able to get GIS
mapping standards for CUSMAP. We
proved that it is possible to enter data
from different sources and produce
usable, valuable maps. This will be
enormously helpful as we assess the
mineral resources of Hicks Dome and
the Paducah Quadrangle,’ explains
Robert Pool of the IGS. “By 1990 we
should have substantial information
on the area’s mineral resources.”

Customized Mapping

The Geographic Information System
is just as useful when the lead time
for complex natural resource data is
short.

Colin Treworgy of the Geological
Survey reports on a three-day turn-
around for a Peoria project: ““Tri-
County Tomorrow, an economic
planning group for Peoria,-Woodford
and Tazewell counties, asked us to
investigate mineral resources in that
area, especially coal. In less than a
week, we were able to give them a
GIS-made map showing current land
uses — residential, commercial,
industrial, forestlands, agricultural
lands and wetlands — and coal
resources attractive for mining.”

“Our maps also provided them
with some information they hadn't
asked for, but was quite dramatic.
The Peoria metropolitan area is
expanding in some areas over
abandoned underground mines, and
the potential of mine subsidence is
another important issue for this kind
of group to consider.”

“What we proved is that we can
customize maps in very short periods
of time for groups of people with
very specific needs — all in a very
graphic, understandable way.”

Rob Krumm and Robert Pool are
Associate Geologists/GIS Specialists
with the Computer Research and
Services Section of the Illinois
Geological Survey. A Geologist with
the Coal Section of the Survey, Colin
Treworgy’s principal areas of research
are coal resources and coal mining.

by Lynda K. Martin

The following is the first in a contin-
uing series of articles profiling Illinois
artists.

Suarly in his 60th year, prompted by
a dream, Maurice Sullins began to
paint. Upon awakening from the
dream, Maurice, in his haste to start
his new life as an artist, began draw-
ing on whatever pieces of paper he
could find around the house. When
he ran out of paper, he cut apart
record album covers and drew on the
blank inside surfaces. Within a few
weeks he had bought acrylic paint
and was applying it to old mirrors,
plywood panels, and masonite —
scrap materials that were stored in his
garage. From that time in 1970 until
his wife Mary died in 1986, Maurice
painted continuously and obsessively,
producing over 1,200 paintings in 16
years.

There is little in this Llinois ar-
tist’s background that would indicate
such an extraordinary turn of events.
The third child in a family with

ON THE

seven children, Maurice was born in
1910 in Medora, Illinois, about 40
miles north of St. Louis. His father
was a minister and was frequently re-
quired to move his family from one
small town in Illinois to another.
Maurice retains vivid memories of
living in places such as Elkhart,
Sadorus and Galesburg during the
early 1900s.

In 1928 Maurice enrolled at the
University of Illinois in Champaign

and was awarded a B.S. in Geography

in 1934. He also married in 1934,
and in 1940 he and his wife Mary
moved to Joliet, Illinois, where he
still resides. Never employed in his
field of study, probably because of
the Depression, he worked at various
jobs, including one as a foreman at
the Fisher Body plant in Willow
Springs and another waxing and
detailing airplanes at the Joliet
Municipal Airport.

One of the first to learn of
Maurice’s work was Timothy O'Keefe,
himself a sculptor and eventually
Maurice’s agent. Maurice claims that
he didn’t do any artwork prior to his
60th birthday, a claim verified by his
older brother. He did confide in
O'Keefe that he had considered
becoming an artist as a young man,
but was deterred by the poverty most
artists endure.

Maurice's art takes place primari
ly in his head, and the physical,
material expression of it is secondary
While still employed at the Joliet Ai
port, Maurice would compose a
painting in his mind during the da
refining it until it was complet

working 10 to 12 hours, he would
rush home and paint until one or
two a.m. in order to record his paint-
ing on canvas. He would then sleep a
few hours and get up to paint
another hour or so before going off
to his job where he would mentally
compose yet another painting.

When he began painting in
1970, his work was somewhat
primitive and clumsy, but always ex-
uberant, carefully composed and
richly colored. Without ever attend-
ing an art class, he progressed rapid-
ly, learning how to handle his paint
to best effect while trying out various
techniques and styles in quick
succession.

With no formal training in art,
Maurice began painting without the
structure and restrictions imposed by
academic art programs. Over the
years he had built his own
philosophical framework, made his
own rules, and developed very strict
ideas about what is right and accep-
table in the practice of art. He scorns
the palette, preliminary drawings, live
models, and other tools and techni-
ques associated with painters. He
paints in his living room with his
canvas lying flat on two small tables.
Maurice usually begins a painting by
“floating on’ a wash which he calls
“clouds.” “Floating on clouds,” he
explains, “is the nearest you can get
to the Universe and how it is.”

Maurice’s images were applied
over the wash with a brush or direct-
ly from the tube. He has terms for his
various methods of applying paint
and for different types of lines. His
“Naughty Line” is a horizontal line
representative of Mother Earth that
forms the lower back and buttocks of
a female figure. A wavy line applied
directly from the tube is a “Master
Stroke.’ A “Grand Stroke”’ is a
horizontal line made in one sweep,
and a “Grand Sweep” is a horizontal
line that goes off the canvas and “in-
to eternity.’ According to Maurice,

“The grandeur and glory of the sky
has never been revealed on canvas
before because no artist had a Master
Stroke, and if you don’t have a Master
Stroke you can’t have a Grand Stroke,
if you don’t have a Master Stroke and
a Grand Stroke you can’t have a
Grand Sweep.”

A voracious reader who can ex-
pound on any subject at a moment’s
notice, his home and garage are filled
with books, magazines and en-
cyclopedias which he calls the
“threads of life’ because all the
knowledge contained in them “‘ties
together.’ He likes to point out that
“everything in the world, everything
in the universe everywhere,
everything ties together.”

When he began painting,
Maurice read everything he could
find relating to art and artists. As he
became aware of the elements of art
such as shape, form and positive and
negative space, he saw everything in
life in terms of these elements. In
reference to this he will often state
that “art is total living.”

He educated himself about well-
known artists by reading and by stu-
dying photographs of their work —
O'Keefe calls him a “walking art en-
cyclopedia.” While he has never
copied directly from others, images
appropriated from artists such as
Calder, Picasso, Rodin, Moore,
Chagall and Matisse appear in his
work along with his own set of per-
sonal symbols. It is his way of “‘pay-
ing tribute” to them and continuing
their work.

Some of Maurice’s personal sym-
bols are largely confined to one
series of paintings, while others ap-
pear frequently throughout his work.
For instance, of the 60 paintings in
the current exhibition, “The Dapper
Frenchman’, Maurice's alterego who
a often accompanied by es Ros’,

,

1 ing t he ar ist ‘combines and jux-

expected ways to
ich canvas is a

that eden ghout his work.

One Maurice's favorite past-
times is reading the dictionary, and
he delights in playing with words.
Mr. Eiffel Tower and His Wife the
Former Arc d’Triomphe, Miss
Chicago Sails into Summer in a Royal
Blue Strapless Maillot, and Personage
Before The Moon are among the
titles he has assigned to his work.

The artist uses the name

“Maurice LeGrand LeSueur Sullins”’ in
order, he says, “to honor” his French
heritage, LeSueur from his grand-
mother and LeGrand from his
mother, Jennie. Although quite a
number of his paintings are based on
scenes from the French countryside
and well-known landmarks of Paris
such as the Eiffel Tower and the Arc
d’Triomphe, Maurice has never
travelled to France — his images of
that country having been found in
books and magazines. Maurice feels
that it is not necessary for him to ac-
tually travel to a location in order to
depict it accurately, because, accor-
ding to him, everything in the
Universe is connected and “goes on
endlessly.”

Like most outsider artists,
Maurice paints for his own satisfac-
tion and, until recently, was extreme-
ly reluctant to sell or even show his
work. Except for the occasional
painting sold to buy more art sup-
plies or those lost or misplaced, his
entire body of work was in his
possession until 1987.

Maurice stopped painting in
1986 after the death of his wife Mary.
After a period of eight months in
seclusion, he seemed to come to
grips with his own mortality and
decided that it was time for him to
show and sell his work. Devoted to
his family, he says his primary
motivation for this change of heart is
his desire to provide a “legacy” for
his grandchildren.

Although he occasionally men-
tions an idea for a new painting,
Maurice seems reluctant to resume
his work. O’Keefe believes that
“Maurice is a true painter, and that’s
what he should be doing. It would
be the best thing for him if he started
painting again.’ O’Keefe has supplied
him with a new box of canvases and
fresh tubes of paint, but it remains to
be seen whether Maurice will add to
his already impressive body of work.

Previously exhibited at the Illinois
State Museum in Springfield and at
the Gaylord Building in Lockport, the
Maurice Sullins exhibition can be
seen from September 19 - November
10, 1988 at the State of Illinois Art
Gallery in Chicago and thereafter
travelling around the state. For more
details, contact the Illinois State
Museum.

Lynda K. Martin is Assistant Curator
for Fine Arts at the Illinois State
Museum.

RES OUR CE §S

DIGEST

New Tick Brings
New Disease To
Illinois

While inspecting some deer
last November a Natural
History Survey entomologist
and a doctor from the
University of Illinois
Veterinary Medicine College
discovered a new tick
previously unknown to II-
linois. This new tick, or
deer tick, is the carrier of a
chronic, sometimes
debilitating illness called
Lyme disease (the number

United States). Symptoms |
include a rash, acute |
headache, chronic arthritic /
and joint pain, and =
neurological impairment,

,

as eis Y
and are often misdiagnosed ©.

as rheumatoid arthritis.
Since the disease is so
new (the first case occurred
in Lyme, Connecticut in
1975) there is no vaccine.
The best way to protect
yourself against the disease
is to avoid forests or wood-
ed areas which the ticks in-
habit, especially in the sum-
mer when they’re abun-
dant, and to avoid contact
with animals they infect,
such as deer, dogs, horses,
mice, and other rodents. If
you must enter the ticks’
habitats, wear light-colored,

one tickborne disease in the >
/

BIORHYTHMS

long clothing (so you can
see if the ticks attach to
you), use insect repellants
and carefully check your
body for ticks after depart-
ing the area. Remove any
ticks with tweezers and
drop in rubbing alcohol to
kill.

A group of scientists
from the Natural History
Survey and the University
of Illinois College of
Veterinary Medicine are try-
ing to determine the
distribution of the deer tick
and the disease-causing

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]

om

J ( Qo” |) u
\ Ixodes dammini i

. (deer tick) by

\a\ [i

bacteria in Illinois. l¢

Bugs Fighting Bugs

The use of foreign
pathogens (diseases) to con-
trol insect populations has
been an unresolved issue

for several years. But recent-

ly two Natural History
Survey scientists, Drs. J.V.
Maddox and M.R. Jeffords,
received an experimental
permit from the U.S. En-
vironmental Protection
Agency to use foreign
pathogens to try to control
gypsy moth populations in
Maryland.

Jeffords said that the
gypsy moths have
multiplied rapidly in the

United States since they
emigrated from Europe and
left their natural enemies
and diseases there. Doctors
Maddox and Jeffords went
to Europe to find the
diseases which help control
the moths and bring them
to the U.S. to introduce
them into select moth
communities.

This is the first instance
where the U.S. EPA has
allowed foreign insect
pathogens to be tested for
insect control. The experi-
ment can have great im-
plications for future
biological control efforts in
the U.S.

Wintering In The
Tropics

About 60 species of Illinois’
birds winter in the Amazon
7 Basin. Each year they join
around 1,000 other species

of birds that live in that
area, considered the world’s
most abundant area of
birds.

In order to study the
birds’ habitats and recom-
mend ways to design nature
preserves to help the
species and their habitats
survive, Dr. Scott Robinson,
a Wildlife Ecologist with
the Illinois Natural History
Survey, received a grant
from the National Science
Foundation to live in the
Amazon Basin and study
the numerous species of
birds that live there.

Cocha Cashu Biological
Station

Robinson says one of
the major findings of the
study is that most of the
birds are very rare and hay
low population densitic

S. Robinson

which emphasizes the need
to preserve large sections of
their habitats to keep their
populations viable. Since
the grant period ends this
year, Robinson will now
finish analyzing the data
and then write reports to
the Peruvian government
recommending conserva-
tion strategies for the
habitats and birds.

This study wasn’t your
average scientific laboratory

experiment. It required
Robinson and other scien-
tists to live in the jungle for
months on end, with little
contact with civilization. At
times they encountered
wild, uncontacted Indian
tribes (one of which stole
Robinson’s laundry), and
often ran head on into
pumas and jaguars. How
did he handle that? “Just
stand there and don’t
move,’ says Robinson.

Catfish following suturing. Note antenna trailing from tail

fin.
Save The Catfish

Catfish are important com-
mercial and sport fish in Il-
linois, but their habitats
have been adversely af-
fected by erosion, weather,
and river traffic. In order to
ensure that the species’
habitats are protected, and
therefore help protect the
species’ existence, Natural
History Survey Aquatic
Biologist Dr. Richard Sparks
is using a grant from the Il-
linois Department of Con-
servation to study what
areas of the river catfish
prefer during their lifecycle
and if barge traffic affects
them.

To do this Sparks track-
ed about 75 catfish over
two years, with radio
transmitters which were
surgically implanted in the

10

fish. He found that catfish
prefer the side channels and
back lakes of Illinois rivers,
but have been forced into
the rivers’ main channels
because the side areas are
diminishing due to increas-
ed mud and sludge residue
and decreased water levels
from the drought. But in
the main channels, the cat-
fish are susceptible to the
river traffic which can kill
or stun them and make
them easy prey for the
vulture-like gulls that follow
boats to feed on the fish.

Sparks says he will
recommend that the side
channels and back waters
be dredged and restored to
protect the catfish which
account for 40 percent of
total sport fishing demand
and 16 percent of the com-
mercial fish harvest in
Illinois.

i AANW
A“

CURRENTS

Aja YX
WA Xx~

Raindrop Dribblings

Who would suspect that the
shape of a raindrop could
affect our weather
forecasts? With a grant from
the National Science Foun-
dation, Illinois Water Survey
scientists are researching
the vibrations and shapes of
raindrops because weather
radar systems base their
radar pictures on the shapes
of drops in clouds. The
shape the systems are cur-
rently basing their picture
on may not be correct.

Raindrops are not tear-
drop shaped (thin on top
and wide on the bottom).
Instead scientists believe
they are more hamburger
shaped (flat on bottom and
rounded on top). The
Survey scientists have built
a raindrop generator in the
stairwell of a seven-story
building that will
photograph drops as they
fall and bounce off one
another.

This data will aid their
CHILL radar weather
system, a national facility
and one of the most ad-
vanced weather radar
systems in the world, and
will be used to better inter-
pret what weather radars
predict. In turn, under-
standing the true shapes of
raindrops will help improve
weather radar’s detection of
storm systems and may im-
prove overall weather
predictability.

A computer-generated
oscillation sequence for a
5mm diameter raindrop.

The Great Lakes’
Shoreline Seesaw

Researchers have learned
that record low levels in
Lake Michigan during the
mid-1960s may be the
primary reason for the $3
million in lakefront damage
sustained during 1987’s
high water levels and severe
winter storms. This conclu-
sion is from a two-part
study of the effects on the
Illinois shoreline from ex-
tremes in Lake Michigan
water levels. The project,
funded by the U.S. En-
vironmental Protection
Agency, will provide a basis
for assessing effects of
altered lake levels caused by
future climatic change.
Stanley Changnon of
the Water Survey conducted
a part of the study that
evaluated the effects of

Weather Station
Becomes
Centenarian

On the clear morning of
August 17, 1888 an observer
read weather instruments
and logged the first entries
into the record book at a
new weather station on the
University of Illinois cam-
pus — the site of the new
Agricultural Experiment Sta-
tion. A 72 degree
temperature and 91 percent
humidity were recorded at
7 a.m. at the “North Farm”
area of campus.

The weather station
kept records for the
Agriculture Experiment Sta-
tion, and also became a
source of data for the
University campus, the
Champaign-Urbana com-
munity, and the U.S.
Weather Bureau.

This August the Survey
celebrated the 100th an-
niversary of what became
known as the Morrow Plots
weather station. Former
weather station observers
were invited to participate
in the August 17 ceremonies

record low lake levels on
the Illinois shoreline during
1964-65. Changnon used
this information to estimate
the potential consequences
of lower lake levels that
might be caused by a drastic
change to a drier climate.
Low lake levels in the
sixties were followed by
periods of extremely high
lake levels, first in the early
1970s and then in the
mid-1980s; a sequence that
has produced many of the
problems. During the
period of record low levels,
buildings and facilities were
constructed in or near the
new beach areas. When the
water levels rose, these
structures suffered con-
siderable wave damage.
Many of the seawall struc-
tures built by Chicago were
exposed when the water
levels fell and dry rot set in.

Some of the weather
instruments at Morrow
Plots on the University of
Illinois campus in a 1960s
photo.

at the Survey.

In 1963, because of the
long continuous records at
the Morrow Plots weather
station, the U.S. Weather
Bureau designated the sta-
tion a benchmark station
for the study of past and
future climatic changes in
the United States. At that
time, it was one of only 15
benchmark stations east of
the Rocky Mountains.

Wayne Wendland, State
Climatologist, says the daily
weather observations have
continued to the present
without a break, which is

unusual in weather recording

but necessary for improved

understanding of the climate.

Personnel Note

William C. Ackermann, II-
linois Water Survey Chief
from 1956-79, died in
Champaign on Thursday,
June 9 after a long illness.
Ackermann led the
Survey during times of
rapid growth, the en-
vironmental movement, stu-
dent unrest, construction of
an addition to the Universi-
ty of Illinois Water
Resources Building, and
changing technology.
During his tenure, the
Survey’s administrative
home changed from the

Department of Registration
and Education to the
Department of Energy and
Natural Resources.
Ackermann received a
degree in civil engineering
from the University of
Wisconsin in 1935. He serv-
ed as an engineer for the
Tennessee Valley Authority
from 1935-54 and as head
of the Agricultural Research
Service in Washington, D.C.
before becoming chief of
the Water Survey in 1956.
He is survived by his wife,
three children, and seven
grandchildren.

meee CENTERING ON WASTE

ESF

Hazardous Materials
Lab Ground
Breaking

On July 11 officials from
the Illinois Department of
Energy and Natural
Resources (DENR), the
University of Illinois and
other state organizations
broke ground for a
laboratory that will become
one of the few facilities in
Illinois specifically designed
for the chemical character-
ization and study of hazar-
dous waste. DENR will ad-
minister the $8.7 million
Hazardous Materials
Laboratory (HML) through
the Hazardous Waste
Research and Information
Center (HWRIC). The HML
will be built on the

The Hazardous Materials Laboratory

southwestern section of the
University of Illinois’
Champaign-Urbana campus.

When the HML is com-
pleted in early 1990 it will
house 41,400 square feet of
laboratory and office space
and will provide researchers
with new laboratories
equipped with state-of-the-
art analytical and safety
equipment for hazardous
waste research, technical
assistance and training in
Illinois.

One important task of
the HML, which is the
culmination of more than
four years of planning, will
be to encourage hazardous
waste researchers from
academic, governmental
and industrial sectors to use
the facility to conduct their
research. HML staff will

provide the analytical and
logistical support for these
efforts.

Another important task
of the HML will be to pro-
vide training, in coopera-
tion with state and federal
programs and needs, in the
areas of safe laboratory
practices, and hazardous
waste and toxic substance
management.

The building will house
four distinct areas for
research. These areas will
include the biological lab,
the treatability labs, the
high hazard labs and the
pilot lab. The toxicity of en-
vironmental samples will be

Calumet Ground
And Surface Water
To Be Studied

The HWRIC recently releas-
ed plans to evaluate ground
and surface water con-
tamination in the Lake
Calumet area. The plans
outline comprehensive five-
year programs to study the
location, types and concen-
trations of contaminants
present in the area’s ground
and surface water, and to
determine whether those
contaminants are harming
the quality of Lake Calumet
or Lake Michigan through
groundwater seepage or
surface water flow.

The $1 to $1.5 million
groundwater study, which
has a variety of potential
funding sources, will be
conducted by a team of
researchers from the Illinois
Water Survey Groundwater
Section. The project will
provide the basis for a
longterm groundwater
monitoring program in the
Calumet area that will track
changes in groundwater
quality, determine the possi-
ble human health effects of
exposure to contaminants
and determine the sources
of contamination.

12

researched in the biological
lab while bench-scale treat-
ment experimentation will
be conducted in the 720
square feet treatability labs.
The 1,500 square foot high
hazard area will consist of
four labs equipped with
special air handling equip-
ment to provide rapid turn-
over of room air, thus
preventing lab vapors from
escaping into the rest of the
HML. In addition, the
building will house the ad-
ministrative offices, library,
clearinghouse and com-
puter facilities of the
HWRIC.

It will also provide the
information necessary to
make informed policy deci-
sions about prioritizing in
cleaning the hazardous
waste sites, using land in
the area and protecting
public health and the sur-
rounding environment, in-
cluding Lake Michigan.

The contamination of
the Calumet area surface
water would be a second
area of study. Researchers
from the Water Survey Sur-
face Water Section will
study the extent of the sur-
face water’s contamination
and its contribution to the
pollution of the area’s
groundwater, Lake Calumet
and Lake Michigan. The
research team will design
and install a longterm sur-
face water monitoring pro-
gram with goals similar to
those of the groundwater
monitoring program.

bes 6

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MOM Helps Clean
Up Industrial Waste

Generators of industrial
waste will soon be looking
to MOM (the Multi-Option
Model) to find answers to
their disposal and waste
recycling problems. The
Multi-Option Model, a new,
interactive computer pro-
gram for waste reduction
being developed by
HWRIC, waste reduction
agencies in other states and
the U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency, will help

generators learn new waste
reduction and recycling op-
tions by guiding them
through a series of ques-
tions and answers on a
computer screen.

Generators will put in-
formation regarding the
amount and type of waste
they generate into the pro-
gram. The MOM program
will then offer the
generator information in
these areas: waste reduc-
tion, exchange and available
treatment, storage and
disposal facilities.

GEOGRAMS

Survey Helps In
Search For Car And
Body

Recently the Geological
Survey was involved in an
unusual use of its resources
— assisting police in the
search for a car containing a
missing body.

This spring the Blue
Island (Illinois) Police
Department (BIPD) received
a tip that a car with a miss-
ing woman’s body was in
the Calumet Sag Channel.
Dredging and diving techni-
ques proved unsuccessful in
locating anything in the
channel.

After seeing a television
news report about the
department’s efforts, con-
sulting geologist Harry
Smedes contacted the
police and suggested that
the Survey’s resources might
help the search.

In late June, in
cooperation with the BIPD,
three Survey scientists
travelled the channel in a
canoe using a magnetome-
ter to detect unusually high
amounts of metal submerg-
ed in the channel, which
could signal the presence of
an object like a car. They
found three areas contain-
ing higher than average

amounts of metal: one was
a previously identified car,
another was undeter-
minable (it was buried too
deeply in mud for divers to
identify), and the last was a
car stolen from Chicago in
1984. -

The location of the car
with the missing woman re-
mains a mystery, but the
location of a missing stolen
car was resolved.

Maximizing Coal
Production And
Protecting Farmland

The Illinois Mine Sub-
sidence Research Program
(IMSRP) was established in
1985 to develop guidelines
for underground mining
methods which would max-
imize coal extraction while
preserving the agricultural
productivity of prime II-
inois farmland. The pro-
gram was initiated at the re-
quest of the Illinois Coal
Association and the Illinois
Farm Bureau and is directed
by the Illinois Geological
Survey (IGS), with the U.S.
Bureau of Mines and the II-
linois Coal Development
Board funding the research.

As part of the program
University of Illinois
agronomists have com-
pleted a three-year study to
assess the impact of mine
subsidence on prime
farmland. Other researchers
are using field and
laboratory techniques to in-
vestigate the mechanisms of
mine subsidence including
in-mine floor and pillar
strengths. Field instruments
are used to monitor the
movements and changes in
groundwater. Surface soil
changes are also being
monitored before, during
and after subsidence events

Special Maps Spot
Mineral Resources

The geology of southern II-
linois, which is rich in
mineral resources, is more
complex than other parts of
the state and its details are
only now beginning to be
understood. In 1981 the II-
linois Geological Survey
undertook a program of
detailed geological mapping
in the region with support
from the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC). Map-
ping in the area was renewed
in 1984 with federal match-
ing funds from the
Cooperative Geologic Map-
ping Program (COGEOMAP)
of the U.S. Geological
Survey.

The area being mapped
extends northward and
westward from the
Southeastern Illinois
Flurospar Mining District
mapped by Illinois
Geological Survey (IGS)

using field instruments.

To bring the coal and
farm industries up to date
on IMSRP projects, results
and plans, an industry brief-
ing was held on August 16
in Mt. Vernon. A five-year
Memorandum of Agree-
ment, signed by the State of
Illinois and the U.S. Bureau
of Mines, insures collabora-
tion and cooperation
through 1991. Research will
likely be followed by long-
wall demonstration pro-
grams coordinated with
coal mine operators by
1991.

scientists 20 years ago. Ex-
tensive fault zones in the
region and the historic New
Madrid Earthquake (1812-13)
in nearby Missouri led the
NRC to ask questions about
possible modern fault
movements that could
damage nuclear power
plants. Geologic mapping
by IGS geologists revealed
no dangerous faults, but in-
stead found new details
about the geology of the
region that were broadly
encouraging for mineral
resource exploration.

Renewed efforts by IGS
mappers have located new
seams of coal that are
potentially attractive targets
for exploration. Detailed
mapping also is changing
geologic concepts of the
region in ways that could
provide new tools for suc-
cessful oil and gas explor-
ation.

The first three geologic
maps produced in the pro-
gram were published in the
summer of 1986 and are
available for $5 each. Three
additional quadrangles have
been mapped and are being
edited for publication in
1988 or 1989. Thereafter,
two quadrangles will be
completed each year.

SHORT TAKES

Rabbit Hits The Big
Time

It’s out of the burrows and
on to the big time for our
furry friend Roger Rabbit.
Rabbit, of the cartoonus
family and Joonus species,
starred in the summer’s hit
movie “Who Framed Roger
Rabbit?” Rabbit says he’s
proud to represent the
animal kingdom on screen
and admits that it took a bit

of adjusting at first. “I’m
not used to having all of my
meals provided. I was ex-
pecting them to just turn
me loose in a clover field
for lunch.”” Rabbit got his
break when a Tinsel Town
agent spotted him in his
former act, as he was pulled
out of his partner’s hat.
What’s his next act? “Well,
I'd really like to hit the
boards seriously, as Othello
maybe,” Rabbit says. But

Roger Rabbit, out of the burrows and onto the screen. (
MCMLXXXVIII Touchstone Pictures and Amblin Entertain

ment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

then he’s retiring to start his
Own animal actor agency.
“It’s time that animals’
talents are viewed more
seriously. We can do a lot
more than jump through
hoops and dance,’ he says.
Rabbit says his agency, ten-
tatively called “Animals R
Us,” should open around
1990.

IEPA Helps Clean Up
Farms

The Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency routinely
gets calls from farmers who
want to know how to pro-
perly dispose of leftover
hazardous wastes such as
herbicides, pesticides and
waste oil. Proper disposal
means transporting the
waste to St. Louis or
Chicago, where the nearest
incinerators are located.
Since this is very costly
(about $2,400 per 5 gallons
of liquid pesticide), some
farmers let the containers sit
and rust or dump them on
unused farmland, which
contaminates the land and
groundwater. So the IEPA,
in conjunction with the
Adams County Cooperative
Extension Service, spon-
sored a Pilot Farm Chemical
Disposal Program in Adams
County. The agency sent
letters to area farmers ex-
plaining that if they would
bring certain types of their
hazardous waste to the
county fairgrounds on June
3, the agency would pro-
perly dispose of them for
no cost. Two percent of the
farmers participated. The
IEPA collected more than
10,000 pounds of waste and
would like to offer this pro-
gram in all counties if state
money becomes available.

Drought Doings, Or
The Irony Of It All

June was proclaimed “‘Il-
linois Rivers Appreciation
Month,’ and June 20-25
was “‘Water Quality Week in
Illinois.” Mother Nature
didn’t get those press
releases.

Don’t worry about
those globs of green and
brown foam floating down
our rivers, they’re just

Things Could Be
Worse

While the summer’s
drought has left us lament-
ing Mother Nature’s
heartless ways, things
could, and have been,
worse. On March 8, 1925
the Tri-State Tornado hit Il-
linois and lasted three and a
half hours (the standard is
10 to 15 minutes), averaged
62 mph (the norm is 20 to
30), and left a damage zone
of one-half to one mile

oxygen-starved algae which
have been forced to the top
because of heat and low
water levels.

It’s nice to know that
the drought helped
somebody. Illinois coal
usage was expected to in-
crease this summer because
of higher energy demand
from greater air condition-
ing use and overall drought
effects.

wide and 120 miles long.
Six hundred ninety-five
people died in Illinois, In-
diana and Missouri, and
2,027 were hurt. Losses
totaled $101.9 million
dollars (in 1985 dollars).
Between June 19 and 20,
1964 thirty-three hail
storms plagued central and
southern Illinois in 18
hours, causing $34.8
million damage and
destroying at least half of
369 miles of cropland.

a

The Stork Arrives
For The Peregrine
Falcons

A pair of state and federally
endangered peregrine
falcons became the proud
parents of two offspring
this year, believed to be the
first peregrine falcon births
in Illinois since 19351, when
the last peregrine nest was
sighted.

The mother and father,
which nested on a building
ledge 34 stories high, were
released in Chicago during
the past two years as part of
urban peregrine release pro-
grams. (Five birds were
released in 1986, 11 birds
were released last year and
at least ten will be released
this year.)

Peregrine falcon popu-
lations declined in the
1950s with the use of the
pesticide DDT which pre-
vented the birds from absorb-
ing calcium and in turn
thinned their egg shells.

Mark Spreyer, Chicago
Peregrine Release project
Director, said he hopes to
leave the birds undisturbed
in their sky-high nest since
even banding them might
be too much of a dis-
turbance. (Interesting
sidenote: The July issue of

) the Department of Conser-

vation’s Outdoor Highlights
announced Spreyer’s recent
engagement to a Lincoln
park zoo associate
veterinarian named. . . Dr.
Peregrine Wolff.)

Collections Corner

Most people have collected
things at one time or
another, from stamps to
bills to coins. But for Il-
linois survey scientists, it’s
part of the job. Take for ex-
ample the Natural History
Survey. Scientists there
started collecting animal
and plant samples in 1858
and have built up several
different types of collec-
tions, some with millions of
specimens. (Unfortunately
some of the original
specimens were destroyed
in the historical Chicago
fire.)

These collections serve
important functions: they
are a resource when scien-
tists have to identify
specimens (which may be
foreign and new to the state
or country) for research,
state departments, univer-
sities and citizens; they
document the past and pre-
sent flora and fauna of Il-
linois and therefore assist
environmental impact
studies; they aid in student
training; they provide

material for basic research
in specimen classification;
and they keep important
specimens which were used
in specific research.

Dr. Wallace LaBerge,
Head of the Faunistic
Surveys and Insect Iden-
tification Section for the
Natural History Survey, has
collected bees for 23 years.
(The bee collection makes
up part of the Survey’s
nearly six-million-specimen
insect collection). LaBerge
estimates that there are tens
of thousands of bees in the
collection, many of which
he caught and preserved
himself. Some were col-
lected between 1880 and
1905 by a Carlinville
botanist and donated to the
Survey; others are left over
from the undestroyed part
of the 1858 collection.
LaBerge has collected bees
in North America, Europe,
Mexico and Central
America. He has every
species of bee that is native
to Illinois and additional
kinds found only in sur-
rounding states.

Some of the Illinois Natural History Survey's more spec-
tacular collections which are used for display and
demonstration purposes.

Nature Preserves
Commission
Celebrates Silver
Anniversary

The Illinois Nature
Preserves Commission was
created in 1963 by the II-
linois General Assembly.
The nine-member, guber-
natorially appointed,
volunteer Commission has a
four-fold mandate: to deter-
mine areas which qualify
for dedication as Illinois
Nature Preserves, to formal-
ly dedicate areas into the Il-
linois Nature Preserves

System, to establish and
oversee guidelines for their
care and management, and
to promote the preservation
and educational, scientific,
or passive recreational use
of other natural areas. The
Commission currently
oversees 168 Illinois Nature
Preserves, or 27,000 acres
of natural lands, and 5,000
acres of land in its Natural
Heritage Landmark Pro-
gram. Commission staff has
helped preserve thousands
of acres of natural lands in
Illinois.

Counting Our
Endangered Plants

The Illinois Nature Conser-
vancy started a new pro-
gram this year — they're
counting on volunteers to
count Illinois’ endangered
plants. (The Nature Conser-
vancy is a national, non-
profit organization
dedicated to preserving the
variety of life which cur-
rently exists on our planet.)
At approximately 40 sites in
the Chicago area and collar
counties, the Illinois Con-
servancy’s volunteers, or
stewards, visit certain
natural areas and monitor

MoS SES Uy oo

the performance of the
area’s endangered plants.

According to a Conser-
vancy field representative
this is a special program
since the stewards per-
formed highly skilled,
scientific work. Each site
has a different number of
endangered plants and re-
quires different counting
methods. The Conservancy
wants to look at the perfor-
mance of the plants over a
period of about ten years to
determine if the various
sites are being properly
managed. But they want the
stewards to keep counting
long after that.

Mi OO eS Ee ens

As a new feature in this issue we are providing our readers
with a calendar of events at the Illinois State Museum in
Springfield, the Illinois Artisans Shop and the State of Il-
linois Art Gallery in Chicago's State of Illinois Center, and
the Illinois State Museum in Lockport. The first calendar is
a chronological list of events and exhibits at all four loca-
tions. The last calendar is a schedule of events at the
Springfield museum’s “Place of Discovery,” a special area
within the museum dedicated to children and their

interests.

Chronologically Listed Events

September 4 - November 20:

Models, Maquetes and Studies of Major Works commis
sioned by the Illinois for Art Program, Illinois State

Museum Lockport Gallery

September 19 - November 10:
Maurice LeGrand LeSueur Sullins: Paintings 1970-1986,
State of Illinois Art Gallery

September 25 - January 1, 1989:
Collection Update: Painting, Sculpture, Drawing and
Prints, Illinois State Museum, Springfield

October 1 - 31:
Skeleton Quilts and Masks featured at the Illinois
Artisans Shop

October 14, 11:00 a.m.:
Country Crafts demonstrated at the Illinois Artisans Shop

October 28, 6:00 p.m.:
Halloween Event, Illinois State Museum, Springfield

October 28 - 29:
Sculpture Film Festival, Illinois State Museum Lockport
Gallery

November 1 - 30:
Rural Christmas Prints featured at the Illinois Artisans
Shop

November 5, 10:00 a.m.:
Collectors Day, Illinois State Museum, Springfield

November 18, 11:00 a.m.:
Christmas ornaments demonstrated at the Illinois
Artisans Shop

November 21 - January 6, 1989:
Survey exhibition of the Illinois Arts Council Partners in
Purchase Program, State of Illinois Art Gallery

December 1 - 31:
The Elves of Christmas featured at the Illinois Artisans
Shop

December 4 - February 12, 1989:
ABC: The Artist, the Book and the Child exhibition,
Illinois State Museum Lockport Gallery

December 9, 11:00 a.m.:
Holiday Jewelry demonstrated at the Illinois Artisans
Shop

December 10:
Storytelling, Illinois State Museum Lockport Gallery

December 11:
Gaylord Building Open House, Illinois State Museum
Lockport Gallery

January 14:
“I Can't Draw” Workshop, Illinois State Museum
Lockport Gallery

Kids’ Calendar: A Place For Discovery

October 15, 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.:
Discover Dinosaurs

October 29, 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.:
Lights Out! and Cave Wonders

16

November 5, 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.:

The World of Water

November 19, 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.:

Eskimos to Iroquois

December 10, 10:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 2:30 p.m.:

Holiday Fun

TRANSITIONS

IEPA Director
Named

On July 29 Governor James
R. Thompson named Ber-
nard P. Killian as the Direc-
tor of the Illinois En-
vironmental Protection
Agency (IEPA). Killian
replaced Dr. Richard J.
Carlson who resigned to
form an environmental con-
sulting firm based in
Chicago. (Killian had served
as Acting IEPA Director
since May 4.)

Killian, 44, joined the
agency in 1974 asa
legislative liaison. In 1980
he became Manager of
Public Programs and in
1984 served as Manager of
Government and Communi-
ty Affairs.

He guided the IEPA’s
legislative programs through
substantial changes, in-
cluding comprehensive
hazardous waste legislation,
the establishment of the
State “‘Superfund”’ program,
vehicle emissions inspec-
tions law, the Illinois
Chemical Safety Act, the
Solid Waste Management
Act and the Ground Water
Protection Act.

Killian received a law
degree from the University
of Chicago Law School in
1969 and a bachelor’s
degree from the University
of Notre Dame in 1966.

Bernard P. Killian, Director
of the Illinois Environmen-
tal Protection Agency.

E.. months the weather forecast
was “‘continued hot and dry.” Forty
percent — fifty percent — sixty
percent chances of rain never
materialized into the real thing. Birds
patiently perched on lawn sprinklers,
Chicagoans were ozoned indoors,
and farmers ... well, farmers simply
despaired.

Illinois was running on empty.

A Rain Deficit

A drought is in the eye of the
beholder.

Farmers worry about changes in
crops and germination rates, the
impacts of less rain rather than less
rain per se.

Residential water supply users
don’t get excited until one to three
months after the rainfall shortage
occurs, when wells begin to go dry.

The surface waters of the state
don’t show a change until four to six
weeks after the precipitation trend
changes.

There is no one good
quantitative definition of what
constitutes a drought. According
Wayne Wendland, State Cli
with the Illinois Water S
precipitation amounts a
low relative to norma
weeks or more (s2
two-tenths of a
you may have
on your hand

“We start
ry at the end
when rainfa

And no one is sure

what caused it.

we had a drought then, and our worst
fears materialized in June when Illinois
received only 23 percent of its
average rainfall for that month. The
intensity of the drought was reduced
in some areas of the state in July,
with the statewide precipitation for
July at 56 percent of average
(normal). Unfortunately, the west
central and central sectors of the state
received far less than this amount.”

“The average rate at which a
drought of this intensity occurs is
once every ten years, not at all
unusual. What is unique and most
disturbing about this drought was
that the rainfall shortages occurred in
the spring, usually our wettest
months. Most Illinois droughts occur
in the late summer and fall. The
public’s attention isn’t really drawn to
a drought situation until it sees the
impacts of reduced rainfall on
agriculture, water supplies and
recreation. All hell broke loose in the
first two weeks ne, when the
media pic

—
he

(L) Regular hybrid (R) Drought resistent hybrid

No one is sure when it began.
No one is sure when it will end.

was going on.”

This year’s monthly springtime
rainfall averages were almost as low
or lower than those of the infamous
drought years of 1934, 1936 and
1953, which also experienced
springtime droughts. Comparisons
with the Dust Bowl years were
inevitable, although improved
farming practices prevented the soil
losses seen in those years.

Illinois was not wilting alone.
Twenty-three other states were
severely affected by the drought.
Northwestern Wisconsin, the north-
ern half of Minnesota and all of
North Dakota were in worse
condition, receiving only 30 percent
of their average rainfall for April, May
and June. By mid-July Minnesota had
lost half or more of its wheat,
soybean and corn crops. The North
Dakota Farm Bureau estimated that
the drought will cost that state $2.6
billion.

Brief respites from the drought
came with occasional rains in some
areas of the state. In general,
wever, rainfall deficiencies since
ary are in the -7 inch to -12 inch
ith the greatest deficiencies
central part of the state
t climate as a guide,
less than 10 percent
ility that the rain
ill be remedied
1 of next year

Jmega

yverage sum
r the jet stream
at 40,000 feet is

ntral and

northern Wi

~ consin, flow

west to east. Pre-
cipitation is gen-
erally found 200
miles north of

and along that jet
stream. The earth’s
near-surface flow of
air typically moves
from the Bermuda
high to the western
Gulf of Mexico north
over eastern Texas, even-
tually curving northeast
over Illinois. It brings with it
warm and humid weather.

In an average year, rising, moist,
counterclockwise winds known as
cyclones promote rain. These are
followed by the development of
anticyclones, high pressure systems in
which dry air gradually descends
toward the ground, moving in a
clockwise pattern around the center.
These cyclones and anticyclones
alternate to render the nation’s usual
weather pattern.

That is what happens in an
average year. This year was not an
average year.

For some reason not yet known
to atmospheric scientists, this year an
anticyclone stalled over the central
United States and split the jet stream.
The northern jet stream veered into
southern Canada, and precipitation
moved alongside and north of it,
completely missing the Farm Belt.
The southern jet stream moved to the
southern United States, blocking Gulf
moisture from coming north.

The combination of the stalled
high pressure system and the split jet
stream is known as an Omega Block
because of the omega-like circulation
pattern over the United States.
Scientists do not know what caused
it.

The cause of the Omega Block
may not be clear, but its effects are.
From April through early July, the air
blowing into Illinois came from the
desert regions of west Texas, causing
relative humidity to be much lower
than average.

Temperatures during that time
period were also very un-average:
highs that were five to nine degrees
above the average, and lows that
were two to three degrees below the
average. The variations in daytime
and nighttime temperatures were
severe.

The Scorched Earth
After the meager rainfall in mid-July,
18

Another drought victim

refrain was

the farmers’

“Every little drop of rain helps, but. . .”

The unspoken “but” was the
damage already done. Particularly
hard hit was the corn crop which
was in the process of pollination.
Many corn crops had some kind of
tassel (the male flower), but the
female component, the silk, simply
wasn't there or was dried out. No
longer receptive to the pollen grains
released from the tassel, the silk was
incapable of forming kernels in the
ears.

State Director of Agriculture
Larry Werries estimated that the
average corn crop yield in Illinois
would be less than 70 bushels an
acre. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) estimates that the
nationwide corn crop at 4.48 billion
bushels, the smallest since 1983 and
down 37 percent from 1987’s crop of
7.06 billion bushels.

Experiencing similar difficulties
was the soybean crop, which Werries
predicts to be considerably less than
the USDA's nationwide estimate of
1.47 billion bushels. The state average
yield will be 25 bushels or less per
acre.

“Many farmers in Illinois face
complete loss of their crops, while
some will have substantial crops,’
according to Dr. Steve Hollinger of
the Water Survey. “In the last two to
four weeks of the growing period
from mid-August to mid-September,
dry weather means a decrease in the
quality of the corn crop as well as a
decrease in the quality and yield of
the soybean crop.”

With rivers and lakes down and
increased threat of fire to dried
vegetation, Illinois’ wildlife was a
drought victim too. Fish, especially
sport fishes like the bass, crappie and

bluegill, were

finding them-

selves trapped in

shallow tributar-

ies. Their breeding

time is also long
past, so there will
be small crops of
new fish. Fish in the
Sstate’s farm ponds were
endangered by a lack of
sufficient oxygen caused
by shallow waters and high
temperatures.

Birds’ reproduction rates
were low, there was a significant
reduction in their insect food supply
both for themselves and their young,
and birds like robins could not build
nests without the mud needed to
hold the nest together.

Grassland nesting wildlife in
Illinois (pheasants, quail, rabbits,
many songbirds, etc.) suffered
indirectly from the drought, when
about the first of July, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture approved
haying on Conservation Reserve
Program (CRP) lands in 13 states. CRP
lands in all states are now open to
haying, coming at that critical time
when many species of grassland
wildlife were nesting. CRP lands
were signed up for 10 years, with
Owners given annual payments to idle
their land and money to establish
cover crops. These cover crops are
now in jeopardy from both mowing
and drought.

Waterfowl was extremely
vulnerable, with little water at
nesting places. ““Dabbling ducks are
in big trouble, because they nest in
prairie potholes, and those potholes
are just plain dry,’ reported Glen
Sanderson of the Natural History
Survey. “Some diving ducks will be
all right, but some nest on vegetation
in marshes and those marshes are
drying up. Waterfowl in the prairie
provinces of Canada, the Dakotas
and Minnesota are in very bad shape.
Adult ducks will head north of the
prairie potholes where there is
permanent water for a better food
supply, but they won't breed up
there. “Fall populations of ducks are
usually about 50 percent young birds.
Duck populations were down to
begin with, what with two to three
years of bad water conditions. It’s
just going to get worse.”

“As for other species, direct
mortality rates may not be too high,
but the smaller creatures like rabbits

and squirrels, shrews and mice will
have a hard time finding a decent
food supply. Rabbits need tender
vegetation, and they’re not going to
get that with these conditions. As for
the squirrels, the acorn crop is in bad
shape, and litters will be small as a
result. There will be some effect on
deer as well. Like rabbits they need
more tender vegetation. Oppossums,
raccoons and the like should do all
right since they have a more varied
food supply — carrion, fruits,
vegetables, insects, etc.”

Ozone Alerts and Sprinking
Patrols

Things weren't easy on the human
population either.

Chicago wheezed through a two-
day “yellow” ozone alert, when
ozone levels hit 200 to 300 parts per
billion on July 7 and 8. The highest
ozone levels seen in Chicago in a
decade sent joggers, the elderly and
everybody else with common sense
indoors.

Most people throughout Illinois
stayed indoors, and air conditioners
sales flourished, as did the carwash,
lawn sprinkler and garden hose
businesses. Those brave souls who
did go out found wilted gardens and
brown scruffy-looking lawns. The
more adventurous ran into or rather
dove into trouble in swimming holes
and lakes. Diving and resultant neck
and spine injuries have become
another aspect of the drought.

Water conservation was the
order of the day. In north suburban
Naperville midnight lawn soakers
were in danger of tickets from
municipal sprinking patrols. Parts of
Kankakee and Iroquois counties
declared water emergencies, forcing
some communities to drill new wells
or truck in water. At this writing,
some communities like Springfield
have imposed mandatory water
conservation measures on everything
from lawn sprinklers to water served
in restaurants.

Recreational water use declined
as river levels declined, with many
streams at near record lows. Water
levels in lakes and reservoirs also
continued to decline. The water level
of Lake Michigan decreased as well,
placing the lake at its 100-year
average level for the first time since
1977. In recent years lake levels have
hit record highs.

(continued on page 24)

Drought And The Greenhouse Effect

by Stan Changon

The unexpected and severe
nationwide drought of 1988,
coupled with increasing claims of
future global changes of warmer
and drier climatic conditions as a
result of the ever increasing release
of carbon dioxide (CO,) from the
burning of fossil fuels and
deforestation, have led more than
one person to speculate about the
possible tie between the two
atmospheric issues. Was the highly
unusual springtime drought in
Illinois and elsewhere the first
symptom of the climate change
atmospheric scientists had been
talking about for the past 10 years?
The scientific community
unanimously says “‘no,” the 1988
drought is not tied to the ever
increasing atmospheric burden of
our waste gases. Normal climatic
variability is sufficiently great to
make this conclusion invalid.
Regardless, the Greenhouse Issue
has found international concern
and is the single most critical
atmospheric issue facing society. It
will likely soon eclipse acid rain
and the ozone layer problems. The
Greenhouse concept says that CO,
and other trace gases with
comparable atmospheric
properties (methane, CFC’s, and
nitrous oxides) will act as a
“window’”’ letting the sun’s energy
in but not letting as much re-
radiation back into space, leading
inevitably to global warming and
changes in all weather conditions.
What do we know? There is
clear evidence that CO, and the
other trace gases are steadily
increasing; the decadal increase of
CO, is 4% in the earth’s cleanest
air, that over the central Pacific.
Second, there is strong scientific
agreement that these increases will
lead to global warming. Global
Climate Models (GCM’s) developed
over the last 15 years on huge
computers by climatologists at four
U.S. research centers, have been
used to model the future
Greenhouse Effect (the radiation
balance in GCM's is changed to
emulate the gaseous effects on the
atmosphere). They all predict that

between 30 and 70 years hence,
global warming will occur. Their
warming estimates range from one
to four and one-half degrees
Centigrade, with the greatest
warming at the Poles and the least
near the Equator.

What we do not know? The
GCM’s require a myriad of
scientific assumptions. Note that
their widely differing predictions
(one to four and one-half degrees
change and each requiring very
different time periods to develop)
reflect a lack of precision; they are
still primitive in many ways.
Atmospheric scientists cannot
specify, in any accurate way, how
the climate changes will occur ...
will they be gradual or in a few
major jumps interspersed with no
change? (Such uncertainties also
make any association with the
drought of 1988 impossible.) The
GCM’s have poor spatial resolution
and their predictions for future
climate conditions over areas like
the Great Lakes are widely
different. For example, the output
of one GCM indicates that in 50 to
60 years, the level of Lake
Michigan will be two feet lower
than today’s average, whereas
another GCM output leads to a
nine foot decrease! This difference
creates vast differences in the
likely effects on water supplies,
transportation, and the economy
of Chicago, of Illinois, and the U.S.
and Canada.

What do we need to do?
This essay does not deny the
seriousness of the Greenhouse
issue, but attempts to put it in
perspective. The major scientific
uncertainties make it difficult to
adopt restrictive policies that of
necessity would have far-reaching
impacts on national global
economic growth. The watchwords
are research and refinement of the
GCM's, and close and careful
monitoring of the climate.

By James Krohe Jr.

E.. more than 90 years its scientists
have hunted fish from aboard horse-
drawn wagons, camped in floating
houses, been bombed by birds, dived
into water so murky that they had to
see with their hands instead of their
eyes “Only certain people like to
work in a field station,’ explains
Stephen Havera, a doctor of ecology
who is director of the Havana River
Research Laboratory on Lake
Chautauqua in Mason County. “It’s
not that plush.”

Forbes’ Foresight

In 1895 Dr. Stephen A. Forbes,
founding Chief of the Illinois Natural
History Survey, complained that
students, indeed science itself “suf-
fered ... from lack of opportunity
to study nature alive.’ Thanks to
Forbes the study of nature in Illinois

still in the water like a broken log
with teeth; a few yards upstream a
great blue heron — what Illinois’ pre-
eminent nature writer John Madson
once described as “‘a fishspear with
an attached bird as a life-support
system’’ — stands at attention.

What a remote field research sta-
tion cannot provide in plush it makes
up for in proximity. “In Champaign,
you get into the field maybe once a
week,” Havera says, recalling his own
experience at the Illinos Water
Survey, “‘and then it takes a two-hour
drive to get there.’ In contrast, the
Havana station offers convenient dai-
ly access to riverine marshes,
floodplain forests, mud flats, and of
course the Illinois and (barely 75
miles away) the Mississippi. Says
Havera, “‘It’s monitoring the same
population and habitat year in and
year out that gives you an index to
measure variation.”

In ecological science, you can’t
understand the way things are unless

A Day In The Life Of

The Havana River
Research Laboratory

has been very lively indeed ever
since. It was largely at Forbes’ sugges-
tion that the then-State Natural
History Laboratory established in
1894 a biological research station at
Havana, on the backwaters of Illinois
River.

It was the first inland aquatic
biological station in the country
manned and equipped for con-
tinuous investigations and the first to
dedicate itself to the study of a major
river system. Even today, it is still one
of only a handful of such stations on
the large floodplain rivers, as what
was begun on the Illinois. River 94
years ago has since been undertaken
on the Nile, the Volga, and the
Amazon.

“The creek has never been down
this far,’ Havera observes as he
trudges across a footbridge which
connects we ee phone to the.sk

survival in a to cool water
spri In the Shadow of the bridge
a aie of young channel catfish

“gorges on minnows. Nearby a gar lies

20

you understand how things used to
be. Because senior scientific staff
have been stationed at Havana almost
continuously for nearly a century,
they have been able to measure the
river’s response to a variety of man-
made “‘perturbations’’, from increased
flow from diverted Lake Michigan
water to sewage pollution to
sedimentation to the introduction of
alien species such as the common
carp and the Asiatic clam. Havera
slaps at a stinging fly which was
claiming this spot of shore, then
points out that the only reason th
is a Lake Chautauqua during th
short summer of 1988 is that'y
being pumped into it.
come and go. But we
environment,so

e Senior
ta iy at the
Havana 1a His colleagues include
Richard Sparks, an aquatic biologist
who specializes in mussels and other
creatures that live in the bottoms of
rivers and lakes, and Frank Bellrose,

an ornithologist who has made a
lifelong study of the birds which
float on and fly above them. They
are joined by as many as 19 junior
scientists, interns, and support staff,
plus farther-flung associates. The lab
is isolated physically but not
bureaucratically. Ecological research
tends to be not just interdisciplinary

Mussels are studied i
environment

The lab
with the

but interagency i
staff works in @
other Illinois gs
state universi
federal wild
agencies.

area lakes. In 1939 perma-
ers were built next to Lake
ua. That small frame

e, and a $100,000 addition
tly finished which

d available space. The new
are feet provide expanded
ce and library space, a com-
om, even office space for

© scientists.

avera is called to the telephone.
lan to fell 79 trees near Rice Lake
as excited local controversy, since
the trees are near an eagle roost. A
meeting is being held that evening to
discuss it, and Havera is asked to at-
tend. “My kid’s got a ball game
tonight,” he laments.

Such requests are common.
Science intersects recreation, wildlife
protection, environmental protection,
and the expertise of the lab’s staff is
often in demand. Long-term research
gets them involved in short-term con-

troversies. “In 1982 there was a big
mussel die-off, so mussels became
suddenly important,’ Havera recalls.
“Or it might be ‘Save Peoria Lake!’ }
Part of the lab’s role is to tea
as well as learn. Havera appreci
the need for public educatiog
talking about science is not

e building
walls are fes-
ptOs of scientists in
and neckties collecting
usSels the size of dessert plates, of
before-and-after scenes of drained or

silted-up lakes, of forests of water
plants that aren’t there anymore and
of mud flats which are, of several
generations of investigators diving,
seining, tagging, and measuring
everything that ever swam, flew,

Ducks under study

crawled, or grew — from eagles to
benthic macroinvertebrates. Dr. C.A.
Kofoid, superintendent of the Havana
station from 1895 to 1900, published
1,000 printed pages on what he
learned about Illinois River plankton
alone.

vera excuses himself again, to
a word with a colleague who
just returned from a morning
aboard one of the lab’s mini-navy of
9 watercraft. Havera describes the
channel catfish he'd seen in the
creek, adding some distinctly non-
icthyological judgments about how
one of them might taste on a plate.
“That’s Brian Todd,’ Havera resumes.
Todd and co-investigator Frank
Dillon are trying to learn more about
the movements of the channel cats.
Radio transmitters were surgically im-
planted in some three dozen fish
which were then released into area
streams. Their locations can be track-
ed in shallow water from as far away
as a half-mile, 24
hours a day, data
which should be use-
ful in identifying (and
thus possibly expand-
ing) the preferred hab-
itats of this valuable
sport and food fish.

Old Questions, New
Answers

“We're doing things now that they
didn’t have the instruments to do
twenty to forty years ago,” Havera ex-
plains. Gas chromatographs have
been used here to analyze the blood
chemistry of ducks that have ingested
lead shotgun pellets, for example,

Havana River Research Laboratory — INHS

and computers are invaluable in
digesting large amounts of informa-
tion about the distribution of and
fluctuations in waterfowl
populations.

Much of the lab’s work involves
finding new answers to old ques-
tions. Writing in 1958, George Ben-
nett noted in the I//inois Natural
History Survey Bulletin, ‘“Many of the
early activities in the management of
aquatic resources of the United States
were based on premises which later
research proved to be inaccurate.’ For
example, corn, buckwheat, Japanese
millet, and milo have been the staple
foods offered by waterfowl managers
since the 1930s. Ducks eat them, cer-

Havana Research Station’s main
building

tainly. But Havana researchers had
established 50 years ago that duck
feeding habits varied with available
foods. Their preferred natural diet is
highly varied, consisting of moist-soil
plants such as smartweeds and
nutgrasses along with pecans and pin
oak acorns. Those foods have largely
disappeared, however, leaving water-
fowl increasingly dependent on
simplified managed diets which,
research suggests, are not as nutri-
tional as wild diets. (Ducks fed ex-
clusively on corn, for example, ac-
tually lose weight.)

There are new questions which
need answers too. Havera leaves the
office building and crosses a dusty
gravel drive to the facility’s wet lab, a
former storage building converted for
the moment into a combination
aquarium and TV studio. The
cultured pearl industry in Japan is
paying top prices for mussel shell
from the Mississippi and the lower
Illinois. Commercial musselers have

moved onto those streams from Ten-
nessee and Arkansas, taking as much
as a thousand tons of shell per year
from each. Because mussels are slow
to reproduce, wildlife biologists
worry that surviving beds may be
ruinously overfished.

The once-rich mussel beds have
already been decimated by over-
exploitation and sedimentation. A be-
aproned Phil Moy stands amid a
jungle of cattle troughs and computer
screens, the former holding mussels
of various species in sand and gravel

ch mollusks often offer the

oozy mud. The mussels’
itself a food source for certat
vertebrates which in turn are
upon by fish. But the link between
mussels and game fish may be even
more intimate. “Fish and mussels
clearly share a close relationship,”
says Moy. “Mussels have to parasitize
a fish as part of their reproductive cy-
cle, for example, or they can’t sur-
vive. But we don’t know exactly
what happens.”

To find out, Moy and a colleague
set up matched tanks. Mechanical
paddles, gravel, and filtered light
simulate a stream-bottom environ-
ment, half of which is populated by
mussels, half bare. A single fish
swims in each. A video camera link-
ed to a computer constantly records
the fish’s position in the tank at one
to two second intervals. Different
species of fish will be tested under
different conditions (including
breeding) in simulations of advancing
complexity. If mussels do play some
specific role in the lifecycle of game
fish, regulation to restrict commercial
musseling might be warranted.

At The Mercy Of Nature

Mussels have always figured pro-
minently on the scientific agenda at
Havana. Although of diminished
commercial importance, mussels are
still vital to diving ducks as food. To
the human ecologist, they are vital as
pollution monitors. To riverine in-
habitants in general they are vital as
waste assimilators and purifiers. Their
numbers and variety have been
decimated by sedimentation and
over-harvesting; a 1966 survey by
then-director William Starret found
only half the species of mussels along
the Illinois that had been reported
prior to 1900. More modern dangers

22

threaten mussel scientists as much as
mussels themselves. In 1983, divers
from the lab spent two dangerous
weeks diving near Naples, Illinois,
playing tag with snags and tow boats
as they marked mussels in a study
gauging the impact of barge traffic on
local shellfish populations.
“You're at the mer
and the animals whes¢
studies,’ Hayerae

ot example, attention
il shift from the river
e skies. Censuses of
waterfow! visiting the Illinois valley
ave been made weekly between
September and April for 50 years,
with less comprehensive surveys
made of waterfowl and eagles along
the Mississippi in years since.
Pioneering studies of duck feeding
and nesting habits were made at
Havana beginning in 1938, as well as
research which supported the
economic and ecological utility of
wildlife refuges. Much of that was
done by Frank Bellrose, who has
been widely recognized as having
done for ducks what Johnny
Appleseed did for orchards.

Unfortunately the great flocks of
ducks and geese which visit the
Illinois and Mississippi valleys have
been dwindling. Looking toward the
empty water of Lake Chautauqua,
Havera says that more than 100,000,
perhaps as many as a quarter million
ducks (most of them mallards) will
alight there in November to rest and
feed. As recently as ten years ago,
half a million birds could be counted
there.

To find out why, an ongoing
study of waterfowl management has
occupied Havana staff for more than
seven years. Waterfowl habitat has
been inventoried for the first time
since 1955. Food studies done by
Bellrose from 1938-40 have been up-
dated with the help of 11,000 birds
of 14 species. Banding data amassed

since 1922 ha

4 lyzed to
. Distribution

Less of Everything

For the moment, however, the only
ducks at the Havana lab are in cages
on the grounds. It is a strange
menagerie which includes pink wood
ducks, whose feathers were dyed as
part of a study on moulting and
breeding behavior.

“A lot of the work essential to
the ban on lead shot was done here
in these pens,’ says Havera. Lead
poisoning of ducks which ingested
spent hunters’ shot was recognized as
long ago as 1870, but the precise
physiology of the condition is still
not fully understood. The rates at
which such shot is ingested, the ef-
fects of “second dosing” on wild
birds, and comparisons of lead levels
in dead and live birds have all been
investigated in recent years.

The impending federal ban on
the use of lead shot is one bright spot
in an otherwise gloomy chronicle.
There are fewer species, fewer
habitats, fewer lakes than when the
lab first opened — less of everything
in fact except pollution and sedi-
ment. The backwater lakes and
sloughs so vital to the river
ecosystem are filling up and conver-
ting to grass and then floodplain
forest. ““We’ve done in 50 years what
nature would have taken 1,000 to
do,” Havera says. Even the lead shot
ban (scheduled to take full effect in
1992) did not become law until more
than a century after the problem was
diagnosed. “How many ducks — and
eagles which ate poisoned ducks —
died in that time?”

Havera quickly adds, “How
many eagles and ducks will that ban
save over the next 100 years?” The
circumstances of wildlife research
leave the scientists based in Havana
doing more postmortems than
preventive medicine. The future may
see more efforts to restore what
could not be protected. If that hap-
pens, the knowledge accumulated
here will provide the blueprint.

Until then there will always be
more to learn, and people who will
want to do the field research needed
to learn it. ““People do their best
work,” says Havera, ‘where they’re
happiest.”

W LED tebe

Thousand

The mysterious domestic

.

-
-

Bippcone once said that a Secrets several thousand

cat knows a thousand secrets

and will tell none. Consider this: un-
like most creatures, no one really
knows how domestic cats came into
being, or why, or how, or when

or where.

According to The Complete Cat
Book (Richard Smith, 1963, New
York), several legends evolved around
the cat’s mysterious origin. One
variation says the domestic cat was
born when Noah, in order to solve
the problem of plentiful rodents on-
board the Ark, passed his hand over
the lioness and she sneezed, produc-
ing the cat. Another legend says a
bored lioness became enamored with
the vivacious, curious monkey and
their coupling produced the cat
which exhibited characteristics of
both parents.

Paleozoologists believe that the
first scientific tccord of a cat-like
creature was fifty million years ago
when the Miacis, the cat’s ancestor,
lived. The Miacis evolved into the
civet cat, which quickly evolved into
the present domestic cat, although
scientists have no understanding why
this quick evolution occurred.

Stormy Start

While no one knows when cats first
encountered man, it is known that
cats have been domesticated for

years and have
alternately experienced periods of
great favor and great rancor during
their domestication. At one time Egypt
was the cat’s most fervent admirer,
exalting the feline to the state of a
deity. Royal cats received fish and
milk-soaked bread, and were mum-
mified and ceremonially mourned
upon death. (Egyptians would shave
their eyebrows upon their cat’s
demise.) The cat-loving Egyptians
even made it a capital offense to kill
a feline. The Moslems and Romans
were similarly fond of their furry
friend.

However, during the Middle Ages
in Europe the cat fell from favor and
experienced somewhat of a feline
holocaust. The mysterious creatures
were considered evil, even devils,
and were burned en masse at lively
public festivals, dropped from steeple
tops, or used as targets for archery
practice.

America welcomed the furry
creatures as utilitarian friends.
According to The Complete Book of
Cats (A. Suchsdorf, 1956, New York),
felines first arrived in America with
the colonists and by World War II
were stationed at every military base,
depot, factory, shipyard and the like
as the local controller of rodents.
And the cat's popularity seems to be
ever-increasing as urban dwellers opt

=
mee! A
al

for cats as pets instead of dogs
because they generally require less
space and care.

But with the increase in the
number of rural and urban cats, peo-
ple have also begun to question the
feline’s effects, if any, on other
wildlife. Cats are well-known for
their hunting abilities and habits. But
some wonder if those habits are
adversely affecting their prey and
wildlife in general, and if so, what
should or could be done about it.

Dr. Richard Warner, Wildlife
Ecologist for the Illinois Natural
History Survey, conducted a five-year
study of free-ranging domestic cats in
a rural area in east-central Illinois
from 1977 to 1981. He wanted to try
to determine the number of cats in II-
linois and observe their general
behavior, such as their movements,
tolerance of other cats, and hunting
and feeding habits because he
thought doing so could help deter-
mine cats’ impact on other wildlife
Warner also wanted to see if there
were any feral cats in the area (a cat
which has reverted to an untamed
state and does not depend on man
for its survival.)

To do this Warner and his
research team garnered information
by interviewing cat and farmstead
owners in the area and by trappin
cats and radio-tracking 11 adult «

for a period of about 30 days during
each of the five years.

Cats As Free-Ranging
Creatures

After tracking the 11 cats Warner
discovered that the males, as popular
belief may have it, were truly the
wandering tomcats compared to the
more stationary females. On an
average the males travelled twice the
area of the females. But both males
and females spent almost as much
time on farmsteads as they did on
roadsides, field edges, farmstead
perimeters, and waterways.

The males’ gypsy ways decreas-
ed their lifespans. The far-ranging
males were found to be more suscep-
tible to death due to severe weather
or other unknown causes. Both sexes
of free-ranging cats had relatively
short lifespans (four to five years) and
were fairly susceptible to death as a
result of human action or accident.
Even so, Warner’s study showed that
overall the number of cats in this
rural area increased from 291 in 1977
to 445 in 1981. This result was
similar with pet food industry studies
which showed the number of cats in
national urban areas to be increasing.

However while the number of
cats is growing, the types may not be,
at least not in Illinois. Warner found

no evidence to suggest that Illinois is
home to true feral cats. He says feral
cats like terrain that has plenty of
holes and burroughs, much unlike Il-
linois’ environment. But Warner did
find transient cats, especially males,
who roamed from farmstead to farm-
stead and finally stayed at one or
died.

Cats As Hunters

While the cats studied were fed daily
at the farmsteads, Warner discovered
that all of the free-ranging cats still
hunted, although to varying degrees.
As evidenced by their deposits at the
farms, the cats most often killed mice
and rats, followed by small birds, rab-
bits, other rodents and pheasants.
Warner says hunting is instinctual for
cats, but he’s unsure whether these
skills would be sophisticated enough
to keep the cats alive if other food
sources weren't provided.

In summary Warner says the
study’s data indicate that between
five to six million cats live in Illinois
in rural and urban areas, and that cats
are hunters by instinct. Since the in-
crease in the national cat population
has been generally unrestrained by
government, Warner suggests that
wildlife agencies try to discover the
degree to which cats are depredating
wildlife in certain environments and
research appropriate ways to control

the population of domestic cats, if
necessary. He suggests that if cats are
having an adverse effect on wildlife,
the public could be made aware of
the fact and the number of cats could
be controlled. Warner says he doesn’t
feel there’s currently enough informa-
tion to launch a major public educa-
tional program, but that others
disagree.

“The irony is that we're looking
at the negative side of cats, whereas
in the larger context it’s a people prob-
lem,’ Warner says, explaining that
humans may have a responsibility to
be aware of cats’ hunting instincts
and to help control their depredation
of wildlife by keeping them inside,
having them declawed, or attaching
bells to their collars.

However, pet ownership and the
freedoms associated with it are sen-
sitive issues. So far only 10 percent of
America’s county governments have
cat-control laws. In fact, according to
The Complete Cat Book (Smith,
1963), an effort to control domestic
cats failed once already in Illinois.
When Adlai Stevenson was governor,
a group called Friends of Birds in-
itiated a bill which would have re-
quired that cats be house-bound or
leashed when outside. He vetoed it
saying, “It is in the nature of the cat
to do a certain amount of unescorted
roaming.”

Hot and Dry
(continued from page 19)

Landscapers and nurseries,
which often guarantee new plantings,
have been hard hit. In California the
microchip industry felt the effects of
the drought, as water needed to wash
the chips fell short and more chips
were rejected as a result. Barge traffic
on the Mississippi slowed to a crawl,
and a proposed diversion of Lake
Michigan water to the river system
failed.

When Will It End?

Good question, according to Wayne
Wendland. “It’s over when it’s over. I
wish I had a better answer than that,
but the National Weather Service's
long-term forecasts all suggest that
we're in for hotter temperatures

24

and average or below average
precipitation. We still have seven to
twelve inches of rain to make up. Of
course I always take some perverse
hope from the fact that once
everyone is in agreement about the
weather, it’s bound to change.’

And that may be as much hope
as anyone can expect.

Dr. Wayne Wendland has been at the
Illinois Water Survey since 1980 and
is currently a Principal Scientist
there. The State Climatologist for
Illinois, he received his PhD in
Meteorology from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Steve
Hollinger received his PhD in
Agronomy and Agricultural

Meteorology from Purdue University
and has been a Professional Scientist
with the Water Survey since 1984.
Dr. Stanley Changnon has been with
the Survey since 1952, serving five
years as Chief. He is now a Principal
Scientist and Chief Emeritus. Dr.
Glen Sanderson is head of the Illinois
Natural History’s Wildlife Research
Section.

Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley

Chairman, Society for the Surveys
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton

Vice-Chairman, Society for the
Surveys

Ottawa Silica Company Foundation

Ottawa

Walter E. Hanson

Treasurer, Society for the Surveys
Founder, Hanson Engineers, Inc.
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals Company
Hinsdale

Henry N. Barkhausen
Jonesboro

John Doxsie
A.E. Staley
Decatur

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie
Bloomington

Clayton Gaylord
Ingersoll Milling Machine Company
Rockford

Michael O. Gibson
Marine Bank of Springfield
Springfield

Richard C. Hartnack
The First National Bank of Chicago
Chicago

John Homeier
Bi-Petro
Springfield

Richard A. Lenon

International Minerals & Chemicals
Corporation

Northbrook

Richard A. Lumpkin
Illinois Consolidated Telephone

Company
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R. & H. Construction
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William A. Rooney
Wilmette

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Forest Park Foundation
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McDermott, Will & Emery
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J.R. Short Milling Company
Chicago

Joseph Spivey
Illinois Coal Association
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Green Prairie Products, Inc.
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Champaign

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Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director

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Assistant Director

Jane Christman
Assistant to the Director

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Illinois Scientific Surveys

Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

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Understanding Our Natural Heritage

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Scientific ~~.

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

Winter 1989

The Society Page

This cold and snowy season may seem quiet, but beneath the sur-
face is a veritable beehive of animal activity. If you’ve ever won-
dered about the winter of Illinois’ furred, feathered and finned
creatures, Survey scientists chronicle it for you in The Winter of
Their Content.

The American Bottom is part of the vast Mississippi
River floodplain, lying in Illinois between Alton and Chester.
Join us in the first of a two-part feature on a part of Illinois
where humans have lived and prospered for over 10,000 years.

In an earlier issue we looked at the work of Water Survey
scientist Don Dolske in preserving the cultural monuments at
Gettysburg National Park. We turn southwest now, where he is
helping to preserve the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi Indians.

The resurrection and recreation of Illinois’ wetlands is the
focus of efforts by Dr. Donald Hey, Survey scientists and many
others, and is also the focus of our article on the Des Plaines
River demonstration project.

Most Illinoisans know about the great value of this state’s
coal reserves, but in this issue we will enlighten you about fluo-
rite, the state’s official mineral. Illinois produces ten percent of
the nation’s fluorite, used in the production of everything from
toothpaste to space—walking propellants.

Three very talented photographers have developed a fasci-
nation with— and three books on— the landscape of Illinois. Our
series on The Art of Nature looks at Illinois In Camera.

I am constantly amazed at the diversity of projects under-
taken by our three Surveys in preserving the great beauty of
Illinois. I hope you will join me in supporting their efforts by
becoming a member of the Society. An application form is on the
back cover.

Enjoy a peaceful and prosperous New Year.
Sincerely,

Aor bit Mme ey

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Table of Contents

The American Bottom 1
History in the vast Mississippi River floodplain is as rich as

the land itself.

Wetlands: A Living Laboratory 4
What's lost can be found again. Long—vanished wetlands
along the Des Plaines River are being resurrected.

The Ancient Ones 7
The spectacular cliff dwellings of the Anasazi Indians are in
peril from man and nature both.

Surveying Illinois 9
Biorhythms Currents

Centering on Waste Geograms

Short Takes Transitions

Tomorrow’s Mineral

Found in beautiful hues ranging from royal purple to amber,
the state’s official mineral is used in the manufacture of
products ranging from aerosols, refrigerants and teflon to
“Tiffany” shades.

The Winter of Their Content 17
The winter lifestyles of the furry and the fleet.

The Art of Nature: Illinois In Camera 21
Three landscape photographers focus in on Illinois.

About the Cover

Waterfall, icicles, and leaves in a canyon in the Upper Dells,
Matthiessen State Park, LaSalle County, Illinois. Photographer:
Willard Clay.

Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys
Volume III, Number II
Winter 1989

Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin Editor

Jane Christman Assistant to the Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Stay In Touch

Name, address or delivery changes, membership or contribution inquiries,

letters to the Editor, should be addressed to The Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, 319 W.Cook St., Springfield, I., 62704, (217)522-2033.

If at present you are receiving more copies of the magazine than usual it is
because we are using many new mailing lists. While we are cross—checking to
eliminate duplication, please give your extra copies to friends.

Copyright 1989 by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys. All rights
reserved,

PART I: THE CULTURE

THE AMERICAN BOTTOM

Child in East St. Louis

by James Krohe, Jr

It is appropriate that the dominant landmark
in a place called the American Bottom
should be an Indian ceremonial mound
named after French monks. The American
Bottom (also known as the Bottoms) is the
Illinois part of the Mississippi River
floodplain lying between Alton and Ches-
ter, roughly 70 miles to the south. Today
the site of the scattered urban complex of
Metro—East, the Bottom has been home to
humans for at least 10,000 years, and his-
tory is piled up as deep and as thick as the
silts, sands and gravels which fill the riv-
er’s ancient bedrock valley.

The French Influence

In its pristine form the Bottom was
ecologically rich. It offered food in all
seasons, wood for fires, chert (a form of
flint) for tools, access to trade goods

via the river, building sites, salt — all were
close at hand. One modern anthropologist
estimates that the Indians had everything
needed for subsistence within three kilome-
ters of any site in the Alton—Dupo section
of the Bottom.

It was into this Eden that Mar-
quette and Jolliet paddled in 1673. The
French were the first Europeans to see the
Bottom and the first to settle it. When
Anglo pioneers first dared cross the

Appalachians on their march from the At-
lantic coast to the continental interior, the
Illinois French already had a history half a
century long. The village of Cahokia was
founded as a mission to the Tamaroa Indi-
ans in 1698, the year before Williamsburg
became the capital of colonial Virginia.
Old Kaskaskia had a church in 1695, and by
1720 Fort de Chartres, upriver from Ches-
ter, was the seat of political and military
authority which extended from Arkansas to
the Great Lakes, and which prevailed until
shortly after the British victory in the
French and Indian War in 1763.

The French were Illinois’ early
civilizers. Missionaries and fur merchants
set up churches and trading posts all along
the Bottom, and the military followed with
forts to protect them. The names on today’s
maps recall the French influence, even if
modern pronunciations no longer do: Fort
de Chartres, Prairie du Rocher, Carondelet,
Renault. Never numerous, the French de-
parted from pioneer stereotypes in many
ways. They built with logs stood on end
(two such structures survive in Cahokia),
they farmed communally, and they lived in
compact villages rather than on farflung
homesteads.

Unlike later European arrivals, the

French in Illinois were interested in trade

Old farmstead

more than territory. They farmed exten-
sively, true, but as Carl Ekberg, the Illinois
State University historian who has made

a study of the Illinois French, says, “Agri-
culture became a part of their trade net-
work. Illinois was the grain area of French
Louisiana. A lot of grain was shipped to
New Orleans along with deerskins and
bear hides.”

Catholic church in Cahokia

PART I: THE CULTURE

The American Bottom, of course, stands
between the confluence of the Missouri,
Illinois, and Mississippi to the north and
the Mississippi and Ohio to the south, mak-
ing it the intersection of a continental sys-
tem of river roads which stretches

from the Rockies to Pennsylvania and from
the Gulf to Canada. The ancient Indians
traded shell and precious metals along these

rivers, the French pelts, lead, and grain.
Later the cargoes would change, to grain
and coal and crude oil and iron ore, but
the river remained the focus of the eco-
nomic life of the Bottom until well into
this century.

The tenure of the Illinois French
in the Bottom was cut short by political and
military development beyond the Missis- -
sippi — France’s defeat in the French and
Indian War with Great Britain and, later.
the American Revolution. The survey lines
and roads of those early French towns
shaped the subsequent physical develop-
ment of the American Bottom, but their po-
litical and cultural influence was short—
lived once Americans began arriving in
numbers. Many French had already moved
across the river to St. Louis when that vil-
lage was founded in 1764, taking their cul-
ture with them; the Bottom village of Prai-
rie du Pont, for instance, waS renamed sim-
ply Dupo.

The Mississippians

The French did not realize it, but their saga
of arrival, domination, and departure had
been lived out many times before them in
the Bottom by a succession of Indian peo-
ples going back to the Stone Age. Evidence
of ceremonial complexes, fishing

and nutting camps, communal houses, bur-
ial grounds and tool—making camps from
various eras have been found in all parts of
the Bottom save the bluff face.

Recreating these ten centuries of
occupation from their buried remains, how-
ever, is like trying to read a novel which is
missing key pages. Few artifacts left by the
Paleoindians who dwelt there 8,000—10,000
years ago have been found on the Bottom
itself; they are believed to have been
washed away by river floods or buried be-
neath dozens of feet of alluvium. Dozens of
mounds built by the Mississippian peoples
were plowed; the cliff near Alton which
bore the magical painted image of the Piasa

Bird (probably a pictograph of an Indian

se
SHO LES Ss

Storefront

“medicine bird”) reported by Marquette and
Jolliet was quarried for limestone. Such is
usually the habit of conquerors; the stone
used to build the last Fort de Chartres in
the 1750s was cannibalized by locals who
used it in the foundations of their own
houses and barns.

No one carted away Monks
Mound, however. Some 100 feet high and
occupying fully 15 acres of ground, this
terraced behemoth was the ceremonial
centerpiece of the Mississippian culture
which flourished between 900 A.D. and
1400 A.D., and the only pile of dirt to be
named a national historic site and be de-
clared one of the world’s cultural treasures
by the United Nations. During the peak
of the Mississipian occupation, Cahokia
was the focal point of an urban complex
of satellite towns and farming outposts
which may have been home to as many
as 40,000 people.

The Mississippians at Cahokia
achieved a high level of civilization in an
ecomony sustained by corn’s primitive an-
cestor, maize. They lived the way civilized
people everywhere tend to live. They made

PART I: THE CULTURE

calendars, traded with remote peoples, suf-
fered from a too—rich diet, dedicated beau-
tiful artworks to the gods, organized them-
selves according to status, and acquired
enough wealth to worry about other tribes
stealing it.

The accomplishments of the Mis-
sissippians in art and social organization
were unrivalled in fact except by the distant
Mexican civilizations. However the culture
mysteriously faded some 600 years ago,
and by the time the French arrived three
centuries later the Indian tribes that had
taken up residence in the Mississippians’
abandoned metropolis were as ignorant of
them as were the puzzled Europeans. The
whites did not drive the Mississippians
from the Bottom, nor cheat them of it. Nor
is there evidence of war or plague which
might explain the sudden demise of the
civilization at Cahokia. Anthropologists
have been arguing the point since the 1920s.
Some speculate that the cause was eco-
nomic, that the population grew too large to
be sustained by the local resource base
perhaps, or that hostility from Late Wood-
land peoples disrupted trade networks.

All-American

The Indian cultures of the Bottom presaged
the American one in fascinating ways.
Floodplain and upland peoples sometimes
coexisted in the Bottom, perhaps uneasily,
each with different cultures and economic
bases. In the same way, modern upland
towns like Alton or Belleville are largely
distinct, ethnically, politically, and eco-
nomically, from lower floodplain towns
like East St. Louis. As the noted sociologist
Daniel Elazar observed about the Metro—
East region in 1970, “It is a miniature
megalopolis masquerading as part of a met-
ropolitan area.”

The differences between the occu-
pying cultures have been more decisive in
reshaping the Bottom, however, than the
similarities. As Bill Woods, a geographer
and archaeologist at Southern Illinois Uni-

versity at Edwardsville, explains, trade was

never as crucial to the Indian economy as it
was to the Europeans’.

Once the European economy
passed from the subsistence phase to the
market phase in the mid—19th century, the
Bottom lived from the river less than it
lived off of it. A river which is to be used
must be controlled: Land which is to be
built upon must be dry. Flooding was a
regular occurrence until approximately
1910, when construction began on a mas-
sive system of levees, pumps, drainage
canals, catchment basins, and relief wells
which today keep the Bottom dry. It is a
never-ending task — as Nani Bhowmik of

Cannon in Fort de Chartres

the Illinois Water Survey emphasizes,
the American Bottom is just that, a low-ly-
ing place — and performing that task has
transformed the Bottom. Once wide and
meandering, the Mississippi today is con
fined to a narrow channel; towns such as
Carondelet and East St. Louis which used
to be on the river today are only near it
People moved through this river
crossroads as well as goods, which is why
so many Bottom towns are among the od
est in Illinois as well as the oldest.
trade, which had been sporad

(continued on p. 24)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

WETLANDS:

A LIVING LABORATORY

We |
'\

Volo Bog: State Natural Area, Lake County.
What human value could there be in soggy,
wild, dangerous areas ideal only for mos-
quitoes, snakes and scores of other varieties
of offensive plants, insects and wildlife?

“Disease—breeding wasteland” was
the generic label hung on millions of acres
of the nation’s wetlands for more than 200
years. An agrarian society moving relent-
lessly west made swamps, marshes, bogs,
fens and wet meadows suitable for people,
their homes, their farms and pastures and,
later, their cities, highways and bridges.

“The price of economic develop-
ment was the destruction of 50 percent of
the nation’s and 90 percent of Illinois’

natural wetlands — over 8.5 million acres in

4

our state alone,” according to Dr. Donald
Hey, the environmental engineer who di-
rects the Des Plaines River Wetlands Dem-
onstration Project. “The federal government
has spent billions of dollars in an attempt to
clean up the nation’s lakes, rivers and
streams, prevent flood damage, and create
wildlife habitat because our wetlands have
been drained and our rivers dredged,
straightened and otherwise disfigured.”
Dams and treatment plants have improved
the condition of the nation’s surface waters.
But Hey intends to prove that wetlands,
carefully chosen, can do a better job for

less money.

From Wasteland to Wetland

Financially and philosophically supported
from the beginning by the Illinois Depart-
ment of Energy and Natural Resources
(DENR), the demonstration project aims to
create a wetland in a remote area 35 miles
north of Chicago that was indeed a man-
made wasteland when feasibility studies
began in 1980-81.

“Along this nearly three mile
stretch of the Des Plaines River, they are
giving birth to a complicated, sophisticated
living laboratory from which elements of a
total wetlands ecological system can be

identified, extracted and adapted for use

elsewhere,” said Karen Witter, Director of
DENR.

Costing an estimated 10.2 million
dollars and spanning I5 years, the project
offers scientists and engineers infinite op-
portunities to experiment, test and study.
By 1995 some 450 acres of “created” natu-
ral wetland will be returned to the Lake
County Forest Preserve District for mainte-
nance.

“Using public pathways, people
will be able to see an almost ethereal kind
of beauty. As they see it, they will better
understand the natural functions of wet-
lands — how this fragile combination of liv-
ing things existing as a buffer between land
and open water serves to store floodwater,
filter and cleanse surface water, recharge
groundwater, and, in a very literal sense,
help protect and clean the environment in
which we live,” Hey observed.

In Illinois there is a real commit-
ment to protect, preserve and restore many
or our original wetlands, according to
Marvin E. Hubbell, Wetlands Program
Administrator at the Illinois Department of
Conservation (IDOC). A plan is now in the
works to restore the balance between eco-
nomic development and preservation of
Illinois’ precious wetlands. Formulation of
that plan is the work of the Wetlands Advi-
sory Committee (WAC), a group sanc-
tioned by the Governor and funded by the

SITE PLAN

Key. QlL—Quarry Lake,
> Parshall Flume,
® Electrical Vault,
= Oak Savannah,
i EWA-Experimental Wetland Area,
@ Pumping Station
a Precipitation Gauge
® Groundwater Well,
@ Inlet Velocity Sensor
@ Interior Level Sensor,
RSR—River Stage Recorder
+ RE—River Environs
} Climate Station
--- Project Boundary,

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

General Assembly. Its members include
government agencies, environmentalists,
business and industrial interests.

This spring WAC intends to sub-
mit legislation aimed at strengthening,
clarifying and expanding existing state and
federal legislation governing the fate of

wetlands, “Those we still have, those in

jeopardy and those that must be reinvented.

The Des Plaines River Demonstration Pro-

ject will reveal many of nature’s secrets,”

Hubbell said.

Its Infinite Variety

“From the standpoint of living things, every
wetland is different from every other,”
noted Dr. Allison Brigham, aquatic ecolo-
gist with the Natural History Survey.
Plants, trees, animals and insects that can
be re-established in northern Illinois are
totally unlike those thriving in the wetlands
of southern Illinois. Species there are more
like those found in Louisiana and Florida.
“Until last year, we spent our time at Des
Plaines figuring out what species had lived
there scores of years ago and which ones
had to be seeded and planted to begin re
creation of a balanced ecosystem,” Brigham
reports. “Once plant life and water are
ready, mobile living creatures like birds,
insects, animals and fish will again choose
to use the lush, natural vegetation.” For

now the Natural History Survey is on hold,

Site Plan of the Des Plaines River Wetlands Demonstration

oO

A marshy inhabitant

waiting for earthmoving and construction to
be completed.

Scientists agree that groundwater
and surface water interact in, wetlands, but
that interaction is different and of greater or
lesser importance at every site. That's when
decisions get sticky. “There are pros and
cons to a wetland’s value — its existence,”
Hey states. “In areas where human activity
depends upon clean, plentiful groundwater,

wetlands can serve a cleansing, recharge

function. But if the priority is to secure

Scale (feet)
=== —

300 «A000

U.s. HWY 41

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

re

sy,

4

Ps

Ss
ki
i

Swamp: Little Black Slough at Heron Pond in Johnson County.

more surface water and the sponge effect of
a wetland is pronounced a negative, new
ways must be found to compensate — to
reach a balance.”

Dr. Richard Berg of the Illinois
Geological Survey says, “We want to know
how all of this human intervention at the
Des Plaines site will affect the river’s shape
and the materials composing the riverbed in
addition to looking at the groundwater-—sur-
face water interaction.” The Geological
Survey has drilled 80 wells, some clustered

and of varying depths, strategically placed

6

among the bone—dry indentations on the
project site. These shallow, saucer—shaped,
man—made indentations became “ponds” as
water from the Des Plaines was pumped
into them.

Using an elaborate irrigation sys-
tem dotted with all sorts of instruments, a
plethora of benchmark scientific studies

will occur daily. “To check the river itself,”

Berg said, “we've set up 28 cross-sections
along the project’s three—mile stretch.”
Using the same wells, the Illinois

Water Survey is researching the levels at

which water is found and the river’s water
quality as it flows through a labyrinth of
pipes, channels and ponds. From this laby-
rinth will emerge an ecologically balanced
wonderland of living things, each species
nurturing others as the whole system serves
to cleanse land, water and air.

A Blueprint for Restoration

Linking the project's three parts — geology,
water and living things — is the water cycle.
“We're taking water samples from each
pond to see how its quality changes from
entry to exit,” said Dr. Rodger Adams, hy-
draulic engineer with the Water Survey.
“But we also need to know how nature in-
fluences the whole.” At the project’s cli-
mate station, scientists use sophisticated
instruments to monitor soil moisture, solar
radiation, temperature, wind direction and
speed and precipitation.

While land—clearing, construction
and seeding work await additional funding,
the man—made wetland along the Des
Plaines took its first breath when the pump-
ing station opened late last October. The
consensus of scientists, engineers, environ-
mentalists and politicians seems to be that
the money spent at the Des Plaines River
Demonstration Project was well—spent and
will show us how to rebuild natural cleans-
ing systems, control flooding and replenish
water supplies.

“What we learn here,” said Project
Director Hey, “will draw a basic blueprint
—a model — for repairing the damage we've
done to our wetlands. As scientists, engi-
neers and students from here and abroad
continue to visit the project, they are find-
ing, as we have, that uses of this blueprint
are endlessly astounding and economically
sound.”

For more information regarding this pro-

Ject please contact Dr. Donald L. Hey,

Wetlands Research, Inc., S53 W. Jackson
Blvd., Chicago, Il, 60604.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE ANCIENT ONES

The Navajos called them the Anasazi, the
Old Ones, the ancestors of our enemies.
They lived and built in the Four Corners of
the Southwest, where Colorado, Utah, Ari-
zona and New Mexico meet, from 100 B.C.
to the thirteenth century A.D. When they
mysteriously disappeared, they left behind
twin legacies of huge stone cliff dwellings
and pottery that brings tens of thousands of

dollars from avid collectors.

Master Builders

What is known about the Anasazi Indians is

every bit as intriguing as what is not known
about their culture. Archaeologists estimate
that there are more than 100,000 Anasazi
sites on the Colorado Plateau. Only a few
have been excavated, only a few thousand
mapped. Every site has a few things in
common: dwellings placed to catch the
winter sun and the summer shade, a source
of water and soil good enough to grow a
corn crop.

The Ancient Ones began as small
groups of hunters and seed collectors who
lived in pit houses roofed with canopies of
brush and mud. Sometime between 0 and
500 A.D. they became part-time farmers
and basket-making became prevalent.
About 500 A.D they acquired a gift for
making beautiful pottery, the bow and ar-
row, and the hafted ax. They turned to
farming full time, raising corn, squash and
beets. The population grew and prospered.
The basketmaker era ended when they
moved aboveground to community living.
Their pit houses became kivas, the focal
point of Anasazi ceremonial life.

The expertise of Anasazi builders
was crucial to their continued development.
They began to manipulate their environ-
ment, constructing shallow channels that
diverted runoff onto their small fields and
building check dams that collected eroded
soil and held the water that carried that soil.
There might be hundreds of such dams in a

single community. This development

proved critical in the period from 700 to
1100 A.D., when local frosts and droughts
struck frequently.

From 1100 to 1300 A.D. the
Anasazis began to build multi-story build-
ings and engage in extensive trade. The
tribes living on the Mesa Verde built giant
cliff dwellings, the last of the Anasazis to
build complex masonry structures. Their

aeries under the overhangs of cliffs were

Cliff Palace

the most spectacular of all the dwellings of

the Ancient Ones.

Counting Quartz Grains

In a $400,000 six—year project funded by
the U.S. National Park Service, researchers
from the Illinois Water Survey (IWS)
worked to measure the damage done to
those spectacular ruins by manmade pollut-

ants and by nature herself.

us

The Sun Temple Copyright 1983 D. Dolske

“The real treasure of the Anasazis
were the sandstone blocks they shaped and
decorated themselves,” explains Don
Dolske, project head with the IWS. “Our
job was to develop a method for measuring
the erosion rate affecting the blocks, look at
airborne environmental pollutants and the
surrounding microclimate and relate those
variables to how much damage is occurring
and why.”

This isn’t the first time the Park
Service has called on Dolske and the Water
Survey. Preservation of cultural monuments
has become a special talent of Dolske’s. He
has also been involved in measuring the
effects of acid deposition on Civil War
monuments at Gettysburg National Park
(see the fall 1987 issue of The Nature of
Illinois, “The Erosion of History at Gettys-
burg”).

Dolske’s team set up two test
walls of five stone blocks each. The stones
were selected in consultation with Mesa
Verde Park archaeological personnel from
rubble left by crews who had reconstructed
and stabilized the existing ruins. The stones
had lost their context with respect to any
existing ruins and were of small archae-
ological value.

One wall was located on a rock
ledge fully exposed to the elements and
near Dolske’s climate monitoring station.
Twenty-five meters away, the second wall
was placed at the extreme down—canyon
side of Spruce Tree House Ruin, which is
protected by a rock overhang. In addition,

8

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

sandstone specimens cored out of a single
block were mounted in quartz holders and
held in acrylic racks at each site.

Using microphotography with pic-
tures taken at one—month intervals, the rate
of surface recession on the stones was
measured by counting the loosened quartz
grains that fell off the blocks.

Weather and atmospheric chemis-
try measurements were made at two towers.
For each month, average levels of such pol-
lutants as sulfate, nitrate and sulfur dioxide
were taken. These pollutants are of special
interest because of their involvement with
the acid rain problem. Information on acid
rain from the National Atmospheric Depo-
sition Program was made available to [WS
researchers. Microclimate parameters
measured at Spruce Tree House included
temperature, relative humidity, horizontal
and vertical wind velocity, wind direction,
incident solar radiation and rainfall rate.

“Our task now is to correlate all of
this data to determine what impact any or
all of these variables have had on recession
rates, ” said Dolske. “On the surface, rain-
fall amount appears to be the greatest fac-
tor, and that is critical because recent con-
struction of large industrial installations
like power plants and smelters in the area
could alter local air chemistry and climatic
conditions. We will look at what happens
to the erosion rate if the amount of pollut-
ants doubles.”

“Our measurements for the first
four years of our study times the 700—year
age of the ruins show only one millimeter
of surface erosion on the sandstone blocks.
That’s really not too much damage, with
the present Gay recession rate not that
different from the historical rate. One
cautionary note, though. The materials in
the blocks are sensitive to the pollutants
involved in the acid rain problem. There is
cause for concern, but no cause for alarm.”

The two test walls and racks of
sandstone samples will continue to be
monitored for at least ten more years by
Park Service personnel.

A Cultural Recession

The ruins of the Old Ones will be in place
for archaeologists to puzzle over for a long
time. The biggest threat to the Anasazis
may not be nature or acid rain, but the
pothunters and vandals who use spades,
shovels and even bulldozers in their quest
for black market art booty. Archaeologists
will need every bit of time and every pot
shard to unravel the many mysteries sur-
rounding the Anasazis.

No one knows why the Anasazis
settled on the Colorado Plateau in the first
place. Most of the areas they lived in were
too cold or too hot or too dry. No one
knows why they built an incredibly com-
plex series of roads when they had no
wheels or pack animals. There may have
been a Mexican trade connection to the
very rapid development of their culture —
archaeologists have found abalone shells
that could only have come frem the south.
Most puzzling, where did the Ancient Ones
disappear to and why?

Most archaeologists say that a 10
to 15 year drought and severe ecological
disturbances wrought by the Anasazi them-
selves as they cut down trees to grow corm
were the reasons the tribes dispersed to be
swallowed up or annihilated by their neigh-
bors.

Dolske has his own theory. “There
were active volcanoes in this area from
1000 A.D. to 1200 A.D. Their dwellings
were under overhangs that could have
fallen down, or they were smoked out by
volcanic debris and sulfur dioxide, or the
shaking simply scared them away.”

“IT was extremely fortunate in see-
ing the ruins as a researcher instead of as a
tourist. Most ruins are visible, but roped off
to the public. We actually got to go inside
rooms with the plaster still hanging and
decorations painted on the walls still intact.
In one unexcavated area we saw pot shards
and old corncobs. I’ve gone to the ruins
three times a year for the past six years. I'l
be going back.”

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

ae BIORHYTHMS

Barging In On Mussels

The Natural History Survey’s
Aquatic Biology Section is re-
searching the effects of barge
fleeting on mussel beds, looking
specifically at present and pro-
jected increases in fleeting
permit requests for the Illinois,
Mississippi, and other midwest-
ern rivers. Mussels were
collected from fleeted and
unfleeted areas of the Illinois
River at Naples, Illinois. Scien-
tists noted any damage to the
mussel shells and engraved
them with identification num-
bers. The mussels were also

The Great Mite Smoke-out
During the fall of 1987 the
dreaded exotic mite Varroa
Jacobsoni was discovered for
the first time in North American
honey bee colonies. Fourteen
states, including Illinois, have
colonies infested with this exter-
nal parasite. NHS scientist E.
Killion, Extension Specialist

in Apiculture, is collaborating
with several federal agencies to
develop a technique that will aid
regulatory agencies and the
beekeeping industry in sampling
honey bee colonies for Varroa
mites.

A sticky mite detection
board has been devised that can
be inserted in the bottom of a
bee hive. A miticide (pesticide
that kills mites) is then placed in
the upper area of the hive, forc-
ing mites to drop onto the sticky
detection board. In a recent ex-

periment a colony was smoked

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

measured before being replaced
in the river.

Mussels from two fleeted
and unfleeted sites were recap-
tured annually to compare
mortality, shell damage and
growth rates. After one year the
scientists found that mussels
from fleeted areas had more
shell damage, higher mortality
rates and lower growth rates.
Since 1984 more than 4,000
mussels have been marked and
more than 500 have been recap-
tured. The project is scheduled
to be completed this year.

with a nicotine—rich tobacco. If

results prove favorable, smoking

may replace the miticide as a
simple, quick and economical
way for beekeepers to survey

their colonies.

Oh, Rats!

Illinois has more rats than any-
one thought. With support from
the Illinois Endangered Species
Board, NHS scientists recently

completed a study on the distri-

Illinois’ endangered
Marsh Rice Rat
Photograph by J. Hofmann

bution, abundance, and status of
the marsh rice rat in southern
Illinois. This small mammal

is listed as a state-threatened
species.

At least 85 rice rats were
live—trapped in nine counties,
including three counties which
had not previously reported the
species. These new records, in

conjunction with the recent dis-

covery of rice rats in Pope
County, reveal that the species
is more widely distributed in
Illinois than previously thought.
However the rats’ habitat is
a type of wetland, which exists
mostly as small isolated patches
that cannot support large popu-
lations. The rice rat will remain
on Illinois’ threatened and en-

dangered species list.

CURRENTS

Look Out For Lightning

niidt] el Te
Hei | ;

i ea ee

f r
eT

A recent study shows lightning strikes more often than previously thought,

as seen in this photograph. Copyright 1988; Mark F. Raeber

Electrical storms may be more
dangerous than thought accord-
ing to a study of lightning con-
ducted in part by Water Survey
scientist Stanley Changnon.
Changnon used sensitive equip-
ment to record the number of
lightning bolts which touched
ground.

His findings show that
lightning strikes more fre-
quently than weather records

have shown. This discrepancy is

probably because record keepers
are trained observers who listen
for thunder, which was thought
to always follow lightning.
However the study shows
that between 22 and 40 percent
of lightning bolts are “silent”
not accompanied by thunder
This could have adverse impli
cations for businesses like
nuclear power plants, which
have had to base risk analyses

on old, conservative reports

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Do Agricultural Chemicals Affect Groundwater?

Each year millions of pounds
of agricultural chemicals are
applied to Illinois fields. The
Water and Geological Surveys
have begun the first phase of a
comprehensive plan to deter-
mine how these chemicals may
affect the groundwater quality
of rural private water supplies.
The pilot study will estab-
lish the methods and procedures
to be used in a statewide assess-
ment of the effects of fertilizers,
herbicides and insecticides.
Researchers will collect water
samples from wells in areas

The Drought Continues....
Although the fall brought
rainfalls and thunderstorms to
some parts of Illinois the
drought isn’t over. This fall,
parts of the state were two to
fourteen inches below the yearly
average precipitation level.
Water Survey scientists say
that there’s less than a 10 per-
cent chance of recovering lost
precipitation by next April.
They also say that the
state’s water supplies could
reach critically low levels due
to the drought, which they’ve
labelled as worse than the

thought to be at risk from agri-

cultural chemical contamination.

Different levels of risk were
developed by evaluating near—
surface and aquifer materials,
aquifer depth and the amount
and kinds of pesticides in use.

During the plan’s second
phase researchers will conduct
the statewide assessment, with
the third phase calling for estab-
lishment of a long-term state-
wide monitoring program to
ascertain if problems are local
or widespread.

droughts of the 1930s and
1950s. The levels of some rivers
and streams hit record lows this
summer, and fall foliage was
duller and shorter—lived due to
dry conditions.

According to a Survey re-
port the drought won’t be over
“until renewed and sustained
precipitation has begun to fall
over relatively large areas of the
state and continues.” And the
drought’s effects won't cease
until six to eight weeks after
that.

CENTERING ON WASTE

Household Hazardous Waste Education

How many of us have old pesti-
cides, paint solvents, or other
household chemicals sitting
around the house? How many of
us know how to properly dis-
pose of these household hazard-
ous wastes? A recent household
hazardous waste collection day
along with resident surveys
conducted in Champaign shed

10

some insight into the public’s
knowledge of hazardous wastes.
Last year Champaign area
residents were invited to dispose
of their household hazardous
wastes for free in a day—long
program sponsored by the Inter-
governmental Solid Waste Dis-
posal Association of Cham-
paign, the City of Urbana and

Champaign County. Surveys
conducted before and after the
collection day show that public
awareness about hazardous
waste problems increased be-
tween 20 to 30 percent because
of the event, which helped dis-
pose of seven percent of the
amount of hazardous wastes im-
properly disposed of each year.
Farmers participating in the
survey averaged 26 partial or
full containers of hazardous
material while urban households
averaged 10 containers. Far—
ranging educational programs
are needed to reduce household
production of hazardous waste.
Copies of this report are avail-
able from the Hazardous Waste
Research and Information
Center (HWRIC) at
(217) 333-8940.

Hazardous Waste Reduction
Plans Wanted

To encourage industry to reduce
the amount and toxicity of
wastes it generates, the HWRIC
has begun a Recycling and Re-
duction Techniques program
which will help fund innovative
hazardous waste reduction
methods. Under the program
Illinois businesses, industries,
public and private researchers,
consultants and vendors in the
hazardous waste field can apply
for funds up to $50,000.

The matching funds are
awarded to applicants whose
projects have strong potential
for developing practical waste
minimization techniques that
Illinois industries can use. Up to
$50,000 is given for large re-
search projects and between
$5,000 and $10,000 is given for

smaller projects such as waste

reduction audits.

The grants could save
Illinois industries millions of
dollars by reducing costs associ-
ated with hazardous waste dis-
posal. Eligible projects include
those that: test equipment to
reduce, detoxify or recycle
waste streams, reclaim or recy-
cle hazardous wastes on— or
off-site, minimize the amount
of hazardous waste generated,
or achieve a high degree of in-
novation in hazardous waste
treatment. For more informa-
tion, call the HWRIC at
(217)333-8940.

HWRIC Helps Train Industry
Through the HWRIC and the
Illinois EPA, Illinois was one of
ten states selected for a national
waste reduction training pro-
gram funded by the U.S. Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency.
The Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act Integrated Train-’
ing and Technical Assistance
Initiative (RITTA) program will
help train personnel from the
regulatory, technical assistance,
and business/industry commu-
nity in hazardous waste reduc-
tion and waste minimization.
HWRIC’S involvement in
this program will benefit indus-
try by providing interns to help
work on waste reduction and
recycling projects and by pro-
viding generators with informa-
tion on how they can better
manage and reduce the waste
they are generating. Using this
assistance, participating indus-
tries’ productivity and effi-
ciency should increase, while
the amount of waste they
release into the environment

should decrease.

a GEOGRAMS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

There’s Oil In Them Thar Valleys

A network of 300 million year
old valleys lies buried only
1,000 feet below the surface of
Illinois. When the valleys were
drowned by rising seas 300 mil-
lion years ago, porous sandbars
along the valley floors were
buried by impermeable marine
mud, creating the potential for
petroleum traps. Until recently
little public information existed
on the petroleum trapped there.
The Geological Survey re-
cently issued “Illinois Petroleum
129,” the first report to discuss
one such trap in detail. In this
report, geologists R. H. Howard
and S. T. Whitaker discuss the

Survey Produces National

accidental discovery of a petro-
leum trap near Hardinville in
1955 and the reasons geologists
overlooked the existence and
importance of that buried valley
for 20 years.

Luckily the same sandbar
was again encountered in 1974
one and a half miles from the
original oil—bearing sand.
Within that one—and—a-half—
mile area, 20 producing wells
were subsequently drilled.

With this study as a guide, ex-
plorationists can make a deliber-
ate attempt at finding other such
reservoirs throughout significant
portions of the state.

Heritage Corridor Brochure And Study

The Ilinois—Michigan Canal
was directly responsible for the
growth of Chicago as a market
and processing center and for
the settlement and development
of northeastern Illinois. In 1984
Congress created the IIlinois—
Michigan Canal National
Heritage Corridor, a new kind
of national park which directs
attention to the canal area’s
geology, archaeology, pre—
history, settlement and industrial
development.

After Congress established
the Corridor, the National Park
Service (NPS) contracted with
the Geological Survey to pro-
duce a geological inventory
of the Corridor. The Survey
covered the immediate canal,
the river valleys, the adjacent
uplands and other important
nearby sites. The study included
geological bedrock and surficial

geology maps of the | & M
Corridor, and geological sites
of special significance for his-
torical, tourist, scientific or
commercial interest.

These studies resulted in a
document on the geology of the
corridor for the NPS and a new
color brochure about the canal
area called “Ice Age Geology.”
(The Society will mail a bro-
chure to all Society members in
the near future.)

Personnel Notes
Chief M. W. Leighton presented
the “Distinguished Achievement
Award for Fiscal Year 1988”
to Dr. John P. Kempton, senior
geologist and special projects
leader for the Survey's Super-
conducting Super Collider
(SSC) Task Force.

During his 32 years with
the Survey Kempton led the in-

itial geological studies to suc-
cessfully site the Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory in IIli-
nois, and led the Northeastern
Illinois Planning Commission
Task Force and the SSC Geo-
logical Task Force. Kempton
has also served as acting Group
Head for the General and
Environmental Geology Group,
developed a ground-water
research program to seek addi-
tional water resources for
Danville, and participated in

the beginning of a geology—for—

SHORT TAKES

The Cave State

Illinois is known for its prairies,
not its caves. But a recent study
of the state’s caves shows that
Illinois houses 480 of them, or
four times more than previously

thought. The bad news is that of

the 84 caves which were exten-
sively inventoried, 61 percent
showed signs of human damage,
some significant enough to ren-
der the cave “dead.”

Several years ago the
General Assembly passed legis-
lation protecting caves and their
resources, which often include
endangered and rare species
and important archaeological
remains. However, no one was
really sure how many caves IIli-
nois had, where they were, or
what they contained. The IIli-
nois State Museum conducted a
study to gather this data and use
it to help preserve the caves.

Of the 84 caves investi-
gated, most are privately owned
in rural areas (many in southern
Illinois), more than half contain
streams, nearly one-fifth have

rare or unique formations, and

planning study for Logan
County.

Robert A. Bauer, geologist
and supervisor of the Rock Me-
chanics Laboratory, was named
the Douglas Piteau Outstanding
Young Member of the Associa-
tion of Engineering Geologists.
Bauer has received international
recognition for his achievements
related to his work on the SSC,
the Illinois Mine Subsidence
Research Program (IMSRP) and
other projects.

Spelunker repelling into a

Hardin County cave

Photograph by James Oliver

some house endangered bats and
other invertebrates unique to II-
linois. But don’t plan on visiting
any of these caves. Museum
paleontologist Russ Graham
says the caves’ locations will

be kept largely confidential to

prevent further human damage

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Agency Nurtures New Generation Of Conservationists

Kids for Conservation charter members as they appeared on “Good Morning America”

during the 1988 Illinois State Fair. Photograph: Illinois Department of Conservation

Forget the Nintendos and G.I.
Joes, today’s kids will use their
spare time to become conserva-
tionists under a new program
created by the Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation (DOC).
“Kids for Conservation” is a
free club for Illinois youngsters
up to 16 years old.

The Radon Scare
This fall the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency released a
report saying that radon, a ra-
dioactive gas produced from
decaying uranium in the soil,
was found in high concentra-
tions in homes in seven states.
Lengthy exposure to higher
levels of radon is believed to
promote lung cancer. While ra-
don is a significant problem, a
spokesman for the Illinois
Department of Nuclear Safety
(DNS), says that Illinois has
average radon levels, with no
areas showing exceptionally
high readings.

A recent DNS study of Illi-
nois homes shows that 43 per-

cent have radon readings above

12

DOC spokeswoman Glenda
Burke says the department
saw a need to make parents and
children more environmentally
conscious and thought the best
way to reach both groups would
be through an at-home club.
Club members will receive a
quarterly conservation magazine

the recommended levels and one
percent have readings above the
action level. The department
recommends that persons test
the radon levels in their dwell-
ings if they suspect high levels.
Radon is a colorless, odorless
gas that seeps into homes
through cracks and often exists
in basements or groundfloors.
Home test kits are available
at hardware and grocery stores.
By calling (217) 786-6024 you
can get a DNS—published list of
reputable detection businesses,
their prices and services. Radon
can be removed by contractors

or by homeowners.

and can participate in upcoming
special DOC-sponsored events
that will be held statewide.
Fifteen thousand children are
currently enrolled in the club
and DOC hopes to register
thousands more.

When The Sky Runs Out...
It’s time to get serious about
ozone, according to scientists
from the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA).
Recent EPA studies show that
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
may have destroyed more ozone
than originally thought. Ozone
is essential in our atmosphere
because it protects plants

and humans from the sun’s
ultraviolet light, which, in large
amounts, could kill plant life
and cause other unknown
damage.

The EPA is urging coun-
tries to stop using CFCs which
are often found in aerosols,
air—conditioning and insulating
foams. Last year about 40 coun-

tries signed a treaty vowing to

reduce CFC production in the
next decade. Some scientists
worry that it’s too little too late.
In fact there’s a hole in
Antarctica’s ozone layer every
spring that seems to last longer
each year. Canadian researchers
now think the Arctic is also
developing an ozone hole. Addi-
tionally, it will take one or two
centuries after we've stopped
using all CFCs before the
atmosphere can naturally heal
itself.

To Burn Or Not To Burn?

This summer's devastating fires
in Yellowstone Park have made
some people question the Na-
tional Park Service’s 16—year—
old fire policy. The Park Service
allows some naturally—caused
fires to burn (while being
closely monitored), while the
U.S. Forest Service tries to ex-
tinguish nearly all fires. (Those
Yellowstone fires started by
humans this summer were
fought immediately.)

The Park Service's ap-
proach is that burns should be
allowed so that forests follow
their ecological cycles. This phi-
losophy says that forests are
reborn when fires clear out dead
growth, thus nurturing new
plant and animal life.

This policy also let quanti-
ties of dead growth accumulate
and made the forests ripe for
fires. Additionally, circum-
stances surrounding this sum-
mer’s fires were unusual be-
cause Yellowstone had experi-
enced its worst drought in more
than a century.

Scientists are still debating
whether we should interfere

with forest cycles or not.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

First Nuclear Waste Repository Postponed

Concerns about the safety of the
nation’s first permanent reposi-
tory for high-level nuclear
wastes prompted U.S. Depart-
ment of Energy officials to in-
definitely postpone its opening.
The $700 million New Mexico
facility would collect large
amounts of radioactive, pluto-
nium-—contaminated wastes ac-
cumulated from years of atomic

Cleaner Living Through Corn
The city of Urbana is going to
use degradable plastic bags
made partially of cornstarch to
get rid of its yard waste. The
Illinois Department of Energy
and Natural Resources (ENR)
gave the city a grant to test the
bags, which will be secured
with natural brush ties.
Officials from ENR say if

Where Are The Ducks?

This is a bad time for ducks, ac-
cording to Dr. Frank Bellrose, a
waterfowl specialist with the
Illinois Natural History Survey
who has studied ducks for five
decades. Duck populations have
declined in recent years due to
droughts and a loss of the wet-
lands that ducks use as breeding
grounds.

The wetlands were drained
for agricultural uses or dried up
naturally due to droughts. When
ducks could find sparse nesting
areas, the lack of vast breeding
grounds left their nests open to
more predators.

Scientists think the ducks
can recover. To help them,

weapons production.

Some officials feared that
the facility, a series of long
corridors, large storage rooms,
and ventilation shafts 2,150
feet underground, could not
operate safely. The facility was
scheduled to open in October,
but is not likely to open until
this year or later, after safety
questions are answered.

the test is successful it could
help reduce dependence on
community landfills, offer safe
alternatives to leaf burning, and
promote another use for I]linois
corn. The project will also dem-
onstrate that the bags and ties
help process yard waste into
usable garden mulches and
ornamental wood.

many conservation groups are
calling for the reclamation of
Canadian and North American
wetlands under a joint program
by the U.S. and Canadian Wild-
life Services...but the price tag
is one billion dollars.

Some of Illinois’ duck populations
which are threatened by the

loss of wetlands.

Raising Raptor Consciousness
Raptors such as hawks, owls,
bald eagles, and peregrine fal-
cons are at the top of the food
chain. They are very sensitive to
environmental changes and were
hurt by the DDT pesticide and
other pollutants. Since raptors
have low reproductive rates and
many are endangered species,
the Illinois Department of Con-
servation has developed pro-
grams to monitor their popula-
tions, protect their habitats and
increase public knowledge about
their importance.

Along with such programs
as “Don’t Shoot Hawks and
Owls” and “Bald Eagle Appre-
ciation Days,” the department is
coordinating a Midwest Raptors
Symposium from February 27
through March | in Chicago.
The symposium, whose co—
sponsors include the Illinois
Natural History Survey and the

Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, will address raptor
population status, habitat
requirements, mortality causes,
monitoring techniques, manage-
ment practices and public
education.

Illinois’ raptors, like this hawk,
are essential to maintaining
stable food chains.
Photograph: Joe Milosevich

MUSEUM MOMENTS

The following is a calendar of
events at the State of Illinois Art
Gallery in Chicago and the
Dickson Mounds Museum.

State Of Illinois Art Gallery
January 17 — March 10

Don Baum: Domus exhibit
March 20 — May 12
Photography Illinois exhibit
May 22 — July 7
Contemporary Puerto Rican
Artists

Dickson Mounds Museum
January 15, 2:00 p.m.
Harvesting the River: Life and
Work on the Illinois River

January 29, 2:00 p.m.
B’rrr—owing in Winter: Animal
Survival in Illinois

February 12, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00

p.m.
Artifact and Fossil Identification

Day
February 25, 2:00 p.m.
Rumpelstiltskin

March 11, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00

p.m.

Spoon River Wild Turkey
Festival

April 2, 2:00 p.m.

Aztalan: Why Did those Missis-

sippians Move to Wisconsin?

TRANSITIONS
Four Elected To Society Board

ne

Michael O. Gibson

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Stephen C. Mitchell

James D. Nowlan

At the September, 1988 meeting
of the Society’s Board, Michael
O. Gibson, Springfield Marine
Bank Senior Vice President,
was elected Board member

and Treasurer. “His years of
experience in trust and asset
management bring an entirely
new viewpoint to Society
leadership,” said Gaylord
Donnelley, Society Chairman.
Also elected to the Board were
John R. Doxsie, Vice President

Witter In Charge At DENR
Karen Witter has been ap-
pointed Director of the Illinois
Department of Energy and
Natural Resources by Governor
James R. Thompson. A former
assistant to the Governor for
natural resource issues, Witter
succeeds Don Etchison, who
now manages a consulting
group headquartered in
Vancouver, British Columbia.

14

John R. Doxsie

of Decatur—based A.E. Staley
Manufacturing Company;
Stephen C. Mitchell, Executive
Vice President of the Chicago—
based engineering firm, Lester
B. Knight & Associates; and
James D. Nowlan, Professor of
Public Policy at Knox College
in Galesburg, Illinois. “We are
honored indeed that men of such
vision and stature see value and
purpose in what the Society is
about,” Donnelley said.

Karen Witter

TOMORROW’S MINERAL

A yellow, cubic-shaped fluorite specimen. Photograph by Marlin Roos,

Illinois State Museum

Thanks to Illinois your smile is
probably brighter, your sink is
shinier, and your picnics are
bug—free. More specifically this
thanks should go to Illinois’
official state mineral, fluorite.
Illinois has world—class deposits
of this beautiful ore which have
made it the nation’s top
fluorspar producer. (While fluo-
rite technically refers to the
mineral and fluorspar refers to
the ore containing the mineral,
the terms are virtually inter-
changeable.)

This unsung hero of IIli-
nois’ minerals is typically
formed in cubic—shaped crystals
which can be colorless, white,
purple, pink, blue, green, yel-
low, or tan. Because of its
colorful variations and interest-
ing shapes, fluorite is a popular
collector's mineral. Two thou-
sand years ago wealthy Romans
considered fluorspar goblets
treasures.

Indians are the first known

users of domestic fluorspar,

using it to carve ornamental fig-
ures and images. The first
recorded use of fluorite, which
is composed of néarly equal
parts of calcium and fluorine,
was in 1823 when hydrofluoric
acid was made from
Shawneetown minerals.

That was an isolated inci-
dent, since fluorspar had very
limited uses in the 1830s. When
southern Illinois miners were
drilling for lead and found
fluorspar, they threw it out on
the poor—rock piles. After the
Civil War ended the demand for
lead decreased, and after 1870
fluorspar gradually gained popu-
larity as a useful mineral. This
popularity was secured when
steel producers started using
open-hearth furnaces where
fluorspar was used to help
cleanse the steel of sulfur and
phosphorus.

Large scale production of
fluorspar didn’t begin until 1911
when fluorspar’s popularity and

demand dramatically increased

due to a booming steel industry
and the birth of ceramic and
chemical industries which

use fluorspar for a variety of
products.

Today the chemical indus-
try is the greatest consumer of
fluorspar, which is used to pro-
duce hydrofluoric acid which, in
turn, is used to create a dazzling
variety of products: aluminum,
nuclear power, chemicals,
uranium, drugs, rocket fuels and
other types of fluorides. These
fluorides are then used to make
toothpastes, optical lenses,
plastics, refrigerants, non-stick
coatings, fire extinguishers, an-
esthetics, insecticides, cleaning
solvents, space guidance sys-
tems and foaming agents,
among other materials.

Mining Fluorspar

The iron and steel industry

still uses a great amount of
fluorspar as a fluxing agent, and
the ceramics industry
mineral to help make glass and

uses the

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SURVEYING ILLINOIS

enamel coatings. Fluorspar is
also used to fluoridate our
drinking water to help prevent
tooth decay and, in one of its
more unpopular uses, it fuels the
spray in aerosols. Fluorocarbon
propellants are used to propel
astronauts walking in space.

In its natural state fluorspar
is found primarily underground
in pockets of compact bodies of
interlocking crystals. There are
basically three types of these
bodies or deposits: vein depos-
its, bedded deposits, and mixed
deposits.

Vein deposits are steeply
inclined fluorspar beds that
“fill” vertical fissures or faults
which have broken and slipped
against each other.

The bedded, replacement
deposits are flat, horizontal bod-
ies of ore that lie parallel to the
beds of limestone which helped
form them. These deposits occur
along minor faults which have-
nt moved much and therefore
left little space for the ore—

HARRIS CREEK
Homp Minsav 7 Cee Vein @ NS Be

Goose a

Sheek Vein

CAVE IN ROCK
DISTRICT —

Ilinois’ fluorite district and former producing mines

Photograph: Illinois State Geological Survey

forming solutions to fill. These
solutions were forced to spread
out laterally along the limestone
beds. Scientists think that the
intimate contact between the
mineralizing solutions and the
limestone caused fluorite to

form and actually replace the

limestone.

PMc ose - \ Si

where they left ore elements in
compatible areas.

Some fluorspar deposits
were exposed on hillsides or
other weathered areas and were
easily mined from open, surface
pits. But these reserves were
quickly exhausted and today all

mining occurs underground in

as

Room and pillar mining of a bedded-replacement fluorite deposit in

Hardin County. Photograph: Illinois State Geological Survey

A final type of deposit, the
mixed deposit, is a combination
of the vein and bedded deposits.
It usually features a narrow vein
with one or more small bedded
deposits spreading out horizon-
tally where the vein intersects
limestone beds.

Scientists aren't sure
exactly how fluorspar formed.
They think that between 290
and 100 million years ago hot
brine solutions carrying fluorine
and other elements were pro-
pelled by heat from igneous
sources deep within the earth.
This forced the solutions

upward along faults and fissures

vein or bedded deposits.

Only two relatively new
mines are producing fluorspar in
Illinois. (During fluorspar’s hey-
day as many as || mines were
excavated.) Today's mines are
located in the Harris Creek min-
ing district and are owned by
the Ozark—Mahoning Company
which, as the only remaining
domestic fluorspar producer,
supplies 10 percent of the
fluorspar used in the United
States. This “spar” is used pri
marily to produce hydrofluoric
acid which helps make medi
cines, refrigeration gas, and

pharmaceuticals.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Finding Fluorspar

Mining is probably one of the
easier aspects of producing
fluorspar. The most difficult
may be finding it. Geologists
and mining companies are like
Sherlock Holmes searching for
the elusive, underground depos-
its that leave few clues to their
whereabouts. Instead of a mag-
nifying glass these geological
detectives use various explora-
tion methods to hunt their prey
over vast expanses of land.

The Illinois Geological Sur-
vey is involved in some ex-
ploratory programs that will
help determine if new fluorspar
reserves exist or if known re-
serves can be extended. Accord-
ing to James Eidel, head of the
Mineral Resources Group at
the Survey, the Survey has been
investigating the fastest geo-
chemical method to search for
these mineral resources, called
the insoluble residue program.
In this one—of—a—kind process,
certain subsurface rocks are dis-
solved in acid and the parts
which don’t dissolve are exam-
ined for 31 elements. These
small metal amounts, when
compared to amounts from
other subsurface rock samples,
give clues about where to ex-
plore for potential deposits.

The Survey also used this
process in conjunction with
another exploratory program
called CUSMAP, or the Conter-
minous U.S. Mineral Assess-
ment Program. Currently a
quadrangle covering 7,500 miles
in southern Illinois is being sur-

veyed. Preliminary studies of

16

this area, which extends into
Missouri, Kentucky, and Indi-
ana, show that it may contain
fluorspar, lead, zinc, and some
rare metals.

Eidel says that geologists

and mining companies use other

exploratory methods including
photogeology in which pairs of
aerial photographs are inspected
with a special viewer. This
produces a three—dimensional
picture that emphasizes the
land’s surface features. Various
geochemical techniques are also
popular in hunting mineral re-
sources, some involving exami-
nation of minerals within
streams that might give clues
about hidden deposits. No
matter what technique they

use, geologists must eventually
drill suspected deposit areas

to discover if their deductions

are correct.

Fluorspar’s Future
What does the future hold for
Illinois fluorspar? In the past
several years the industry has
had to combat strong import
competition, stagnant fluorspar
prices, increased production
prices, decreased domestic de-
mand and resulting production
declines. In fact the concentra-
tion of fluorspar production in
southern Illinois has further in-
creased the costs of transporting
the mineral to consumption cen-
ters. Illinois mine profits often
came from the sale of minerals
recovered with fluorspar—
sphalerite (zinc ore), barite
and silver.

Meanwhile other countries,
including South Africa, China,
and Mexico, have supplied 90

Close-up of working face of ore showing fluorite, barite (white), and

associated minerals. Photograph: Illinois State Geological Survey

percent of the United States’
fluorspar needs (which has
caused the federal government
to make fluorspar a stockpiled,
critical commodity since so
much of the country’s needs are
met by imports). Imported
fluorspar is often cheaper than
domestic because of lower pro-
duction costs due to cheaper
labor and larger reserves.
Suggestions to help this
industry vary. S.B. Bhagwat, a
Survey scientist, describes an
antidote to the seemingly bleak

future of America’s fluorspar

industry. “The future of the U.S.

fluorspar industry can only be
secured in a limited sense
through a multi-faceted strategy
that encourages exploration,
improves mine productivity,
revitalizes steel and other basic

industries, and develops new

uses for this ancient, industrial
mineral.”

There’s hope, according to
Eidel, who says Illinois hasn’t
exhausted its fluorspar reserves.
Based on the results from some
of the Survey’s previously men-
tioned studies, he says he'd be
“very surprised if there weren't
other major fluorspar bodies
that are hidden in IIlinois.”

Finally, Eric Livingston,
Geologist for the OzarkK—Mahon-
ing Company, says the industry
may get a boost from research
currently being conducted on
fluorine. While fluorspar isn’t
experiencing the heyday it
once had, further research and
exploration could yield new
deposits to revive this declining

domestic industry.

WILDLIFE

THE WINTER

OF

THEIR CONTENT

he
te
Ef

Winter scene

Long before the snow flies, before fall cata-
logs jam mailboxes, before screens go
down and storm windows go up, the animal
kingdom is abuzz with activity preparing
for...inactivity.

If you’ve always wondered where
the critters go during Illinois’ harsh winters
—and what they do when they get there —
we herewith present a survey of the cold
weather lifestyles of the furry and the fleet.
They may not have central heating, but
they also don’t have to worry about
snowblowers, that fourth pair of lost gloves
or jump-starting anything.

Sleeping In

Dozing through the coldest months is one
mammalian method for beating the winter
blues. Hibernation occurs in degrees, but

<

generally involves an inactive state in
which the rate of metabolism, including
heart and respiration rates and body tem-
perature, is greatly lowered.

The ability of mammals to regu-
late their internal temperatures started as
long as 150 million years ago, as they de-
veloped from their reptilian ancestors. Both
mammals and birds have very high body
temperatures, averaging a little less than
100 degrees Fahrenheit in mammals and
three or four degrees higher in birds. One
theory holds that mammals must be able
to cool themselves in warm environments
and keep warm in cold ones, and that the
mammalian body temperature is set high
because it is easier to remain hot than it ts

to stay cool.

Hibernating mammals abandon
their warm—blooded state and sink
into a deep sleep in which their body
temperatures drop to match that of their
burrows or caves, a few degrees above
freezing. Metabolism may be reduced more
than fifty—fold.

Of the eighteen orders of mam-
mals, five contain species that hibernate.
The only true mammalian hibernators
found in Illinois — those whose body tem-
perature drops appreciably — are some spe-
cies of bats, the 13—lined ground squirrel,
Franklin's ground squirrel, the woodchuck
and the meadow jumping mouse.

In late October, when the amount
of daylight has decreased, and days and

nights turn frosty, the woodchuck becomes

less active aboveground. It soon enters its
burrow and falls into the deep sleep of the
true hibernator, with heart and respiration
rates only one-tenth as fast as normal. If a
warm spell occurs, the woodchuck may
arouse enough to leave its burrow for a
food foray.

The 13-lined ground squirrel be-
gins to put on body fat in summer and en-
ters hibernation with double its body
weight. Like the woodchuck, it grows slug-
gish as fall approaches and days grow
shorter. By the time snow covers the
ground, it has sealed its burrow entrance
from within and retired to a hibernating cell
just large enough for the animal and its
nest. It rolls up into a ball with its nose
tucked against its belly near its hind legs
and goes into a deep sleep. Unable to regu-
late its temperature now, it runs the danger
of dying if the temperature of its cell falls
below freezing.

The bat population of Illinois is
divided into two groups: species that mi-
grate and species that hibernate. Those that
hibernate or at least remain inactive over
long periods of time are more gregarious
than their traveling brothers. They live and
hibernate in colonies in caves or abandoned
mines in the winter and may hang in clus-
ters. These include the little brown bat, the
Southeastern, Keen’s and Indiana bat, the

WILDLIFE

Leopard frog before winter dig-in
Eastern pipistrel, the big brown bat and the
Southeastern big—eared bat.

Hiding Out

“Contrary to popular belief, bears do not
hibernate,” explains Dr. Glen Sanderson of
the Illinois Natural History Survey (NHS).
“They're in their dens half-awake. We
don’t know why some species hibernate
and others don’t. But many Illinois species
that don’t hibernate can remain inactive for
long periods of time when the weather is

Bobcat in winter

18

very cold. Skunks in northern Illinois will
stay underground for long periods of time.
Raccoons in northern states will den up to-
gether, 20 to 30 in a group, to conserve
body heat. They won’t eat, but they do
need water, and once a week they'll go out-
side and eat snow or lick ice. When it’s
warm, both raccoons and opossums will
feed at night.”

Many Illinois species follow the
bear’s example, digging in and slowing
down during the colder months to conserve
energy: the opossum, raccoon. skunk,
badger, fox squirrel, gray squirrel, red
squirrel, and chipmunk.

Other mammals remain active
throughout the year, but go to ground in
cold weather: the moles, shrews, some
mice, rabbits and gophers. The Plains
pocket gopher, with a burrow system sev-
eral hundred feet long and occupied by
only one individual, lives continuously un-
derground and comes to the surface only to
dump earth from its burrow or make food
forays. Shrews and mice will burrow under
snow, as will prairie chickens if the snow is
of the right consistency.

Storing food is another important

cold weather coping mechanism used by

shrews, squirrels, chipmunks, mice, voles
and beavers. Buds, seeds and acorns are
carefully cached by the gray squirrel, once
called the “migratory squirrel.” Ample har-
vests of acorns at one time resulted in a
bumper crop of gray squirrels. This was
followed by a nut crop failure and the sub-
sequent mass migration of the squirrel
across the country.

Sharing a habitat similar to that of
the gray squirrel, the fox squirrel collects
nuts for winter use, which he then buries
individually in small pits dug in the ground.
When nourishment is needed, the fox squir-
rel literally smells out its food reserves.

Unsociable and shy, the eastern
chipmunk has large cheek pouches in
which to carry food for winter storage. Its
burrow may be twenty feet long and have
several storage chambers in addition to its
nest. Unlike many other mammals it does
not add winter body fat, but retires to one
of its various pantries when in need of
food.

There are other adaptations to cold
weather by Illinois mammals. Nearly all of
them have winter coats that are much
thicker and with longer fur than their sum-
mer coats. Some mammals change color in
the winter. The least and long—tailed wea-
sels and the white-tailed jackrabbits all turn
white in winter. Deer may move from sum-
mer to winter habitats as far away as 40-75
miles, spending warm weather scattered
through croplands and open habitats, but
moving to dense woodlots protected from

the wind in late January and February.

Leaving Town
Some bird and bat species take extreme
measures to get away from the cold — they
leave town. Most gray bats, and almost all
silver-haired, hoary, red and evening bats
migrate south in winter, usually south of
Illinois but still within the United States.
“As far as Illinois’ bird popula-
tions go, generally the seed—eaters stay and
the insect-eaters go,” says David Bohlen,
Assistant Curator for Zoology at the Illinois

WILDLIFE

State Museum. “Most warblers, vireos,
tanagers and orioles head for Central and
South America. They need insects to feed
on. Cardinals, chickadees and tufted tit-
mouses are examples of birds that stay.
Generally the ones that stay can exploit
seed crops, fruit or even birdfeeders. In
some cases members of the same species

stay in Illinois, while others will migrate.”

Young raccoons in late fall

“Waterfowl will stay if they can find open
water with fish to feed on. Eagles choose
areas protected from the wind for winter
roosts. And many birds take shelter in ever-
greens, which offer good protection from
cold winds.”

Birds like the killdeer, phoebe and
eastern bluebird travel to the southern
United States; some bluebirds stay in south-
ern Illinois. Many robins head to Mexico.
Cedar waxwings go wherever the fruit is.
And some birds, like Illinois’ golden
plover, may fly as far as 6,000 miles to Is
lands in the south Pacific, with South
America as an alternate destination.

Peak migration periods occur from
September through the end of October, al-

though the orchard oriole is the proverbial

early bird, heading south at the end of July
rhe trigger for birds’ migratory activity is
generally thought to be day length, al
though weather is also a factor.

The how of bird migration is un
derstood as little as the where and why.
Some birds navigate by the sun, some by
the stars, some by both. The latest research

shows that magnetic fields in the earth play

an important role. The recent discovery of a
small metal plate in the bobolink’s head
may explain why that bird can navigate its

way past the equator.

Lying Low

Freshwater fishes are remarkably well
equipped to survive winter. The freezing
point of their body fluids is about .5 de
grees Centigrade below the freezing point
of fresh water, and therefore they are in lit
tle danger of freezing. Streams in Illinois
freeze at the surface once the air tempera
ture drops to 0 degrees Centigrade, but
water below the surface continues to flow
and to provide suitable habitat for fishe

throughout the winter

Canada geese on frozen lake

According to Dr. Larry Page,
ichthyologist at the NHS, fishes move from
shallow to deep areas and from small to
larger streams as winter ensues. These
migrations enable fish to avoid freezing
water in shallow areas and, by moving to
quieter, deeper water, to reduce the energy
necessary to maintain themselves. They are

less active during the winter and need to

Beaver lodge in fall

20

WILDLIFE

consume less food. Only in shallow lakes
which freeze to the bottom in severe winter
are they likely to freeze.

According to Dr. Mike Morris, an
ichthyologist with the NHS and herpetolo-
gist on his own time, snakes, turtles and
frogs also go into a winter state where their
metabolic rate is very low. Turtles actively
excavate riverbanks for burrows, while
snakes look for existing holes, usually the
burrows of mammals, to shelter in. They all
have one thing in common: they must go
below the frost line. Some frogs and turtles
shelter in lake bottoms, again where their
metabolic rates decrease, with frogs breath-
ing through their skins and turtles through
their mouths and anuses. You can still find
snakes above ground in midwinter if you
want to — they'll be out on the rocks, sun-
ning themselves. And salamanders are very
cold—adapted, breeding even with ice on the
ponds.

“One of the best known hiber-
nacula in the country is located in southern
Illinois,” reports Dr. Morris. “Little Grand

Canyon in Jackson County, 10 miles south-
west of Murphysboro, is the best known
snake den in the country. There used to be
hundreds and hundreds of snakes there, in-
cluding rattlesnakes and cottonmouths. Un-
fortunately, it became a little too well
known. People came to shoot the snakes for
sport. There are considerably fewer snakes
hibernating there now.”

Biologists have come a long way
in understanding the who, what, when,
where and why of animal survival during
winter, although most maintain there is
much more research to be done. Consider
this: Aristotle and his contemporaries be-
lieved that the disappearance of birds at
wintertime was caused by robins and red-
starts changing into one another (one was
believed to be a winter bird, one a summer
bird). They also believed that masses of
swallows spent their winters beneath the
surface of pools in tight balls to escape
predators.

Imagine what Aristotle could do

with bears.

THE ART OF NATURE

ILLINOIS INCAMERA

Pole Farm
Photography: Larry Kanfer

Under the Rainbow
Photography: Larry Kanfer

by James Krohe, Jr.

“When people see my scenes from
Horsehoe Lake they say, ‘I didn’t know we
had cypress swamps in Illinois,” ~ explains
nature photographer Willard Clay. “And
it’s true that those scenes don’t look much
like Illinois.” The magic of a good photo-
graph, however, is its ability to reveal
things we may have looked at a hundred
times but have never really seen. And few
landscapes are as little seen as Illinois’. The
prosaic charms of its agricultural expanse
are seldom appreciated, its surviving pris-
tine wonders — tucked into the far corners
of the state and in a few river valleys in

between — are seldom visited.

A dramatically different Illinois
is revealed in three handsome books of
landscape and nature photographs now in
bookstores. The publication in 1987 of
Larry Kanfer’s collection, Prairiescapes,
announced a renewed interest in art photos

of the Illinois landscape. Since then two
new collections have been released — //Ii-
nois by Gary Irving and //linois: Images of
the Landscape by Willard Clay.

Each of these books is generously
sized and handsomely produced, and each
contains perhaps a half-dozen pictures
which could fit comfortably in the other
two. Each offers a distinctive view of the
state. An unabashed art photographer,
Kanfer focuses on the former Grand Prairie
of east central Illinois, a landscape a bit
forbidding even in its verdant moods,
one which is familiar without being home-
like. Irving’s //linois (accompanied by
Kristina Valaitis’ economical text) offers a
more comprehensively documentary vision
than Kanfer’s. The book spans the state
from Michigan Avenue to Main Street and
from corn field to log cabin. A botanist by
training, Clay celebrates the nature which

Fishermen at Twilight,
Rend Lake, Illinois
Copyright 1988: Gary Irving

Autumn Leaves and Woodpile
at New Salem State Park
Copyright 1988: Gary Irving

4 mg 4 PES
a CG

survives in Illinois mainly in its more re-
mote state parks and nature preserves — an
unfamiliar, even eerie Illinois of cypress
swamps and stone canyons, waterfalls and
forest floors. Irving portrays the Illinois
that is, Kanfer shows the state as it is often
imagined to be, and Clay how it used to be.
Their techniques vary. Clay uses a
jumbo 4 X 5 view camera, Irving special-
izes in panoramic views, and Kanfer occa-
sionally manipulates images so as to mimic
Seurat’s pointillist effects. The crucial dif-
ference between them is not equipment but
sensibility. For example Clay and Kanfer
agree that a photograph owes as much to

the photographer’s imagination as it does to

the scene itself, that before a scene can be
captured, it must be seen.

In his introduction to Prairie-
scapes, Kanfer explains how he relies on
colors, textures, lines, and moods — the es-
sence of things rather than the things them-
selves — in shaping his compositions. The
result is what Kanfer calls a concept.

If Kanfer aims to abstract images
out of the diffuse elements of his scenes,
Clay seeks to particularize them “I try to
find something that’s really interesting
within the landscape,” he says. In one
scene it might be the pattern of a tree’s
bark, in another mushrooms pushing up

through a blanket of leaves. In each case,

Clay says, “Something tells me, ‘That
needs to be photographed.’ * He shuns
broad landscape shots because “there is
nothing to draw one’s eye into it.”

Irving, interestingly, believes that
his photographs take their shape as much
from the viewer's imagination as from his.
“If what people react to in a picture is light
and shadow or the composition of shapes,
it’s art,” he explains. “If they react to its
more objective elements, it’s journalism.”

None of these celebrators of IIli-
nois is a native. Irving has lived in Illinois
since 1961, Kanfer since 1973, and Clay
only since 1982. Each saw Illinois for the
first time with an eye undulled by familiar-
ity, and each was surprised.

“After I signed the contract to do

the book,” recalls Clay, a former Arizonan,

THE ART OF NATURE

“T asked my wife, “What is there to shoot?’
But I was absolutely stunned by the scenic
beauty in the state.” Irving’s expectations
were similarly low when he was asked by
his publisher to turn from Vermont and
Chicago (subjects of his two previous
books) to Illinois. “It’s so extremely flat,
and there’s such an overwhelming sense of
space,” Irving says of much of Downstate.
“Ironically, that became one of my favorite
places to photograph. It’s almost an
archetypical American landscape.” Kanfer
grew up in Oregon amid a landscape of
obvious charm, but found that IIlinois
offers “a gentle, subtle beauty” to those
who bother to look for it. “I think,” he
says, using a word not often associated
with Illinois, “that this is a terribly roman-
tic landscape.”

Evening Light on Castle Rock
and Rock River, Castle Rock
State Park. Ogle County
Copyright: Willard Clay

Patch of Blue Flag (Iris),
in a Marsh
Copyright: Willard Clay

PART I: THE CULTURE

Street vendor

(continued from p. 3)
eras, accelerated aboard the steamboats and
the railroads which later connected the
docks to the hinterland. One such cargo
was music, which was unloaded in the
speakeasies, bordellos, and gambling joints
of the 1920s. St. Louis has long been asso-
ciated with blues and jazz as each worked
its way up the Mississippi toward Chicago.
East St. Louis’ vice district, “the Valley,”
was where one could hear seminal blues-
men such as William Bunch (“Peetie
Wheatstraw”). If St. Louis was immortal-
ized by songwriter W.C. Handy, its name-
sake in the Bottom found a troubador in
Duke Ellington, who wrote East St Louis
Toodle—Oo.

River towns, like river people,

tend to move on. Governments have pre-

24

served a few relics of the many cultures
which have made the Bottom home. The
stories of their occupations have not been
similarly preserved. Why did the French
array their villages the way they did? Why
did they build their forts where they did?
Ekberg acknowledges that we can only
guess. What happened to the Mississip-
pians? Woods can speculate but that is all.
Urbanization is obliterating the story of
even recent American occupation. Survey-
ors scouting routes for a federal rail reloca-
tion project near Centreville found what
they called a “Late Hippie” style wind—
powered grist mill made by 1970s back—to—
the—landers from concrete and chicken
wire. “It is not a giant anthill nor is it an
ancient Druidic ruin,” the project surveyors

noted of the doomed mill in their report.

“There is a strong possibility that there is
not another structure in the world like this
one.” Another ruin, another people, another
layer added to the history of The American
Bottom.

This is the first of a two-part feature on the
American Bottom. Part two, which will ap-
pear in the Spring/Summer issue,will focus

on how the peoples of the Bottom reshaped

its environment.

Board of Directors
Gaylord Donnelley

Chairman, Society for the Surveys
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton

Vice-Chairman, Society for the
Surveys

Edmund B. Thornton Foundation,
Ottawa

Michael O. Gibson

Treasurer, Society for the Surveys
Marine Bank of Springfield,
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

Henry N. Barkhausen

Jonesboro

John Doxsie
A.E. Staley, Decatur

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie,
Bloomington

Clayton Gaylord
Ingersoll Milling Machine
Company, Rockford
Walter E. Hanson
Founder, Hanson Engineers, Inc.,
Springfield

Richard C. Hartnack
The First National Bank of
Chicago, Chicago

John Homeier

Bi — Petro, Springfield

Richard A. Lenon
International Minerals &
Chemicals Corporation,
Northbrook

Richard A. Lumpkin
Illinois Consolidated Telephone
Company, Mattoon

Stephen Mitchell

Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Chicago

James D. Nowlan

Knox College, Galesburg

Albert Pyott
Director, Nature Conservancy,
Winnetka

John Rednour
R.& H. Construction, DuQuoin

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

William L. Rutherford

Forest Park Foundation, Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
McDermott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Joseph Spivey

Illinois Coal Association,
Springfield

Harold B. Steele

Green Prairie Products, Inc.,
Princeton

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Leo Whalen
Whistling Wings, Hanover

Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director
Estie Karpman
Assistant Director

Jane Christman
Assistant to the Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Illinois Scientific Surveys
Morris Leighton, Chief

Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief

Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

Support*

Corporate and Foundation:
Amax Coal Foundation; Amoco
Foundation; Arthur Andersen &
Company; James and Marjorie
Anderson Foundation; Archer
Daniels Midland; BASF—Wyan-
dotte; Bell & Howell Founda-

tion; Bi—Petro; Borg-Warner
Foundation, Inc.; Boulevard
Bancorp, Inc.; Chicago Com-
munity Trust; Chicago Title &
Trust; Coffield, Ungaretti,
Harris & Slavin; Collins &
Rice; Commonwealth Edison;
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly;
Arie & Ida Crown Memorial;
Dames & Moore; Gaylord
Donnelley Trust; Gaylord &
Dorothy Donnelley Foundation;
R.R. Donnelley & Sons; Dow
Chemical; Draper & Kramer
Foundation; Du Quoin State
Bank; Farnsworth & Wylie;
Field Foundation of Illinois;
Jamee & Marshall Field Foun-
dation; First Chicago Bank;
Forest Fund; Freeman United
Coal Mining Company;
William B. Graham Founda-
tion; Greeley and Hansen;
Hamilton Consulting Engineers;
Hanson Engineers; Harris Foun-
dation; Henry, Meisenheimer
& Gende; Claude H. Hurley
Company; Hurst—Rosche Engi-
neers; Illinois Bell; Illinois Coal
Asssociation; Illinois Farm Bu-
reau; Illinois Mine Subsidence
Insurance Fund; Illinois Power
Company; Illinois Soybean
Program Operating Board;
International Minerals &
Chemicals Corp.; Joyce Foun-
dation; Kankakee Water Com-
pany; Klingner & Associates;
Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Inc.; Kraft, Inc.; Marine Bank
of Springfield; Brooks & Hope
McCormick Foundation; Robert
R. McCormick Charitable
Trust; Midwest Consulting
Engineers; Mobay Chemical;
Peabody Coal Company; Abbie
Norman Prince Trust; Rand
McNally & Company; Ran-
dolph & Associates; R & H
Construction; Regenstein Foun-
dation; Rhutasel & Associates;
Sahara Coal Company; Sargent
& Lundy Engineers; Sheppard,
Morgan & Schwaab, Inc.; J.R.
Short Milling Company; Staley
Continental, Inc.; Tornrose,
Campbell & Associates; Union
Carbide; Whistling Wings.

Individual Supporters:

James Anderson, E. Armbrust,
Henry Barkhausen, Jane Bolin,
Wesley M. Dixon, Jr., Gaylord
Donnelley, James & Nina
Donnelley, Mr. & Mrs. Thomas
E. Donnelley I, Clayton
Gaylord, Walter Hanson, Ben
W. Heineman, Fredrick Jaicks,
Dr. Michael Jeffords, Estie
Karpman, Dr. Morris Leighton,
Richard Lenon, Thomas R.
Mulroy, Al Pyott, John Shedd
Reed, Robert P. Reuss, William
Rooney, William Rutherford,
Michael Scully, Edmund B.
Thornton, Leo Whalen, William
W. Wirtz, Louise Young.

*Contributions of $200 or more

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Understanding Our Natural Heritage

N\A

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

\

Spring/Summer 1989

Published
by the
Society
for the
Illinois
: Scientific

Surveys

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

Spring/Summer 1989

The Society Page

Celebrate spring with us at The Nature of Illinois. Illinois has
more than 170 beautiful nature preserves dedicated to protect
their unusual beauty and unique plant and animal life. With help
from the Illinois Natural History Survey, we offer you a chance
to go daytripping at eight of our state’s most scenic sites.

The American Bottom, a catalog of lowland topogra-
phy, has been home to paleo-Indians, mound-building Mississip-
pians, the French, English and now modern Americans. From
chert to coal, each culture has found a wealth of natural resources
on the floodplain.

After World War II, the U.S. Army encouraged many
discharged officers to seek civilian careers in outdoor recreation.
Leo Whalen, one such ex-officer and a Society Board member,
followed their advice and turned to raising some of the most
prized ducks around at his farm, Whistling Wings.

Chicago was “‘the city of wood” until the Great Fire of
1871 took its toll. Joseph Medill was elected mayor on the
Fireproof ticket and the city rebuilt in stone. The Illinois Geo-
logical Survey traces the ups and downs of Chicago’s building
stone industry.

Northeastern Illinois was recently hit by two history-
making floods, with damages of over $142 million. In its
Floodplain Information Repository, the Illinois Water Survey
erected a first line of defense against one of nature’s most
devastating forces.

The body of an Indian child was laid to rest 2,000 years
ago in Pike County amid a wealth of burial pottery decorated
with long-ago birds. The Art of Nature looks at The Elizabeth
Birds.

I hope you will join me in becoming a member of the
Society.

Have a happy and natural spring.

Warmest regards,

Pr bit Mme ey

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Table of Contents

The American Bottom, Part II 1
The succession of human cultures which thrived on this

vast floodplain have used its natural resources in

surprisingly similar ways, for better...and for worse.

The Best Little Duck Ranch In Hanover 4
Leo Whalen’s mallards have found homes in Emperor

Hirohito's palace, at LBJ’s ranch and in a Beirut

hunting preserve.

Daytripping 7
Get back to nature at eight of Illinois’ most beautiful

preserves.

Surveying Illinois 2
Biorhythms Currents

Centering on Waste Geograms

Harvesting The River

Wood, Fire, Water and Stone 14
Chicago's history is writ in stone.

High Tide In The Heartland 17

With $250 million in flooding damage each year, -
the prairie state is often the waterlogged state.

The Art of Nature: The Elizabeth Birds 20
Prehistoric birds adorn the burial pottery of a child who
died 2,000 years ago.

About the Cover

Prairie vole feasting on a sunflower seed. Photographer:
Dr. Michael Jeffords.

Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys
Volume III, Number III
Spring/Summer 1989

Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin Editor

Jane Christman Assistant to the Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation

Stay In Touch

Name, address or delivery changes, membership or contribution inquiries, letters
to the Editor, should be addressed to The Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, 319 W.Cook St., Springfield, Il., 62704, (217)522-2033.

If at present you are receiving more copies of the magazine than usual it is
because we are using many new mailing lists. While we are cross-checking to
eliminate duplication, please give your extra copies to friends.

Copyright 1989 by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys.
All rights reserved,

NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY

PART II: THE ENVIRONMENT

JUN 21989

THE AMERICAN BOTTOM wer

The old American Bottom - Illinois’ part of

the Mississippi River floodplain which
curves south of Alton for some 70 miles -
was not exactly a paradise: no place which
flooded so often and bred so many mosqui-
toes could be. But the Bottom has been
hospitable enough that humans have made
it home for at least 10,000 years. The river
carved itself a valley out of solid bedrock;
that valley averages roughly four miles in
width except for an 1 1-mile bulge that the
river scooped out of soft Pennsylvania Age
rocks opposite today’s St. Louis. Some-
what perilously perched on this shelf is the
biggest concentration of people and
industry on the Mississippi floodplain
north of New Orleans.

The Bottom (or Bottoms, as it is
also known) is a catalog of lowland topog-
raphy: swales and ridges, sloughs and
backwater lakes, alluvial fans formed by
sediment washing out of the surrounding

bluffs and the remnants of Ice Age terraces,

all watered by the meandering river.
Scientists have identified five distinct
ecological zones in the Bottom, from
which both Indian and European settlers
took timber, game, fish, and waterfowl.
Edible marsh grasses, shellfish, roots, nuts,
and berries were plentiful in season, and
the Bottom’s silty soils provided easy
planting for domesticated crops.

From Chert To Horseradish

Whatever their differences, the succession
of human cultures which thrived on the
Bottom, from paleo-Indians to the mound-
building Mississippians to the French,
English, and modern Americans, used
these natural resources in surprisingly
similar ways. What local deposits of chert
(a kind of flint) were to Indians, coal was
to 19th century factories. The Indians’
specialized camps for nut harvest or fishing
sound a bit like the one-company towns

by James Krohe Jr.

“~—

+4

Ae ahh st ARAMA! th ae
ack cee TL ee

Abandoned car

PART II: THE ENVIRONMENT

Factory scene in East St. Louis

such as Wood River or Alorton that sprang
up around the Bottom’s oil refineries and
metals plants. And their satellite towns and
family-scale farm outposts are mimicked
by the suburbs and scattershot housing
developments which today sprawl across
the Bottom.

Indian farmers preferred the same
low-lying, nonacid, silt-loam soils that
were coveted by later French and American
farmers. Such virgin soils were fabulously
fertile (Early 19th century travelers
reported yields of corn of 120 bushels
per acre).

The diversity of crops grown here
is owed in part to the wide range of soils
and in part to the immigrant farmers who
planted what they were familiar with -
sweet corn, horseradish, pumpkins, melons,
gourds and wheat. More than nine million
pounds of horseradish is produced annually
by about 30 growers. More than half the
U.S. crop is harvested in Madison and St.
Clair counties, where it has been a main-
stay of the economy since 1920. Only the
vegetable truck farms around Chicago
produce more.

i)

Fertile And Fragile

Those soils are fertile but fragile. Bill
Woods, a geographer and archaeologist at
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
who has been digging at Cahokia, sees that
fragility as crucial to the Mississippians’
decline. “The Bottom was not heavily
forested at all. The Mississippians used a lot
of wood for construction” - one mile-long
wall of the defensive palisade around
Monks Mound wed 4500 logs and it was
rebuilt at least three times - “but their use of
wood for fuel would have been tremendous.
They would have exhausted the wetland tree
species for several miles.”

The resulting deforestation of the
bluff valleys would have had disastrous
effects, as erosion from the denuded bluffs
would have aggravated flooding in low-
lying areas. The periodic flooding of
agricultural soils was no disaster to the
Indians, who relied on floods each winter
and spring to bring to their fields new
nutrients eroded from upstream soils. The
problem was that deforestation may have
disturbed the previously predictable timing
of the annual floods.

“During heavy rains in the
summers,” Woods says, “flooding on the
Bottom would have increased dramatically.
Suddenly they were getting flooding of
their prime agricultural soils into July and
August. Production became unpredictable.”
Vulnerable fields apparently were aban-
doned, as the Mississippians moved their
settlements upslope, onto the drier alluvial
fans at the base of the bluffs.

High Waters

The Indians learned what their successors
were to learn again, which is that water
made the Bottom and water can unmake it
too. More than 20 major floods were
recorded between 1844 and 1930, but
coping with high water has tested human
civilization in the Bottom in every age.
Early Indians, for example, simply shunned
the floodplain as a site for permanent
camps. The French did not, with devastat-
ing results. The meandering river drowned
Old Kaskaskia in the 1880s and had
undercut Fort de Chartres before that.

Carl Ekberg, an historian at
Illinois State University, speculates that the
French may have built their forts so
perilously close to the shifting river for
strategic military reasons. Or they may
have done so as a result of a political
accommodation with local Indian tribes
under which the French agreed not to
extend their settlements from the
floodplain into the adjacent, Indian-
occupied bluffs. Or, Ekberg adds, because
the French simply hadn’t lived in the
Bottom long enough to learn about the
Mississippi's treacherous habits.

As Woods points out, the Bottom
habitat environment had already been
altered by humans (if inadvertently) long
before the Europeans arrived there. But the
technological skills of the newcomers
made it possible for them to change the
Bottom deliberately and permanently.
Apart from the ceremonial earthen Indian

mounds, the first major public works on the
Bottom were the levees, drainage channels,
relief wells, and catchment basins built be-
ginning at the turn of this century. Richard
Schicht, Assistant Chief of the Illinois
Water Survey, notes that parts of the
interstate highways which crisscross the
Bottom were built in areas so wet that as
much as 10 million gallons of water a day
have to be pumped away to keep road
foundations from crumbling.

Gourd harvest

PART Il: THE ENVIRONMENT

Building On Low Ground

Stricter local floodplain regulation (based
in part on flood hazard maps prepared by
the Water Survey) reflects increased sensi-
tivity to the risks of building on vulnerable
floodplains.

Ironically it was the availability of

water in quantity that spurred the rapid in-
dustrialization of the Bottom since 1890.
Between the 1940s and 1960s especially,
factories such as the Granite City steel

American lotus

works took in as much water per day from
underground sand and gravel formations as
would be used by cities of 100,000. Such
heavy withdrawals, coupled with runoff
diversions on the surface, caused local
water tables to drop temporarily, turning
wet land dry. Recent slowdowns in
groundwater withdrawals have caused
water tables to rise back toward pre-
industrial levels, flooding basements and
undermining sewer lines. The U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers has planned an
extensive system of dewatering wells,
using a computer model developed by the
Water Survey.

But engineering can undo nature
only so far. The existing levee system is
designed to protect the Metro-East region
from flood crests of 52 feet, the hypotheti-
cal “once-every-200-year” flood. The
leveeing of channels upriver means that
water which once lingered in backwater
lakes now crashes downstream. The record
flood of 1973 saw the Mississippi at St.
Louis pushed to near 200-year heights by a
volume of water which used to produce
only a 30 or 40-year flood

“Yes, we're getting higher flood
stages with the same amount of water,”

(continued on p. 23)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE BEST LITTLE DUCK RANCH

The first sign of Whistling Wings is
its farm area, located on Route 84
as it winds its way to Illinois’ far
northwestern corner. After passing
through a succession of small river
towns, you almost drive by this in-
conspicuous complex of several
grayish buildings and wire duck
pens. But look carefully. What
you're actually viewing are
Whistling Wings’ breeding pens,
the birthplace of some of the most
regal, scientific and hunted

ducks around.

The Mallard Capital Of The World
Welcome to Hanover, Illinois, the
Mallard Capital of the World, as the
town’s Chamber of Commerce has
dubbed it. Hanover owes its title to
Leo Whalen, who founded Whis-
tling Wings, the world’s largest
commercial producer of mallard
ducks. Each year two hundred
thousand ducks get their start here
in tiny Hanover (population 1,100)
and are shipped worldwide to
hunting preserves, scientific
laboratories, schools, restaurants,
and more unusual places like
presidential ponds (more on

that later).

Whistling Wings’ existence owes
some thanks to the U.S. Army which, after
World War II, encouraged discharged
officers like Whalen to seek civilian
careers in outdoor recreation (thought to
be the wave of the future). That sounded
good to Whalen who wanted to work
outdoors after having toiled inside in
tavern and pool hall businesses. While
stationed in Germany during the war,
Whalen had become familiar with

IN HANOVER

by Tara McClellan

ae a
A SN a i Ma

Welcome tothe World’s

MALLARD DUCK CAPITAL

Hanover city limit sign

European hunting clubs and decided to
start one in his hometown of Hanover.
For those who might wonder
“Which came first, the duck or the egg?”
the answer in this case is the duck, two
hundred of them in fact. Whalen decided
to use mallards because the breed is well
regulated under federal law and is the
only type of duck allowed on hunting pre-
serves. In 1954 he bought two hundred
mallards and a few acres of farm land to
start his hunting club. He added a small

lake to the area and waited for
eager hunters.

Unfortunately Hanover
was too far from the city to attract
hunters, and hunting preserves
hadn’t caught on in America as
they had in Europe. Whalen
branched out into raising birds, at
first only for his club. Later he
started selling ducks to other
preserves and customers, and the
production part of the business
eventually became more success-
ful than the preserve. In 1963
Whalen closed the club and
concentrated on dealing ducks.

Whalen is now 72 and
helps oversee the business from

a

his hilltop house overlooking
Whistling Wings’ office and the
adjacent river which is home to
nearly 100 Whalen mallards. (A
mallard is painted on Hanover’s
water tower.)

The combination office-
hatchery is a small brick building
in the middle of Hanover that
looks more like an old warehouse
than the base of a world class
duck producer. The first thing a
visitor notices upon entering the
office is a dozen or so fluffy little duck-
lings huddled together in a glass case. This
office is the hub of Whistling Wings,
where orders are taken, hatching dates
determined, shipping schedules arranged,
and the farm’s overall operations coordi-
nated. Bill Whalen and Marianne Whalen
Murphy, Leo Whalen’s son and daughter,
help oversee Whistling Wings from these
headquarters and keep a close eye on
the eggs and newborn ducklings in the
adjacent hatchery.

Leo Whalen, founder

Eggs In, Ducklings Out

The hatchery is what Whistling Wings
ducks call “Mom.” It’s here that they go
from duck egg to duckling. On long tables
inside the cold, concrete room lie baskets
of the greenish eggs (so colored to camou-
flage them in grass) waiting to be placed in
the six-foot tall metal incubators that look
more like large freezers than surrogate
duck mothers. (Each incubator “mothers”
up to 15,000 eggs simultaneously.)

Before they reach this point the
eggs are first gathered, up to four times
daily, from the breeding pens at the farm
area. Each pen houses one of four different
breeding groups. The breeding groups all
have one drake for every four hens, but
differ on the ages of the males and females
coupled together. Each group’s output and
quality of offspring are monitored to
determine which combination of ducks
produces the best quality mallards.

After the eggs are gathered from
the pens, they're washed, disinfected, and
stored in coolers which keep them dormant
for up to seven days while more eggs are

gathered. On the eighth day the eggs are

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

“candled” to test for fertility. When held
against a light a fertile egg will show a
dark mass inside (the embryo), while
infertile eggs will appear clear.

Each Wednesday all of the eggs
are placed inside the incubators to provide
them with plenty of heat and humidity.
These surrogate mothers also turn the
eggs once every hour to prevent the
embryos from attaching to the shells.

Bill Whalen says that amassing a
quantity of eggs over a week and transfer-
ring them to the incubator at one time
controls the number of ducks which will
hatch on a certain date. This helps coordi-
nate the overall hatching, shipping, and
delivery schedules. During the peak
season of May and June, there are two
hatchings each week, while there is only
one hatching per week the rest of the year.

After the eggs have been incu-
bated for twenty-four days, they’re
transferred to deep drawers in the tall
hatcher machines which provide the eggs
with more humidity than the incubators.
This prevents the ducklings from having
problems breaking out of their shells on

Young mallards in pen

the twenty-seventh day.
“We put in eggs and take out
ducklings,” Bill says.

Bringing Up Baby

The first order of business for the mallard
neophytes is to comply with Uncle Sam.
The federal government requires that each
duck must have the toe on the back of one
of its legs clipped off to show that it was
farm-raised. After becoming “legal” the
ducks are either packed in shipping
containers and sent to customers wanting
day-old ducks or moved a few miles down
the road to buildings back at Whistling
Wings’ farm area.

A chorus of high-pitched, excited
chirping greets vistors upon entering the
confinement buildings. Thousands of
ducklings ricochet off one another or
huddle together in one of several pens.
Each rectangular pen corrals about 1,000
ducklings of a particular age: day-old,
week-old, two-weeks-old, or three and
four-weeks-old. Here the ducklings get
plenty of protein-rich food, heat (from

sources under the ground), and water

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

from rows of hanging “nipples.” When classroom incubation of eggs, and to golf promptly wrote Johnson suggesting an
the ducks are five weeks old they’re moved _ courses for grounds beautification. exchange: ducks for an official Lone Star
to the real world, Whistling Wings’ There are the more unusual LBJ Ranch hat. The deal was welcomed
wetlands area. customers like the Jack Daniels distillery and a presidential limousine picked up
The wetlands area is several miles in Tennessee which wanted ducks for its “LBJ’s ducks.” This wasn’t Whalen’s last
from town on 400 acres of grassy, rolling ponds (you can see the ducks in some of presidential deal. In 1985 former president
land. Whalen’s original hunting clubhouse __ their print ads). Brookfield Zoo had to Richard Nixon bought some ducks for his
is still here, looking out over one of three buy a duck a week to keep its Il-foot California ranch.
lakes he made for the ducks. The lakes are anaconda snake happy. Japan’s Emperor
surrounded by 60,000 pine trees which Hirohito sent representatives to tour A Festival Of Fowl
Whalen planted and by small plots of land Whistling Wings before buying 200 Ducks range from $.95 to $16.75 each,
which he preserved for wildlife (we saw Whalen mallards to populate the palace depending on their age and the quantity
some wild turkeys on our visit). There are ponds. Malaysia wanted some ducks for a ordered. For five dollars you can adopt a
no fences or nets to keep the mallards in, park, Beirut ordered some for a hunting duck. Each year Hanover holds a Mal-
but why leave when you have all the food preserve, England wanted some for lardfest, its version of October Fest. It is
and pleasant surroundings you could research, and Peru’s president wanted held the first weekend in October and is
ask for? eggs for purposes unknown. Whistling dedicated to everything about ducks,
Raising ducklings in natural Wings’ mallards have also travelled to according to Bill Whalen. Part of that
surroundings like these ensure that Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands and the weekend is Whistling Wings’ Adopt A
Whalen’s mallards are as close to wild as Dominican Republic. Mallard Program. Participants name their
possible. They must adapt to a varying “You never know who you'll be ducks, receive their official certificates of
climate and survive such predators as talking to when you pick up the phone,” registration (like a mallard birth certifi-
raccoons, minks, cats and coydogs, a Marianne Whalen Murphy says. cate), have the ducks banded, and get their
coyote-dog mix. Because they ’ve already The transaction of which Leo pictures taken as they release the birds into
faced these natural elements, Bill says Whalen is probably proudest is his trade the wild blue yonder from Hanover’s
Whistling Wings’ ducks offer clients a with Lyndon Johnson. During LBJ’s bridge. Each year the program becomes
high survival rate. presidency, Whalen watched a news more popular and the ducks’ names
report which said that the ponds on get crazier.
For Emperors And Presidents Johnson’s ranch were duckless. Whalen (continued on p. 24)

When it’s time to ship the ducks (which are
sold at any age and in any quantity), a ra-
tioning system is initiated and the mallards
are later lured into catching pens with food.
They are then placed in shipping coops and
delivered via truck or plane.

There have been unplanned
detours. A plane carrying Florida-bound
mallards was hijacked and the ducks ended
up in Cuba...permanently. On another
occasion a would-be ducksnatcher tried to
make off with a truck of mallards as Bill

Whal dev heen Tes —= meett had a
ser eee eV AEVEN COON TIVITY

Most of the mallards are delivered
uneventfully to hunting preserves while the
remainder are shipped to conservation
groups for duck repopulation, to scientists

v¢ veeree renee aaa meee

~ 2 ——

for research, to restaurants, to schools for
Mallard duck eggs

Black oak on Illinois Beach dune

Daytripping is an old and honored custom
among England’s middle classes. Brighton
Beach, Dover, Blackpool and the Isle of
Wight are all common destinations of
Britons looking for a relaxing holiday,
which will probably include bathing,
punting, a pub visit and picnicking. While
the English picnic basket is more likely to
include Scotch eggs, sausages, cucumber
sandwiches and a Cornish pasty or two,
Americans will probably feast on fried
chicken and potato salad. The English will
travel on a special good-for-one-day ticket
on British Railways. Americans will, of
course, drive.

The mode of transportation or the
menu isn’t important; getting back to
nature Is.

Illinois has more than 170 areas
where you can get back to nature, all

dedicated as nature preserves to protect

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

DAYTRIPPING

their unusual beauty or unique plant and
animal life. Many contain endangered
species or geological formations which
can’t be found anywhere else in Illinois.
The public can visit most of these areas,
although few have accomodations.

With expert advice from the
Illinois Natural History Survey, we have
chosen to profile eight scenic Illinois sites
that are nationally recognized nature
preserves. For more information about
all of Illinois’ preserves, call the Illinois
Nature Preserves Commission at
217/785-8686.

Illinois Beach

In this frequently visited 829-acre preserve

near Zion you'll see a prairie, savanna,
marsh, dunes, beach, sedge meadows,
pond, swales and the “Dead River.”

Unusual plant life includes wild orchids,

sandbinding grasses, prickly-pear cactus
and black oaks. Interesting fish, insects
and more than 150 species of migratory
birds abound. A nature center, trail system
and trail guide can assist visitors. To get
there from Zion, take Sheridan Road south
about one mile to Wadsworth Road. Go
east to Illinois Beach State Park and south

of the park’s lodge.

Little Black Slough

The Heron Pond-Little Black Slough
Nature Preserve in southernmost Illinois 1s
1,861 acres of swamps (considered some
of the finest in Illinois), bottomland and
upland forests, streams, limestone glades
and rocky bluffs. Most of the year the
grounds are covered by up to six feet of
water, supporting such interesting flora
and fauna as huge bald cypress trees

(among Illinois’ oldest), tupelo trees, the

bird-voiced tree frog and the cottonmouth.
To get there from Vienna, take Highway
45 south four miles to the preserve on the
east side of the highway.

Revis Hill Prairie

Revis Prairie is one of Illinois’ largest hill
prairies. This 53-acre preserve contains
upland forest and several types of prairie
grasses. The purple coneflower, prairie
clover and other plants thrive there. The
western hognose snake, western slender
grass lizard, ottoe skipper and numerous
insects also make this home. Take High-
way 97 to 0.5 miles north of Kilbourne.
Turn east and take the blacktop road 7.5
miles to a gravel road. Turn and travel
southeast one mile. The preserve is
northeast of the road.

Beall Woods

Next to the Wabash River lie 329 acres of
old forests, sandstone cliffs, and streams
in Beall Woods, which has the largest
Shumard oaks in the world and other oak
and hickory giants. (Some tower 130 to
160 feet high.) Rare fish like the mountain
madtom live in the river next to the
Woods, and more than 100 species of

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

birds have been observed there. Interesting
plants like jack-in-the-pulpits grow here.
From Keensburg, take the blacktop road
east 1.5 miles to the Beall Woods Conser-
vation Area.

Sand Praire-Scrub Oak

Located between Bath and Kilbourne, this
1,460 acre preserve features sand
savannnas, sand prairies and dunes. The
sand prairies and old fields contain savanna
of blackjack oak and several types of prairie
grasses. From Bath take the blacktop road
east 3.6 miles, then turn south for 1.3 miles.
The nature preserve is west of the road.

Lusk Creek Canyon

Grottos, gorges and glades help form this
125-acre preserve, part of which is in
southern Illinois’ Shawnee National Forest.
Lusk Creek cut into the sandstone bedrock,
shaping cliffs from a few feet to nearly 100
feet high. Luscious oak, beech and tulip
trees flourish in the valleys while moss and
ferns cling to the cliffs. Take Golconda
Road north of Eddyville at the junction of
Highway 145 and Golconda. Travel
southeast on Golconda 0.2 miles to a gravel
road. Go east and north 1.5 miles to the

Lusk Creek Canyon

8

Bird’s Eye primrose from Apple River Canyon

parking lot. Walk two miles on the foot trail
to the preserve.

Apple River Canyon State Park

This 297-acre park in northwestern Illinois
offers limestone bluffs, ravines, springs and
streams. Some prairie remnants and forest
remain, hosting several types of prairie
grasses and oak, elm and pine trees. Cliff
swallows live on the bluffs and primrose
adorns the cliffs. Picnic, camping and
fishing facilities are available. The park can
be reached from Interstate 20 or Highway
78. Call 815/745-3302 for specific
directions.

Spring Bay Fen

To visit this 27-acre marshland preserve 15
miles north of Peoria, you must first get
permission from the Illinois Department of
Conservation’s Natural Heritage Biologist
at 309/347-5119. The site is near the
Illinois River’s backwaters and offers
floodplain forests and tall shrub fen. While
it has been inundated by floodwaters in the
past, its features, like wild orchids,
highbush cranberry, poison sumac and
pussy willow are still intact. The Natural
Heritage Biologist can provide specific
directions to the fen.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

ay BIORHYTHMS

The Ones That Didn’t Get Away
Illinois Natural History Survey
(NHS) scientists are busy
conducting a creel (the basket
in which an angler stores his
catch) survey of sport fishing
on the Illinois portion of Lake
Michigan. In 1987 the total
fishing effort in the area
exceeded two million angler
hours, with over half attribut-
able to summer pedestrian
anglers. Harvest estimates for
seven sport fishes exceeded

Crayfish Aquaculture

The market for crayfish, an in-
creasingly important aquacul-
ture product, is expanding
rapidly into Illinois restaurants
and supermarkets. Several
species of crayfish grow to
marketable size in one year in
Illinois, suggesting a big market
for crayfish grown in the
Prairie state.

Natural crayfish foods
include vegetative debris and
invertebrates found in aquatic
sediments. Natural History
Survey and University of
Illinois scientists have also
studied the value of inoculating
wheat straw with certain
bacteria isolated from natural
habitats. When the wheat straw

$3.8 million, and over $10
million was spent on fishing
trips to Lake Michigan.

The study, over three
years old and scheduled to
continue through 1989, is
under the direction of NHS
scientist Dr. W. Horns and
associates, with support from
the Illinois Department of
Conservation and the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service.

was inoculated and allowed to
incubate for six days, levels of
essential nutrients rose meas-
urably, providing a potentially
inexpensive cheap source of

crayfish feed.

Mid-Air Collisions
A single white pelican weigh-
ing about 15 to 20 pounds was
responsible for the loss of a
$230 million Air Force BIB
bomber and three flight
personnel in La Junta, Califor-
nia in 1987. The plane was
flying below 500 feet when the
pelican flew into one of the
plane’s support structures and
severed a hydraulic line.
Virtually the only defense now
against such accidents is pilot
awareness. That is the focus of
a research project by NHS
researcher Dr. Ron Larkin.
Flocks of snow geese,
Canada geese, starlings and
other potentially hazardous
birds are observed on radar to
provide pilots with early alerts.
Concentrations of 50,000 to
100,000 starlings roosting on

Asian Tiger Mosquito Survey
Forty-two Illinois counties
were surveyed in 1987 for the
presence of the potentially
lethal Asian Tiger Mosquito
(Aedes Albopictus) in its
primary larval habitat - used
tire dumps. Major tire dumps
were found in 32 of the 42
counties observed, primarily in
southern Illinois. The rapid
spread of the mosquito was
inhibited by last summer’s
drought conditions, with the
mosquito confined to three

the grounds of Willard Airport,
Champaign, were observed in
December of 1987, and
aviation officials were advised
on how to cope with the
problem. Ground sitings of
large flocks like these are
complemented by radar
detection and recognition of
their distinctive spatial patterns
and morning nest departure
times. A far more difficult
problem is presented by fall
goose migrations - approxi-
mately 10,000 snow geese and
over 250,000 Canada geese in
Illinois. Radar detection is
inevitable, but their identifica-
tion is much more difficult and
must be determined relatively
quickly to avoid aircraft-large
bird collisions.

counties: Madison, St. Clair
and Cook.

Within those three
counties, however, more sites
were infested with a/bopictus
than had been found in
previous years. Legislation is
being drafted for the spring
session to address the issue of
scrap and waste tires in
Illinois, major breeding
grounds for the Asian Tiger
Mosquito,

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Recycling Pesticide-Contaminated Soil

An estimated 1,200 agrichemi-
cal retail facilities are scattered
throughout Illinois. Hazardous
concentrations of pesticides
may accumulate at these sites
through accidental spills during
mixing, loading and cleanup
operations. Natural History
Survey researchers are investi-
gating the feasibility of remov-
ing contaminated soil and

applying it to agricultural fields.

Herbicide residues in soil,
groundwater and grains
resulting from this land
application of wastes were

monitored and compared to
herbicide residues from freshly
sprayed products. The research-
ers found that herbicides
degraded more slowly when
applied to fields as waste soil
than when freshly applied.
These waste herbicides were
still active, although less than
freshly sprayed material, against
several weed species. In
addition no residues were
detected in crops, and the
pattern of herbicide presence in
groundwater was not related to
application treatments.

Dr. Glen Sanderson Promoted To Principal Scientist

Dr. Glen Sanderson, the world’s authority on the raccoon and a
highly respected authority on waterfowl, has been promoted to
the rank of principal scientist at the Natural History Survey.
Dr. Sanderson has a long and distinguished record of scientific
and professional achievements, including the Oak Leaf Award
of The Nature Conservancy, the Conservationist of the Year
Award from American Motors Corporation, and the Profes-
sional Merit Award of the North Central Section of the
Wildlife Society.

His efforts played a key role in the replacement of lead by
steel shot for waterfowl hunting and in preserving the remnant
populations of prairie chickens in Illinois. As section head of
Wildlife Research for nearly 25 years, he has unselfishly
provided leadership, advice and guidance to all those who care
about our natural resources.

Prairie Chicken
(Courtesy: Illinois Natural
10 History Survey)

peee CURRENTS

CS
AMA,

Lead In Drinking Water

To help utilities meet new,
stricter U.S. EPA regulations on
lead in drinking water, the
Illinois Water Survey (IWS) is
conducting research for prepara-
tion of a guidance manual for
utilities nationwide.

The manual, funded by the
American Water Works Associa-
tion Research Foundation, will
provide guidance to utilities in
identifying lead sources,
selecting water treatment
alternatives and monitoring
their effectiveness.

Iilinois Water and Air

Under Stress

At sites throughout the state that
comprise the Illinois Benchmark
Network, the Water Survey
regularly collects data on
shallow groundwater levels,
climate characteristics and
suspended stream sediments.

The long-term data col-
lected will help answer ques-
tions and resolve conflicts on
such issues as the use of
groundwater for irrigation,
methods for decreasing stream
and lake sedimentation and the
feasibility of solar and wind
energy systems.

“The water and atmos-
pheric resources of Illinois are
under more stress now than at
any other time in history,”
according to network coordina-
tor Dick Schicht. “Demand for
water is increasing. And more
and more wastes - including
hazardous wastes - are being
disposed of. The data collected
at network sites should help us
solve Illinois’ environmental
problems.”

The manual is expected to
be available in July. For more
information, contact Chet Neff at
the Water Survey, 217/333-4954.

Metro East Groundwater
Studied

Intense industrial activity has
exposed shallow groundwater
supplies in the Metro East area of —
southwestern Illinois to industrial
pollutants. To study the area’s
groundwater quality, Water
Survey researchers have installed
groundwater monitoring wells in
southern Madison and northern
St. Clair counties.

The project is part of a
study to assess groundwater
quality in areas of the state
identified as highly susceptible to
groundwater contamination. The
Survey has completed a study of
groundwater quality in the
Rockford area and will begin a
study in the Peoria-Pekin area
this spring.

Contamination by both
industrial sources and agricul-
tural chemicals will be monitored
during the project. The monitor-
ing wells were installed at
Cahokia, Centreville,
Collinsville, East St. Louis, Glen
Carbon, Granite City, Madison
and Horseshoe Lake State Park.

Weathering Time and Pollution
While the National Park
Service contemplates an
extensive conservation effort to
preserve Philadelphia’s
Merchants’ Exchange Building,
Water Survey researcher Don
Dolske is studying the effects of
climate and pollution on the
eroding building.

The 155-year-old struc-
ture, which is part of the
Independence National

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Historical Park, shows signs of
surface erosion, discoloration
and loss of stone integrity. The
project offers a unique opportu-
nity to study the weathered
marble of an architecturally
and historically significant
building and enhance under-
standing of how materials
withstand such factors as local
pollution and acid rain.

Philadelphia Merchant's Exchange Building
(Courtesy: Illinois Water Survey)

Saving a landmark
(Courtesy: Illinois Water Survey)

See CENTERING ON WASTE
malale

Reducing Waste

Reducing the volume and
toxicity of wastes generated in
Illinois’ manufacturing process
is the goal of a new U.S.EPA-
funded program to be admini-
stered by the Hazardous Waste
Research and Information
Center (HWRIC).

Illinois was chosen as one
of six states to receive $300,000
over three years for the WRITE
(Waste Reduction Innovative
Technology Evaluation)
program. HWRIC will intro-
duce new waste reduction
techniques to Illinois industries,
disseminate information about
these techniques and establish
reliable performance and
cost information for waste
reduction techniques.

Hazardous Wastes In The Classroom

Chemistry and other science
departments in small colleges
and high schools generate
enough hazardous wastes (220
to 2,200 pounds per month) to
qualify as small quantity
generators under federal
regulations. Frequently they
lack the technical expertise and
financial resources to address
problems associated with
these wastes.

With funding from
HWRIC, Dr. Wayne Wesolow-
ski of Illinois Bendictine
College in Lisle will head a
project aimed at developing
low-cost, innovative solutions
to the problem. Dr. Wesolowski
will form a waste disposal
consortium with other local

colleges to establish teaching
methods for training students in
reducing hazardous wastes.
Information on hazardous waste
regulations applicable to
college and high school
laboratories will also be
assembled.

Results of the project will
be shared with local groups
through state-sponsored
workshops. More than 400 high
school teachers alone are
expected to participate. The
first workshops are scheduled
for spring.

Publications Help Industries
Reduce Hazardous Waste
Four publications are now
available from HWRIC to
assist Illinois businesses and
other hazardous waste genera-
tors: Waste Reduction for
Illinois: Information & Serv-
ices, The EPA Manual for
Waste Minimization, Waste
Minimization: Environmental
Quality with Economic Bene-
fits, and The Illinois Small
Quantity Generators’ Manual
(2nd edition).

These publications are
available free from HWRIC:
1808 Woodfield Drive, Savoy
IL 61874; 217/333-8940.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

a (GGEOGRAMS

World’s Most Powerful X-Ray Source Sited

The Illinois Geological Survey
(IGS) recently helped to deter-
mine critical geological and
hydrogeological parameters for
preliminary design and construc-
tion of the world’s most power-
ful X-ray source - the Advanced
Photon Source (APS), funded by
the U.S. Department of Energy
and planned for construction

at Argonne National Laboratory
in Illinois.

The Survey’s investigations,
funded by $250,000 from the
Illinois Department of Energy
and Natural Resources, increase
confidence that the foundation
for the positron storage ring will
be stable. This is a necessity for
effective operation of the
equipment, designed to produce
high-energy X-ray beams
10,000 times brighter than
currently possible.

Underground Power

Illinois has abundant energy
resources, mostly in the form of
181 billion tons of underground
coal, about one-tenth of total
coal resources in the United
States. The coal’s high sulfur
content represents one barrier to
development. Others - like
depth of coal or proximity to
areas already drilled for

oil - have been extensively
studied by Geological Survey
researchers.

Little is known, however,
about the impact of other
factors such as land use
limitations, development of
other mineral resources and
other restrictions. The Illinois
Geological Survey will work
with the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) to update coal
resource and reserve figures in
a study that will look at 10 to
15 representative areas selected
to reflect the range of coal
resources and restrictions on
mining. That data will be
extrapolated to estimate
available coal in the state and
Illinois Basin.

The facility will be used
by researchers from academia,
industry and governmental
laboratories in materials
science, biology, medicine,
biotechnology, chemistry,
physics and geosciences. At any
one time 300 scientists will be
able to use the APS.

New Map Series Available

A new version of the Illinois
Coal Mine Map Series detailing
the extent and location of coal
mining operations for 73
counties as of January, 1987
has been completed by the
Survey. This 80-map series
features surface and under-
ground mines (both active
and abandoned) and other
technical data at a new scale of
1:100,000 for easy use with the
USGS’ 1:100,000 scale, 30 by
60 feet, quadrangle map series
and Illinois county map series
available from the IGS. Each
map is accompanied by a
county directory of coal mines
listing company names, mine
names, type of mine, years
operated, coal seam mined and
mine location.

Available on either paper
($2) or polyester film ($5),
these maps can be obtained
from the Coal Section, IGS,
615 East Peabody Drive,
Champaign, IL 61820. The
Survey can also design
customized maps for any of
the 73 mined counties.

Looking Through The Layers
Distribution of earth materials
from the surface to a depth of
15 meters (49.3 feet) and
horizontally over a specified
area is depicted in a stack-unit
map now available for the
entire state of Illinois. Com-
prised of four separate regional
maps, the stack-unit map
provides basic geologic
information for regional land-
use planning.

The maps and an explana-
tory publication by Dr. Richard
Berg and Dr. John Kempton of
the Survey are sold as a
package for $9.75 plus postage
and handling fees by the Order
Department, Illinois Geological
Survey, 615 East Peabody
Drive, Champaign, IL 61820 or
call 217/333-4747.

The Geological Year

In Review

To provide the public with a
look at current projects and
critical natural resource issues
facing the state, the Geological
Survey has published highlights
from this fiscal year. A copy of
this free document may be
obtained by written request to:
Order Department, Illinois
Geological Survey, 615 East
Peabody Drive, Champaign,
IL 61820.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

MUSEUM MOMENTS

Harvesting the River: Life and Work on
the Illinois River will be a waterborne
exhibit highlighting the history of the
Illinois River Valley. The Belle Reynolds,
a renovated tow boat, will transport the
exhibit the length of the Illinois Waterway
during the autumn of 1989. Navigating
from Joliet to St. Louis, the boat will tie
up for several days at each of 18 sched-
uled ports of call (see map at right).
Visitors will be invited on board, free of
charge, to view the multimedia exhibit.
Each community is planning special
events around the river theme.

For more information about the
exhibit and specific dates, contact Lori
Grove or Craig Colten at the Illinois State
Museum, 217/785-4842.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

BUILDING CHICAGO
Woop, FIRE, WATER AND STONE

The stone called dolomite or
limestone was rarely used by
pioneers settling along the shore
of Lake Michigan in northeast-
ern Illinois in the early 1800s.
Although stone was easily
visible to these early settlers,
timber cut from nearby heavy
forests was easier to use for
homes, barns, fences, small
churches and one-room schools.
Historical records are incom-
plete but it’s safe to assume that
by 1830, Fort Dearborn was
using some stone for building.

In that year, the first quarry
in what was to become Chicago
opened. Many of the city’s
historic buildings were made of
stone quarried during the
industry’s early years. But
Chicago was essentially a “city
made of wood” until the Great
Fire of 1871. The fire-proof
value of stone as a building
material was obvious, and
dolomite was used to rebuild
Chicago.

Continent Building

The dolomite found in north-
eastern Illinois was formed
during the Silurian Period,
which began 438 million years
ago and lasted for 30 million
years. The long process began
when virtually all of North
America was covered by
seawater. The original limestone
was deposited in the shallow sea
by accumulation of the shells of
mollusks and other calcite-
secreting organisms. Dolomite

14

From “Combination Atlas Map of Will County, Illinois” Thompson Bros. & Burr, Elgin, Illinois
(Courtesy: Illinois Geological Survey)

was formed by a chemical
process that converted the
original limestone to the mineral
dolomite. The Silurian Period
was followed by several other
episodes of marine incursions
onto the continent, deposition of
sediments, uplift of the sea
bottom, and retreat of the ocean
and erosion. The last sea left the
Chicago area about 300 million
years ago.

After the seas retreated,
rocks that had been deposited
over the dolomite were gradually
removed by erosion and streams.
Beginning about two million
years ago, according to Dr. John

Kempton of the Illinois Geo-
logical Survey, glaciers
repeatedly pushed southward
over the Chicago area and
melted, leaving behind layers of
clay, sand and rock debris
picked up during their advance.
The glaciers and their meltwa-
ter modified the surface,
eroding the glacial debris and
often the dolomite bedrock.
About 12,000 years ago the last
of the glaciers melted. The final
surge of meltwater spilled out
of Lake Michigan to produce
additional erosion and expose
the buried Silurian dolomite in
many areas.

Ribbons Of Water And Steel
The growth of the building
stone industry was intricately
related to the construction of
harbor facilities, the Illinois and
Michigan Canal and the
development of a reliable
system of railroads. In 1827
federal surveyors studied the
long-standing problem of an
immense sandbar at the mouth
of the Chicago River. For years,
city officials - and before them
soldiers from Fort Dearborn -
had tried to keep the river’s
mouth open for shipping. All
manner of manmade controls
failed to prevent the annual

buildup of sand and silt where
the river emptied into Lake
Michigan. Annual clean-ups
were routine until almost the
last quarter of the 19th century.

At first Chicago’s stone
was king. The Bridgeport
quarry - Chicago’s first -
opened in 1830. Thousands of
Irish immigrants poured in from
the east looking for jobs (see
companion article). Hauling
stone from the quarry to the
lakefront, building piers and
breakwaters, loading and
unloading goods from barges
were heavy tasks performed by
mostly Irish immigrants.

That was the case until the
Illinois and Michigan Canal
was built. As early as 1673, the
explorers Jolliet and Marquette
realized the value of a canal
connecting the Chicago and the
Des Plaines Rivers. A few
miles of portage across swampy
land was all that prevented the
explorers’ canoes from travel-
ing all the way from Lake
Michigan to the Mississippi and
then south to New Orleans. In
1827 the federal government
surveyed the area around
Lemont, Lockport and Joliet as
a potential terminal for such a
canal. The Silurian dolomite
layers found in that area
ultimately proved superior to
those found in the immediate
Vicinity of 19th century
Chicago as sources of
building stone.

The 96-mile long Illinois
and Michigan Canal, completed
in 1848, connected the Missis-
sippi and Illinois Rivers to Lake
Michigan through the south
branch of the Chicago River.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

“The Illinois and Michigan
Canal was to Chicago what the
Erie Canal was to New York. It
opened the way for Chicago to
engage in international trade,”
explains Lee Hanson, Executive
Director of the Illinois and
Michigan Canal National
Heritage Corridor. Two years
after the Canal opened, a
network of railroads was in
place. Chicago was now the
heartland link, east and west, by
water and by rail.

Chicago grew. When the
Canal opened in 1848, Chi-
cago’s population stood at

Bridgeport quarry, Chicago, Illinois
(Courtesy: Illinois Geological Survey)

20,000. Forty-one years later in
1889, the population was a
whopping 1,099,850. Chicago
was hailed as the busiest harbor
in the world. Completion of the
canal provided low-cost water
transportation for the building
quarries being developed near
Joliet and Lemont and greater
access to the rapidly expanding
Chicago market.

From The Heights To The Pits
Many of Chicago’s remaining
historic churches, schools and
homes are heavy, handsome
structures built of dolomite

during the latter half of the
nineteenth century. The old
pumping station and the Water
Tower in Chicago and the
State Capitol in Springfield are
examples of the majesty of the
area’s once-great stone indus-
try. With ups and downs along
the way, the Chicago building
stone industry grew for nearly
a century until World War One
when several events conspired
to cause its collapse.

The demise of Chicago’s
building stone industry is
attributed to many causes, but
primarily to changing architec-
tural styles and building
technology. In addition
quarries were hemmed in by
urban growth. To find more
stone, operators had to dig
deeper and at greater cost. A
shrinking market coupled with
the necessity for deeper mining
caused many quarries to close,
leaving abandoned pits in their
wake. The pits became dumps
and landfills. The old Bridge-
port quarry was Chicago’s
first to open and the most
recently closed.

As the use of building
stone in Chicago declined, the
demand for crushed stone for
use as aggregate increased. In
1987 Illinois ranked sixth
among the states in the produc-
tion of crushed stone. Almost
half of that stone came from
quarries in northeastern
Illinois, primarily from three
quarries in Cook County. Un-
fortunately, like the early
building stone quarries, the
continued availability of
crushed stone is itself
threatened by urbanization

Assuring The Future
Dr. Donald Mikulic of the
Illinois Geological Survey
states that “We need to find
new, local sources of high-
quality stone products to supply
the vast markets in northeastern
Illinois.” Some success has
been achieved at the Elmhurst
Underground Quarry. The mine
is 520 feet below ground
surface and is entered by an
inclined tunnel that begins 222
feet below ground and runs
across and down to reach a new
source of dolomite. Innovative
techniques are being devised to
sustain the growth of Chicago’s
crushed stone industry.
Today’s aggregate materi-
als are just as necessary to a
thriving economy as the
building stone of earlier days.
To honor that proud past, a
huge block of Silurian dolomite
is Illinois’ contribution to the
construction of the Fountain of
Freedom commemorating the
200th anniversary of the United
States Constitution.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

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Vulcan Materials Company quarry, Cook County (Courtesy: Illinois Geological Survey)

Shanties, Rum And Company Stores

In 1830 with a population of
150, the fur-trading and military
post called Fort Dearborn was
large enough to be officially
designated a village. The
frontier settlement was strategi-
cally located at the mouth of the
Chicago River.

Funded by local monies,
work on the Illinois and
Michigan Canal began in 1836,
six years after Chicago’s
Bridgeport Quarry opened.
Word of the project spread.
Thousands of Irish immigrants
who had worked on the Erie
Canal moved into the settle-
ment seeking jobs. Families in
the United States contacted
relatives still in Ireland urging
them to come to the new land
for jobs and religious freedom.

In 1837 at least 1,700 Irish
emigrants left home hoping to
find work, food and freedom,
crossing an ocean and half a
continent. Working on the
docks, in the quarry or on the
Canal, they were lodged in
shanties by their employers.
They were fed, given a gill of
rum (about half a cup) and 90
cents in scrip per day. The scrip
could be used as money at a
company store.

“There were German im-
migrants, too,” according to
Lee Hanson, “but the scrip
could be used to buy land at
$1.25 per acre. Most of the
Germans bought farms as soon
as they could. It really was the
thousands of Irish immigrants
who built the Canal.”

In this harsh, impoverished,
raw environment, old world
family feuds ignited. Riots
coupled with yearly outbreaks
of cholera killed thousands. In
1838, 500 perished.

Money dried up during the
national financial crisis of 1840,
and work ceased on the Canal.
Construction resumed five years
later, and the Canal opened in
1848. Chicago’s population had
grown to 20,000. The Bridge-
port area of Chicago took its
name from the city’s first stone
quarry. The area remains home
to many of Chicago’s early
Irish families.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

HiGH TIDE IN
THE HEARTLAND

by Tara McClellan

2S

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Ci Kae

the Chicago metropolitan area was hit by two floods,

both of which exceeded the magnitude of a flood Sa Bi See

century. a

<< = - ~

expected to occur once-every

es

Their Infinite Variety

In its most simple form, a flood occurs
when a stream or river overflows its
banks. A number of events act alone or
together to create different types of floods
with varying degrees of severity. Bruce
Barker, with the Illinois Department of
Transportation’s Division of Water
Resources, says the most common cause of
flooding is large and widespread rainfall
that might be triggered by a line of slow,
intense thunderstorms.

Another type of flood is the ice
flood which Barker says is an annual event
on the Mississippi River near the Quad
Cities. Near the end of winter when ice-
covered streams start melting, the ice
breaks and forms dams which cause
flooding. Water soon breaks the ice dam,
but the ice merely flows further down-
stream and the process repeats itself.
(Barker says scientists are working on an
experimental project on the Kankakee
River in which warm water from a power
plant is diverted through the cold river to
prevent ice jams.)

In The Handbook of Applied Me-
teorology, Krishan P. Singh from the
Illinois Water Survey (IWS) enumerates
the other factors which work individually
or jointly to cause floods: intense storm
precipitation, rainfall over snow-covered
areas, snowmelt, rain occurring on water-
saturated ground, a succession of heavy
storms and dam failure. The severity of the
flood depends on the intensity and combi-
nation of the factors causing it.

The Waterlogged North

While flooding occurs year-round, Barker
says that, statewide, flooding seems to
occur more during the spring and summer
because warm, humid storm masses from
the Gulf often combine with northerly cold
fronts to dump lots of rain on Illinois.
However the northern part of Illinois gets
at least half of its annual floods during the
winter, partially because the frozen ground

increases water runoff. And according to a

18

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Flooded side street in Edgewater District, Chicago, Illinois
(Courtesy: Illinois Geological Survey)

study on flood trends done by Stanley
Changnon of IWS, Illinois’ climate has
become increasingly cooler and wetter,
producing more winter floods and longer
floods, especially in northern Illinois.

Mother nature’s cruel mood
swings aren’t the only factors affecting
flood damages. Man has exacerbated the
problem. Erosion from construction,
wetland development, floodplain filling,
stream alteration and inadequate bridge
construction have increased the damage
that floods inflict. Overall, urbanization
may be the worst culprit. When land 1s
developed it often loses its ability to absorb
water as the sponge-like ground is replaced
with concrete or other impermeable
surfaces that increase water runoff.

This helps explain why northern
Illinois, especially metropolitan and
suburban Chicago, is highly susceptible to
flood damages. It’s an area with several
rivers (and, of course, Lake Michigan)
whose floodplains have been filled,
leaving floodwaters nowhere to go. Other
vulnerable areas in Illinois include
floodplains near the Mississippi, Illinois
and Ohio Rivers. Barker says floodplains

near the Ohio Rivers are highly prone to
flooding since that river’s level can vary
fifty feet from normal stages to its highest
flood stage.

Northern Illinois’ flood suscepti-
bility dates back to at least 1673 when
records show that explorers Marquette
and Jolliet had to evacuate camp there
because of floods. Unfortunately history
repeats itself.

Northeastern Illinois was recently
hit by two history-making floods. In
September and October of 1986, and again
in August of 1987 the Chicago metropoli-
tan area was severely flooded. Mike
Bender, with the Water Survey, says that
each of these floods was worse than a 100-
year flood, a flood that is expected to
occur once every century. Two 100-year-
plus floods occurring within twelve
months of each other was even more
astonishing.

The 1986 flood resulted from
continual substantial rainfall over nearly
two months. The Des Plaines River flooded
and damaged around 2,200 homes and 150
businesses, costing approximately $42
million. Roads were closed, traffic

disrupted, and 3,300 people were evacu-
ated from their homes.

Unlike the previous flood, the
1987 flood resulted from almost 13 inches
of rain falling in a concentrated area in a
matter of days. Nearly one inch of rain fell
on O'Hare Airport within three minutes.
More than 16,000 homes and businesses in
Cook and DuPage Counties were damaged
at a cost of $100 million, and about 300
vehicles were stalled on expressways
flooded with up to six feet of water.

While floods cause a lot of
heartache and financial damage, they can
also have positive effects on the environ-
ment. When flood waters recede from
low-lying floodplains, they leave rich
nutrients and sediment which often
produce valuable forests.

Stemming The Tide
Over the years communities and govern-
ments have initiated flood controls to curb
flooding’s adverse effects. There are
basically three types of flood controls:
structural, nonstructural, and a combination
thereof. Structural controls include erecting
structures like levees, dams, and reservoirs,
or floodproofing existing buildings. The
Flood Control Act of 1945 requires the
state to help local governments with
structural flood damage reduction projects.
Nonstructural controls like zoning

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

regulations and restrictions on the acquisi-
tion and use of floodplains were initiated
around 1975, according to Barker. These
help monitor floodplain development and
ensure that the area will be used appropri-
ately. For instance, low-lying floodplains
are not good for residential purposes but
could provide excellent recreational uses.
While these type of controls do not prevent
flooding, they decrease the amount of
damage it causes.

A recent report by a gubernatorial
Flood Control Task Force recommended
initiating even more stringent controls in
northeastern Illinois. The task force was
appointed in 1987 to determine how to
minimize future flood damage after the
record-breaking 1986 and 1987 floods
inundated that area. The group’s recom-
mendations included: prohibiting new
construction in the area’s 100-year
floodway, requiring new construction in
the floodplain to provide additional storage
for stormwater runoff, and allowing
Chicago’s collar counties to increase
property taxes to fund the execution of
stormwater management plans. (Imple-
menting all of the task force’s suggestions
would cost $2.4 billion.)

Flood Information
In order to control flood damage, planning
bodies must understand existing flood

Building a barrier: Illinois River at Peoria (Courtesy: Illinois Water Survey)

hazards and the flood history of the area in
question. In the mid-1970s the state
required the Water Survey to maintain a
central library of the best available
information on flooding throughout
Illinois. This library 1s the Illinois
Floodplain Information Repository.

According to Bender, who helps
manage this information, the basis of much
of the Repository’s data is regulatory
studies done by the Department of Trans-
portation’s Division of Water Resources
and flood insurance studies done by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In all, the Repository offers nine different
types of studies or reports on floodplains,
flood insurance, flood hazards, flood
controls, dam safety, and the like.

Bender says the Repository’s
customers are “very cosmopolitan” and
include consulting engineers, community
officials, financial lenders, appraisers,
realtors and prospective property buyers.
Usually they are seeking information to
clarify a property’s floodplain perimeters
or to determine the property’s floodplain
elevation, since there are restrictions on
building in floodplains and on securing
insurance for structures in these areas. (To
get information from the Repository, call
the Water Survey at 217/333-2304.)

Illinois has taken important strides
in controlling floods. While the rate of
increase in flood damages has slowed,
overall losses are mounting. The climatic
outlook isn’t favorable according to
Changnon’s 1981 flood trends study. Since
floods can’t be abolished, continually
improving flood preparedness and flood
controls seems to be the key to a drier

future for Illinois.

20

THE ART OF NATURE

BURIAL TREASURE:
THE ELIZABETH BIRDS

by James Krohe Jr.

Roughly 2000 years ago, at about the time
of Christ, the body of a child not yet a year
old was laid in an earthen pit atop a bluff
overlooking what would later be known as
the Illinois River. Next to the child were
carefully stacked 20 vessels made of fired
clay, flattish bowls and jars of assorted
sizes and shapes, all profusely decorated
with shapes and simple pictographs
inscribed into their sides.

Sacred Precincts

Twenty centuries later, archaeologists
working with the Center for American Ar-
chaeology in Kampsville, Illinois, un-
earthed those remarkable ceramics from
the pit they designated Burial 13 Feature 6,
Mound 7, at the Elizabeth site in Pike
County. The discovery was made in 1984,
part of a series of digs being made in an
Indian mound group in advance of major
highway construction. The site had been
home to peoples of the Havana culture

who thrived during the Middle Woodland
period of Illinois prehistory that began
approximately 100 B.C. The vessels
themselves were of the Hopewell design
(named after the Ohio site where their type
was first found). This design was widely
disseminated during the centuries when
Middle Woodland peoples dominated

the eastern half of what is now the

United States.

“Tt is really a unique cache of
pottery vessels,” explains Ken Farnsworth
of the Kampsville Center. Pottery of any
kind is a rare accoutrement of Indian burials
of the period. In perhaps two thousand such
burials that have been excavated in the
lower Illinois River valley, he says, only a
dozen or so such objects had previously
been recovered. Their role in the burial
rituals of the time is unclear. The pottery,
like the body of the infant found next to it,
may have been an offering initiating the
burial site as a “sacred precinct.”

Indian ceramics of the time were
decorated variously. Twisted cords were
sometimes pressed into the wet clay before
firing. (Cords were also wrapped around
sticks or small paddles to achieve different
effects.) In addition to cord-marking,
artisans used punches or stamps to incise
designs into surfaces before firing.

During the Early Woodland
period, those patterns consisted solely of
geometric figures and straight lines. As the
Middle Woodland period dawned, Farns-
worth explains, “Prehistoric man discov-
ered the curved line.” Vessels of Hopewell
design began sporting designs of a new
variety and style. Of the 17 Hopewell
vessels found in the burial pit at the
Elizabeth site, for example, 11 bear the
images of birds.

The Illinois Flamingo?

Animal motifs were common in Indian art.
The pots and pipes of the Middle Wood-
land Indians, like those of their successors
the Mississippians, were carved and
scribed into the likenesses of diving ducks,
frogs, bears, cardinals, and hawks. John
James Audubon, who later painted some of
the birds he saw while in Illinois in 1810

THE ART OF NATURE

and 1812, merely echoed in a different
medium the inspiration of these unnamed
Indian artists. The carved effigy of a raven
that adorns a stone pipe found in Hardin
County, for example, is far from the crude
representations commonly associated with
“primitive” art. Instead it is an artfully
stylized version that anticipated by
centuries much of what we know as
modern sculpture.

Two kinds of birds festoon the
vessels found at the Elizabeth site. One is
spoon-billed, the other displays a hooked
beak. The images are abstract and hard to
characterize with precision. David T.
Morgan, a ceramics expert who authored a
monograph about the finds, notes that the
portraits may represent different species of
each type of birds or different renditions of
the same species.

The hook-beaked birds for
example would seem to be raptors of some
kind, one of the predator species whose
sharp beaks are used to tear flesh. Carrion-
eaters such as turkey vultures would have
had a natural association with Middle
Woodland burial practices. Bodies of the
dead were not always buried immediately
but were placed in open central tombs,

sometimes to be transferred to an adjacent
site for burial, sometimes to be interred
permanently in the tomb when the tomb
was eventually filled. Until then, carrion
birds could feed freely upon the remains.

Morgan, however, argues that the
looping, thin necks of the Elizabeth birds
suggest not a raptor but some kind of hook-
beaked wading bird, such as a flamingo.
Yes, a flamingo. Morgan admits that this
interpretation is extremely speculative, but
it is not impossible. There was much trade
between the Illinois River valley and the
Gulf of Mexico during this period. Among
the objects recovered with the Hopewell
vessels in the burial pit, for instance, were
large marine shells from the Gulf area used
as drinking cups.

Might there have been trade in
flamingoes as well? The bird might have
been prized for its bright pink feathers,
which conceivably could have been used as
ornament. After all, the bird is popular
among modern Illinoisans, who decorate
their lawns with plastic versions of it.
There is no other evidence that the fla-
mingo was ever present in prehistoric
Illinois, however, and Farnsworth for one
thinks it unlikely that the hook-beaked
birds on the Elizabeth site vessels are
flamingoes.

One spectacular pink-feathered
wading bird that almost certainly was
known in Illinois 2,000 years ago was the
roseate spoonbill. “There is one definite
representation of a roseate spoonbill in
Hopewellian art,” Farnsworth says, “a pipe
made of coal from Ohio.” The headless
body of such a bird was even found beside
a buried child at a Middle Woodland site in
the lower Illinois valley.

Scott Robinson, an ornithologist
with the Illinois Natural History Survey,
notes that roseate spoonbills normally
frequent the brackish waters of the Gulf

Nm
Nm

THE ART OF NATURE

coast, but that stragglers used to move up
the Mississippi valley in late summers to
feed. Robert Ridgeway, one of the great
names from the Survey’s early years and
author of the indispensable 1895 Ornithol-
ogy of Illinois, reported that roseate
spoonbills were regular visitors as far
north as the American Bottom, opposite
St. Louis, until 1859.

A Culture At The Center

But why portray the spoonbill and not any
of a dozen other birds? The spoonbill has
no known association with Middle Wood-
land mortuary practice, nor were pottery
vessels bearing its likeness used solely in
burial ceremonies. The bird’s long spatu-
late bill is distinctive, but the spoonbill is
not the only bird then common in Illinois
that had one. Morgan even suggests that
the triangular designs that adorn one of the
bird vessels represent webbed feet, and that
the bird thus depicted may in fact be some
kind of duck.

To the layman these disputes may
seem like a tempest in a clay pot. But these
ceramics offer clues to the ways this
vanished culture saw nature, life, and
death, not just in the Illinois valley but
across much of the continent. Farnsworth
speculates that these particular pottery
styles originated in Illinois. They were
disseminated (sometimes in the form of the
vessels themselves, via trade) as far afield
as Louisiana, Ohio, and Michigan, making
Illinois an important artistic center.
“Whatever they meant, these designs were
pretty important for that ritual,” explains
Farnsworth. “To have pots with these
designs clearly was the right way to go into
the next world.”

Middle Woodland Ceramics from the
Elizabeth site are on permanent display at
the Illinois State Museum in Springfield.

*All photos courtesy of Ken Farnsworth

PART II: THE ENVIRONMENT

sp rappers

ee

hee

Current farmstead

(continued from p.3)

confirms Schicht, who adds that while the
long-term global climate trend may be
toward a drier regime, the last few years in
the Bottom’s drainage area have been
among the wettest on record.

Public health as well as public
property is also vulnerable to the unin-
tended effects of exploiting the Bottom
environment. The French learned that
lesson when the water that backed up
behind their mill dams stagnated and bred
diseases. More recent inhabitants worry
that the indiscriminate dumping of toxic

“substances onto the Bottom’s permeable
soils might be poisoning groundwater. The
Water Survey is cooperating in a study to
identify past industrial sites which might be
toxic hot spots.

Bottoming Out

Any Indian ghosts who walk today among
the mounds of the Bottom, in short, would
hardly recognize the place. Pioneer-era

bottomland forests were cut for steamboat
fuel or cleared for farms; the original non-
timber Bottom vegetation was probably

destroyed by 1850. Some 40 percent of the

area’s wetlands have been drained or filled.

Old meander lakes such as Goose Lake are
gone; others such as Pittsburgh and
Horseshoe Lakes are much reduced in size,
and there is so little water standing in
Grassy and Smith lakes that today’s
mapmakers mark them as marshes.

In 1842 Charles Dickens visited
this area on his way to view Looking-glass
prairie. He described the temperature, not
as hot, but as if the area were on fire. All
he could see was mud, mire, brake and
brush on “the unwholesome, steaming
earth.” Everywhere the air resounded with
the loud chirping of frogs. Today the
chirping of frogs has diminished and given
way to the hum of traffic and tractors.
Isolated wildness, however, still remains to
provide clues to the past. Virginia bluebell,
mayapple and green dragon attest to the

once plentiful bottomland forests. Rainfall-
flooded winter wheat fields become vast
marshes filled with ducks, herons and
egrets. American lotus still blooms in small
lakes and ponds in the summer.

The Bottom’s riches, in short,
have not yet been totally spent. The area
recovered from the mistakes the Indians
made in husbanding their resources. With
luck and some effort, it can survive ours
as well.

Contributing to this article were Michael

Jeffords and Susan Post.

(continued from p.6)

Other Mallardfest events are
examples of how Whistling Wings tries to
diversify its activities and publicize its
operations. Mallard hens that have out-
grown their breeding years are sold to field
trial associations, feathers and infertile
eggs are sold for decorative purposes, duck
meat and duck sausage are available at
Whistling Wings’ office, and duck manure
is sold as fertilizer. TheWall Street Journal
did an article on the whether bat guano was
superior to Whistling Wings’ duck
guano...the jury’s still out. Visitors to the
farm can also buy numerous duck items
such as shirts, pins, and mugs.

Mallard sales have increased
fairly steadily over the years with little
benefit of advertising. Most business
comes from word-of-mouth. Whistling
Wings prides itself on quality “flighting
mallards” with “long wings, correct size,
true color, and good temperament,” as the
brochure reads.

Operating Whistling Wings
wasn’t always so easy. In the farm’s
formative years, Whalen had to develop his
own techniques to raise mallards, often on
a trial and error basis. Whalen was the only
person who had ever exclusively produced
mallards; he had no predecessors to look to
for advice or answers to questions like how
much humidity duck eggs need. (Before
the modernized incubators, Whalen’s
family used to throw buckets of water on
the eggs to keep them moist.)

“We took it day by day,” he says.

The farm has undergone several
changes since then. Four breeding groups,
instead of the original one, produce eggs
year-round unlike the early years when
hatchings only occured in the spring and
summer. Whalen was able to accomplish
this after learning how to use food and light

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

to control when hens lay eggs. The farm

has also acquired new hatchers and
incubators with a sophisticated alarm
system that pages workers if something is
wrong with the eggs or machine. While
family still comprises much of the
workforce, the farm now employs ten
people and covers about 700 acres, much
of which is used to grow duck feed.

Bill Whalen predicts increased
success for the farm. With less land
available for hunting, he believes hunting
clubs will become more popular and will
boost mallard sales.

The duck market looks decidedly

bullish.

Clockwise from top left: Ducks in shipping
crate; Shipping crate; Wetlands where ducks
are released to become adults

Board of Directors
Gaylord Donnelley

Chairman, Society for the Surveys
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Society for the
Surveys,

Ottawa Silica Company Founda-
tion, Ottawa

Michael O. Gibson

Treasurer, Society for the Surveys
Marine Bank of Springfield,
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

Henry N. Barkhausen

Jonesboro

John Doxsie
AE. Staley, Decatur

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie,
Bloomington

Clayton Gaylord
Ingersoll Milling Machine
Company, Rockford

Walter E. Hanson

Founder, Hanson Engineers, Inc.,
Springfield

Richard C. Hartnack

The First National Bank of
Chicago, Chicago

John Homeier

Bi - Petro, Springfield

Richard A. Lenon

International Minerals &
Chemicals Corporation,
Northbrook

Richard A. Lumpkin
Illinois Consolidated Telephone
Company, Mattoon

Stephen Mitchell

Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Chicago

James D. Nowlan

Knox College, Galesburg
Albert Pyott

Director, Nature Conservancy,
Winnetka

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

William L. Rutherford

Forest Park Foundation, Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
McDermott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Joseph Spivey

Illinois Coal Association,
Springfield

Harold B. Steele

Green Prairie Products, Inc.,
Princeton

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Leo Whalen

Whistling Wings, Hanover

Michael Witte

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director
Estie Karpman
Assistant Director

Jane Christman
Assistant to the Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Illinois Scientific Surveys
Morris Leighton, Chief

Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief

Illinois Water Survey

Supporters*
Corporate and Foundation:

Amax Coal Foundation; Amoco
Foundation; Arthur Andersen &
Company; James and Marjorie
Anderson Foundation; Archer
Daniels Midland; BASF-Wyan-
dotte; Bell & Howell Foundation;

Benton & Associates, Inc.; Bi-
Petro; Borg-Warner Foundation,
Inc.; Boulevard Bancorp, Inc.;
Chicago Community Trust:
Chicago Title & Trust; Coffield,
Ungaretti, Harris & Slavin; Collins
& Rice; Commonwealth Edison;
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly; Arie &
Ida Crown Memorial; Dames &
Moore; Gaylord Donnelley Trust;
Gaylord & Dorothy Donnelley
Foundation; R.R. Donnelley &
Sons; Dow Chemical; Draper &
Kramer Foundation; Du Quoin
State Bank; Farnsworth & Wylie;
Field Foundation of Illinois; Jamee
& Marshall Field Foundation; First
Chicago Bank; Forest Fund;
Freeman United Coal Mining
Company; William B. Graham
Foundation; Greeley and Hansen;
Hamilton Consulting Engineers;
Hanson Engineers; Harris Founda-
tion; Henry, Meisenheimer &
Gende; Claude H. Hurley Com-
pany; Hurst-Rosche Engineers;
Illinois Bell; Illinois Coal Assso-
ciation; Illinois Consolidated
Telephone Co.; Illinois Farm
Bureau; Illinois Mine Subsidence
Insurance Fund; Illinois Power
Company; Illinois Soybean
Program Operating Board; Interna-
tional Minerals & Chemicals
Corp.; Joyce Foundation;
Kankakee Water Company;
Klingner & Associates; Lester B.
Knight & Associates, Inc.; Kraft,
Inc.; Marine Bank of Springfield;
Brooks & Hope McCormick

_Foundation; Robert R. McCormick
Charitable Trust; Midwest Consult-

ing Engineers; Mobay Chemical:
Peabody Coal Company; Abbie
Norman Prince Trust; Rand
McNally & Company; Randolph &
Associates; R & H Construction;
Regenstein Foundation; Rhutasel
& Associates; Sahara Coal
Company; Sargent & Lundy
Engineers; Sheppard, Morgan &
Schwaab, Inc.; J.R. Short Milling
Company; Staley Continental, Inc.;
Tornrose, Campbell & Associates;
Union Carbide; Webster, McGrath,
Carlson, Ltd.; Whistling Wings.

Individual Supporters:

James Anderson, E. Armbrust,
Henry Barkhausen, Monika Betts,
Jane Bolin, Wesley M. Dixon, Jr.,
Gaylord Donnelley, James & Nina
Donnelley, Laura Donnelley,
Strachan Donnelley, Mr. & Mrs.
Thomas E. Donnelley II, Clayton
Gaylord, Walter Hanson, Ben W.
Heineman, Fredrick Jaicks, Dr.
Michael Jeffords, Estie Karpman,
Dr. Morris Leighton, Richard
Lenon, Richard A. Lumpkin,
Thomas R. Mulroy, Al Pyott, John
Shedd Reed, Robert P. Reuss,
William Rooney, William
Rutherford, Michael Scully, Harold
Byron Smith, Edmund B.
Thornton, Leo Whalen, William
W. Wirtz, Louise Young.

*Contributions of $200 or more

The Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys

Scale of Contributions

Personal Memberships

Founding $1,000 per year
Contributing 100 per year
Family 50 per year
Individual 25 per year
Corporate/Business
Memberships

Founding $10,000 per year
Benefactor 5,000 per year
Associate 1,000 per year
Sponsor 500 per year
Patron 250 per year

In cooperation with the Marketing

Bureau of the Department of Commerce

and Community Affairs

Society for the

Illinois Scientific Surveys
319 West Cook,
Springfield, IL 62704

MEMBERSHIP FORM

Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

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Send this application to the Society for the Illinois
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Understanding Our Natural Heritage

|

Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage Paid
Springfield, IL
Permit No. 453

»

Wht NATURE OF

LLINOI

Fall 1989

Published
by the .
Society
for the
Illinois
Scientific
Surveys

li NATURE OF

LLINOIS

ral and water resources of our state.
research projects undertaken by

Lake Michigan shoreline
lution and national

rte 1, river ecosystems,
®, tornadoes, air quality, water
» winter storms, nature ©

cultural pests, agricultural
~ather modification, severe
ests, farmland wildlife,

arasites, ceyole: cats, the

The Governor is presented
the Society's Natural
Resources Basket by
Gaylord Donnelley

mmPesAL SST URY SURVEY
OCT 0 2 1989

WWBRARY

Table of Contents sk

Dune :

Home to cactus instead of corn and surf rather than soy-
beans, no place is less like the popular conception of Illinois
than Illinois Beach State Park at Zion.

Illuminating Nature
Illinois’ earliest natural historians believed that illustrations
must accompany words if their work was to be understood

by and compelling to the layman. A look at past and present —

illustrators at the Natural History Survey.

Surveying Illinois

Biorhythms Currents :
Centering on Waste Geograms

Transitions

Fault Finding

Several fault systems and zones criss-cross the Prairie State.
Helping industry quake-proof its facilities is one of the
tasks of the Geological Survey.

Where Water Is Gold

Despite its water-rich reputation, Illinois does irrigate.
Water Survey staffer Tom Rice takes a look at the fruits

(and vegetables) of that labor.

A Smaller World

For every human being on earth there may be 200 million
insects. A pictorial article on the very small, but not so
meek creatures that may have already inherited the earth.

Nature Among The Ruins :

Lake Calumet is a living battleground where small pockets
of nature attempt to survive the surrounding industrial
wasteland. The Hazardous Waste Research and Information
Center is trying to find out what's there...and what's gone.

About the Cover
Gray tree frog getting a grip on fall.
Photographer: Dr. Michael Jeffords.

Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys
Volume IV, Number I

Fall 1989

Editorial Staff >
Jane A. Bolin Editor

Jane Christman Assistant to the Editor

Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation, Chicago

Copyright 1989 by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Sees
All rights reserved.

Dead River scene

No place is less like Illinois, and at the
same time more typical of it, than Illinois
Beach State Park. This stretch of sand
dunes and scrub oaks in Lake County is
home to cactus rather than corn, a place
where strollers are serenaded by surf rather
than the rustle of soybeans in the breeze.
Yet Illinois’ Lake Michigan shore was
sculpted and shaped by the same forces -
wind and water acting on glacial debris -
that made the rest of the state.

Playground and Preserve

Illinois Beach today is a combination
playground and preserve of more than
4,100 acres to which some 2.5 million
people flock annually - far more than visit
any other Illinois state park. Illinois Beach
is also a vast archaeological ruin. These
seven miles of beach and dune are typical
of terrain that once lined virtually the
whole of modern Illinois’ Lake Michigan

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

DUNE

I

y James Krohe Jr

shore. As lake levels fluctuated over the
centuries, the lake built and then aban-
doned a succession of sand and gravel
beaches. Those old beaches survived and
today form parallel ridges separated by
low-lying swales. Inland, this ridge and
swale topography becomes host to dry sand
prairies and marshes in turn, while at the
water’s edge it gives way to low-lying
dunes of wind-blown sands.

Illinois Beach has always been a
popular spot for excursions and summer
homes. Its appeal is partly its exoticism
and partly its simplicity. The vistas here
consist of sun, sky and water whose
sparseness seems infused by almost Zen-
like repose.

Apart from the dunes, Illinois
Beach’s most distinctive feature is the
mile-long Dead River. Dead River belies
its name in important respects. It is not a
river - it is a narrow pond - and most
seasons of the year it is quite lively, being

home variously to spawning fish and

migratory waterfowl. Dead River does not,
however, move very fast or very far. Its
outlet into Lake Michigan is usually
plugged by a sandbar until backed-up
water behind the bar chews through it to
send Dead River gushing into the lake.
After that the lake immediately begins to
pile up sand again like a beaver rushing to
cram sticks into a breach in its dam.
Famed landscape designer Jens
Jensen championed the preservation of
Illinois Beach as early as 1888. Local
citizens lobbied in earnest for its designa-
tion as a state park in the 1920s, but it was
not until 1948 that the section of shore near
Dead River was acquired and opened as
Illinois Beach State Park. That original
parcel was expanded, too, beginning in the
1970s when the state began acquiring
miscellaneous properties that comprise

what is now known as the north unit of the

Ps

Egret fishing in Lake Michigan surf

park, acquisitions that nearly doubled its
size.

As a recreational resource, Illinois
Beach is unmatched. The park’s south unit
offers a thousand-foot swimming beach
with bath-houses, boating and camping
facilities, even a motel-style lodge. The
north unit is the site of the 1,500-slip North
Point Marina, which will be the largest on
Lake Michigan when it is completed in
April of 1990.

Downcoast from the lodge, the
park is devoted to more passive pursuits. A
nature area 1s open to the public, some
half-million of whom hike, sunbathe, or go
birding along the beach, among the dunes,
or on the four miles of trails (equipped
with lookout platforms and interpretive
stations) provided by the state’s Depart-
ment of Conservation. The southernmost
1,100 acres of the site were officially
designated a nature preserve in 1964 - the
first such site in the U.S., according to site
superintendent Bob Grosso. That tract is
reserved for research and is accessible only
by permit.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Exotic Illinois

As many as 60 plants and animals recog-
nized as threatened or endangered in
Illinois may find refuge at Illinois Beach.
No fewer than 16 natural community types
are represented here, from the dune face to
ponds to savannah-like open woods. It is
not only Illinois’ most exotic natural place,
but also perhaps its most varied. Birds of
the farm field such as the Eastern bluebird
nest just yards from where shore birds such
as the piping plover stop to feed, and fen-
loving plants such as the fringed gentian
grow only yards away from interlopers
from the arid West like the prickly pear.

A walk inland from the shore is a
quick course in natural plant succession
that ends in the climax community of the
scrub oak forest. The sandy soil of these
ancient beaches is an inhospitable habitat
for a tree, the more so since these Hill’s
oaks and black oaks must endure not only
drought and wind but fire. Park staff burn
the nature areas every three years as part of
their management plan, mimicking the
natural prairie fires that regularly burned
off undergrowth and more fragile competi-
tive tree species. Oaks typically dominate
these open savannahs, explains Ken

Blazing star flowers blown down by the wind

Robertson, botanist in the Illinois Natural
History Survey’s Center for Biodiversity,
because they do well in surviving fire.
(Among the other species that do well in
spite of the burning, jokes superintendent
Grosso, are the mosquitoes and the poison
ivy.) The result is twisted trees that are the
antithesis of the majestic oaks familiar
from more clement corners of the state.
Some of the oaks in the Illinois Beach
scrub forest are known to be at least a
century old, yet have only attained heights
that many a yard tree reaches in a tenth of
that span.

Indeed, for all its seeming
delicacy, Illinois Beach offers some brutal
environments for living things in the state.
A beach may be a sublime habitat for the
human animal on a balmy day, but for a
plant it is a hell of pounding waves,
scalding sun and wind. Even on the
foredune, immediately inland from the
shore, few plants can survive, much less
thrive. The plant pioneers that homestead
on these treacherous frontiers are a hardy
bunch - beach pea, common bugseed, sand
reed, seaside spurge, marram grass.

The interdunal plant environments
are less punishing, and membership in

Dune-binding grass blown by the wind

those communities is more numerous. Two
conspicuous members of the inhabitants of
this niche are the creeping juniper (a shrub
that is more branch than leaf) and the
bearberry. In the poorly drained terrain
typical of a post-glacial landscape, differ-
ences in elevation as small as one foot can
make big differences in soil moisture and
thus the roster of species. The results are
sometimes anomalous. The sandy soil may
look like a desert, but water is usually only
feet away, in underground formations
saturated by the nearby lake. Some dunes
grasses send roots down ten feet; so do
cottonwood trees that thrive in the park,

trees that usually are found huddled in
Illinois’ moist stream bottoms.

Few of these plants are rare
outside Illinois, says Robertson. Most are
so common on the coastal plains of the
eastern U.S. that the only thing a botanist
from Cape Cod would find strange here
would be the accents of his Illinois hosts.
What is rare is the variety of habitats. The
nature preserve proper, reports Robertson,
astounds even first-time botanizers familiar
with the rest of the park, who find a
“markedly different world down there.”

The diversity of life in all groups
is immense. Plant species so far identified

within the park number in the hundreds.
“It’s always been a place for Natural
History Survey staff to collect,” notes Dr.
Warren Brigham, director of the Center for
Biogeographic Information. “Dead River in
particular has often turned out to be the
place from which new species are de-
scribed.” Not just species new to Illinois,
but new to science, as was the case with
the aquatic beetle collected by Brigham in
the 1970s. Ecologically, Illinois Beach is an
outpost of species whose ranges are
centered to the east, north, and west. It is
this overlapping of ranges that explains
what Brigham calls the “phenomenal”
richness of life along the shore.

Lake Michigan as Architect

While harsh, the dunes environment is
inherently fragile. The active dunes that
line the shore are made up of what the
geologists poetically call Aeolian sands,
after the Greek god of wind. The lake
winds constantly nibble at the dunes.
Where a dune’s flank is left unprotected by
plants, even light winds can lift the sand by
the bucketful, leaving hollows known as
blow-outs. (Some visitors have found that
blow-outs are ready-made sunbathing
booths.)

The near shore in particular is
forever being redefined. A storm can
flatten a dune overnight, only to rebuild it
again over the following weeks and
months. In this way a dune may disappear
but the dunes persist. Such changes can be
inferred from the nature and sequence of
the sediments left behind by the lake.
Where the botanist sees habitat, in other
words, the geologist sees a history book.
Ardith Hansel, geologist with the Illinois
Geological Survey’s Quaternary Frame-
work Studies Section, is part of the team
that is studying core samples and other data
from this beach record. (Among the
preliminary findings: The beach remnants
that cover today’s shore plain are no older

Cottonwood leaves, a dune-binding species

than 3,000 years.) Illinois Beach is
particularly valuable, says Hansel, because,
“Tt’s the one area in Illinois where you can
access the Late Holocene lake record. It’s
an opportunity to study changes through
time.”

Such investigations see into the
future as well as the past. Charting the
cycles of Lake Michigan’s rise and fall will
help public policy makers anticipate shore
protection needs. “We’re trying to deter-
mine what lake level fluctuations have
been like,” explains Hansel, “to ascertain if
the short, 90-year historical record is a

good analog for the past 4,000 years or so.”

Lake Michigan is a fussy archi-
tect, forever fiddling with its designs.
Waves constantly chew away sands and
gravels from one spot of the shore and
move them to another, eroding one section
of shore while it builds another. This
endless redrawing of the shoreline can be

inconvenient to humans. Housing subdivi-

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

sions, even whole villages once stood off
the town of Winthrop Harbor near the
north unit in what is now several feet of
water.

During 1985-86, when the lake
levels stood at record highs, the shore
along the north unit was receding at a rate
of 80 feet a year. For a while, in fact, there
was no beach at Illinois Beach.

During those fretful months,
storm waves would overtop the foredunes,
crashing into the swales behind them like
soldiers swarming into the enemy’s
trenches. “We never had interdunal
ponding before,” recalls superintendent
Grosso. Plant communities that quickly
responded to the damper regime offered a
perfect laboratory of plant adaptation, but
the lake dropped precipitously before a
field study could be mounted, leaving both
the plants and the scientists high and dry.

How Lake Michigan goes about
making and remaking its shore is a puzzle
that has long fascinated researchers at the

Geological Survey. Chief among them is

Charles Collinson who after nearly 18
years of study is regarded as the guru of
Illinois lake watchers. During a high-water
phase in the mid-1970s the old Stratigra-
phy and Surficial Geology Section main-
tained a field research station at Illinois
Beach, which offers one of the longest
stretches of unarmored, untampered with
shore left on the Illinois side.

Oasis and Commerce
What the lake destroys, however, it usually
rebuilds. The graver threats to the Illinois
lake shore above Chicago have always
come from land. The area’s natural
advantages - its scenic appeal, its easy
access to shipping and lake water, its
proximity to major population centers -
have always been exploitable as economic
advantages as well. Often these commer-
cial intrusions were benign; in the nature
trails today one can see the relic stone piers
from a narrow gauge railway that used to
carry ice cut from the Dead River to nearby
Waukegan. Today the site is ringed by
factory sites, housing development and
power plants. That splendid sense of
isolation one feels inside parts of the park
is only an illusion. Construction just
outside the park boundaries has changed
water regimes inside the park, although not
yet significantly, and a sentry line of
monitor wells stands guard in case waste
from an asbestos dump on adjacent
property seeps into the park’s aquifers.
Barring such unhappy intrusions,
Illinois Beach State Park will survive as a
place where one can leave Illinois without
having to leave it. As Ken Robertson says,
“It’s a markedly different world.” 5

ONE OF OUR
LEAST PUBLICIZED

HIGH-RISE PROJECTS.

fF

Although our role in the shaping of Chicago's skyline seems to get all the press,
First Chicago has long supported the vigilant stewardship of our natural resources. In less
than a century, Illinois has lost 72% of its forestland alone. We applaud the efforts
of groups such as the Illinois Scientific Surveys and The Nature Conservancy, who study and

help preserve our state's prairies, wetlands, forests, open lands and wildlife

@ FIRST CHICAGO
FIRST AND GAINING.

THE ART OF NATURE

ILLUMINATING NATURE

As important to a scientist as research are
the pictures that illustrate the path of
discovery traveled from first inquiry to end
result. Earliest scientists involved in the
beginnings of today’s Illinois Natural
History Survey (INHS) record their
conviction that illustrations must accom-
pany words if science is to be interesting td
and understood by lay persons.
Germination of the Survey is
traceable. But stories of the people who
made the pictures are sporadic and brief at
best. The only authentic source is annual
“Bulletins”, which actually were small,
generously illustrated books presented first
in 1869 as progress reports prepared for
sponsors or governing boards. The Bulle-
tins were written by scientists who usually
did not name the creators of their illustra-
tions. Lost in history are the names of
many of the talented people who walked

Bluegill watercolor
by Lydia Moore Hart - 1893

the paths of discovery with scientists. This
article-salutes the work of those few who
can be identified.

The Need for Pictures
Pressure to establish an organized group of
scientists to sort out and explain the habits
of all biological “things” was powered by
educators, agriculturalists and horticultu-
ralists. To inform their constituents, these
leaders needed pictures and words.
Benjamin Walsh was a classmate
of Charles Darwin’s in England before
coming to Illinois in 1838. Walsh died as
the result of a tragic accident in 1869 before
he could present an Annual Report as the
state’s first Acting Entomologist in that
year. Walsh’ scientific legacy is astound-
ing. His crusty quotes are priceless. Often
he chided his peers for seeing science as a
“mental toy” deprived of practical applica-
tion. Prepared before his death, his 1869
Annual Report says, “If I merely succeed

in enticing away a single young woman
from her mawkish novelettes and romances
into the flowery paths of Entomology, or
induce a single young man, instead of
haunting saloons and lounging away his
time at street-corners, to devote his leisure
to studying these tiny miracles of perfec-
tion which the people of the United States
call ‘bugs,’ I shall think that I have not
written altogether in vain.”

Walsh had little success getting
the State Entomologist’s office properly
funded. His acerbic tongue lashed officials
who could “find millions to build a capitol
building and not enough to produce a basic
science manual for young students of
science.” Walsh drew his own sketches and
sent them to an engraver in St Louis.

Doctor William LeBaron, who
succeeded Walsh as State Entomologist in
1870 said, “Next in value to a collection of

Tortoise Beetle, gouache,
by John Sherrod - 1980

the insects themselves, are correctly drawn
figures.” LeBaron’s 1874 Report declares
that the study of natural history shall
constitute one of the branches of education
to be taught in the public schools. Le-
Baron’s illustrator was Missouri’s ento-
mologist.

Stephen Alfred Forbes became the
fourth State Entomologist in 1882. He was
involved with each of the seeds that
eventually became the INHS. They were
the Illinois Natural History Society
(established 1858), State Entomologist’s
Office (established 1867), and the Illinois
State Museum of Natural History (estab-
lished 1872). Forbes was Curator of the
Museum in 1877 when the state split the
three elements, moving “History” and
“Museum” from the university at Bloom-
ington to Springfield and allowing the
associated laboratory to become the Illinois
State Laboratory of Natural History.

Forbes was head of the Labora-
tory, teacher at Illinois State University and
State Entomologist when he accepted a
faculty job at the institution that became
the University of Illinois in 1885. He
moved the Laboratory to Champaign,
retained the job of Entomologist and taught

THE ART OF NATURE

Zoology at the University. During his 60-
year career in science his insatiable
curiosity took him from the study of
insects to fish, birds and mammals. Forbes
was a masterful public speaker and prolific
writer. He valued illustrations believing
that they could help make science interest-
ing to everyone. Forbes was a self-taught
genius, first head of the Natural History
Survey - so named in 1917 - and years
later, hailed as the father of ecology.

In the Eye of the Beholder
Scientific illustrations rarely are found
displayed on the living room wall. Often

the illustrator’s job is to magnify the body
part or cell structure of a species so that a
scientist can take a better look at it.

Some of the most exquisitely
executed scientific illustrations of all time
emerged from the old Laboratory of
Natural History headed by Forbes. The
work of Lydia Moore Hart is miraculous,
according to John Sherrod, illustrator at the
Survey since 1978. Sherrod is trained as a
medical illustrator and believes that Hart
must have invented the tools of her art or at
least adapted what she purchased. A single-
hair brush and a quill sharper than a needle
is Sherrod’s description. How a native of

Tundra swan in watercolor
by John Sherrod - 1987

Halictid Bee, gouache,
by John Sherrod - 1984

Quincy came to work at the Laboratory in
1891 is pure speculation. But it is known
that another Quincy native, entomologist
Charles Arthur Hart, worked for Forbes in
1880. The conclusion is that Charles was
Lydia’s father or uncle.

Hart’s technique is called stipple -
endless numbers of dots made with a
sharply pointed instrument. The density of
ink used coupled with the size and spacing
of the tiny dots define and shade the
subject. In 1893, Hart and Charlotte M.
Pinkerton displayed their work at the
Columbian Exhibition at the Chicago
World’s Fair. Her signature remains Hart
through 1900. But in his 1905 Bulletin
Forbes credits L.M. (Hart) Green for
illustrations. There is no record of Lydia
Hart’s whereabouts or the course of her life
after the early 1900s. Pinkerton’s only
record is a few signed illustrations. Color
plates by Hart and Pinkerton are used in
Forbes’ book The Fishes of Illinois
published in 1908.

THE ART OF NATURE

Crude by Comparison

The purposes and techniques of scientific
illustration have changed little over the
years. An artist’s talent and ability to adapt
tools seem to separate the flawless from the
mediocre. In Sherrod’s opinion nearly
everything is average compared to Lydia
Hart’s superiority.

Carl Mohr was an artist who
became a scientist specializing in insects
and mammals. He learned to draw from his
father, saying that he was an artist continu-
ally exposed to insect studies by operation
of opportunity. As a science graduate
student in 1927, Mohr was hired as a field
entomologist by Dr. T. H. Frison who
succeeded Forbes as Chief in 1930. Mohr’s
model was Lydia Hart. He used her stipple
technique and added cross hatch: continu-
ous parallel lines, running vertically and
horizontally. The dots and the lines are
executed so that the drawing shades from
blackest black to lightest gray. Carl Mohr
produced written and illustrated scientific
studies for the Survey until the late 1940s.

—

Artist and Scientist: The Marriage
“Recently I was brought a large glass
container filled with water and scores of
fish of the same species,” said Sherrod.
The noses, eyes and tails of fishes can vary
Just as the physical characteristics of
human beings do. Sherrod was to draw the _
“typical.” After such a drawing is exe-
cuted, a scientist reviews the work to be
sure the illustration is correct. Another
facet of the marriage is that no insect is
considered “new” until it has been com-
pared to some portion of the over six
million insect samples on file at the
Survey. “Illustration plays an invaluable
part in that kind of scientific analysis,” said
INHS entomologist Dr. Michael Jeffords.
The Natural History Survey is
increasingly involved in the effort to help
science teachers develop and feed an
appetite for learning about natural science.
If the young minds of their students are to
be captured and held, illustrations will play
a vital part. a

aly BIORHYTHMS

Model Pests
Illinois Natural History Survey
(INHS) scientists are using

supercomputers in insect control.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

A recently developed mathe-
matical model uses equations to
describe what happens in a
cornfield infested with European
corn borer caterpillars. The corn
borer is infected with a micro-
sporidian disease that may
ultimately control it. By chang-
ing numbers in the model,
scientists can predict what will
happen under various situations
in a growing season. These
predictions can tell farmers
whether application of an
insecticide is needed in addition
to use of the microsporidian
disease against the corn borer.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Changing Waterfow! Food Habits

Over the past 50 years water-
fowl in Illinois have come to
depend on man for more of
their food. The loss of aquatic
plants in such wetlands as the
Illinois River valley has
resulted in major diet changes
in several kinds of waterfowl.
The last intensive food habits
study was conducted in 1938-
1940. The current study
examined over 11.000 individ-
ual food samples from 14
species of waterfowl. Mallards,
for example, now depend on
such human-managed foods as
Japanese millet, buckwheat and

Mallard ducks (Courtesy: INHS)

milo to the same degree they
depended on aquatic plants in

Learning the River

Illinois corn (Courtesy: INHS)

The Natural History Survey has
developed a new set of curricu-
lar materials: The //linois River:
A Lesson To Be Learned, for
grades five to nine. The
materials focus on the biology

They will be distributed in con-
junction with the Illinois State
Museum’s traveling exhibit,
Harvesting the River: Life and
Work on the Illinois River, or
can be ordered directly from the
Survey by calling Phyllis Dice
at 217/333-6821.

New Medical Entomologist at INHS

Robert J. Novak has been He has also served in Puerto
selected as the Medical Ento- Rico, conducting research on
mologist for the Survey’s vector-borne viral diseases. The

Center for Economic Entomol- _ top issue facing Dr. Novak in and ecology of the Illinois

ogy. Dr. Novak received his
PhD from the University of
Illinois in 1976, spent a two-
year postdoctoral fellowship at
Notre Dame University, and
subsequently joined the Center
for Disease Control, Bureau of
Tropical Diseases, in Atlanta.

his new position is the introduc-
tion of the Asian Tiger mos-
quito into [Illinois in scrap tire
yards, as well as the possibility
that other potentially health-
threatening mosquitoes may use
these piles as breeding grounds.

Survey Scientists Aid Champaign Schools

A new cooperative project
between ten Champaign County
elementary schools and the
Natural History Survey will
benefit more than 5,000
schoolchildren. The schools
involved will turn from
traditional science textbooks to

materials developed by Survey
scientists and elementary
teachers. Butterflies and Moths
for second graders, Habitats,
Food Webs and Food Chains
for third graders, and
Classification of Organisms for
fifth graders will be tested in
the classroom in fall of 1989.

River and such problems as
pollution and sedimentation.

The Illinois River from above (Courtesy: INHS)

yes

“AAA
IX
AAW]
AAM,

CURRENTS

Rainstorm Data For Engineers

Engineers need to know maxi-
mum amounts of rainfall
expected in a given area when
designing highways, storm
sewers, spillways and dams.
They can now rely on definitive
data for heavy rainstorms

in Illinois developed by

Illinois Water Survey (IWS)
climatologists.

Published as Water Survey
Bulletin 70, Frequency
Distributions and Hydroclimatic
Characteristics of Heavy
Rainstorms in Illinois, the report

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

includes statewide maximum
rainfall values for each season
and for all seasons combined. It
also contains sectional values
and isohyetal maps.

To receive a copy, senda
check or money order for $15
(includes postage and handling)
to Publications, Illinois Water
Survey, 2204 Griffith Drive,
Champaign, Illinois 61820.
Checks should be made payable
to the University of Illinois, c/o
Illinois Water Survey.

Saving Peoria Lake

a |

Water Survey technician Ron
Bell checks instream sediment
sampler in Peoria Lake
tributary (Courtesy: IWS)

10

Peoria Lake - the largest lake in
the Illinois River valley and a
popular recreational area - is
almost completely clogged with
sediment. Most of the lake can
no longer be used for swimming,
boating or fishing.

Illinois Water Survey
researchers have proposed an
innovative solution to the lake’s
problems: dredging sediment
from the lake and creating
artificial islands from the
dredged materials. In a second
study IWS is monitoring sedi-
ment carried by tributaries to the
lake to determine the best
locations for controlling incom-
ing sediment.

Dredging benefits would
include creation of improved
aquatic habitats for fish and other
animals and increased water
depth for better recreational
opportunities.

@ MOBIL
‘| \ PILOT

Mobile Unit Cleans Contaminated Groundwater

After more than two years of
design, assembly and testing, a
mobile unit that cleans contami-
nated groundwater onsite is
ready for use.

The Mobile Oxidation Pilot
Plant (MOPP) is housed in a
converted moving van trailer
that contains special equipment
to clean contaminated water as
it is pumped through the
system. One of the advanced
cleaning processes uses ozone
and ultraviolet light to thor-

E OXIDATION =
PLANT (MOPP)

FR WMO DEPART FE | wa ens \

MOPP trailer
(Courtesy: IWS)

| Water Survey aquatic
chemist Mike Fleck
draws sample of
treated water in
Mobile Oxidation
Pilot Plant (MOPP)
(Courtesy: IWS)

oughly and economically
destroy virtually any organic E
contaminant. 4
MOPP was successful in f
tests for cleaning water con-
taminated by trichlorethylene, of

an industrial solvent and a =
common groundwater pollutant.
Aquatic chemist Gary Peyton of

IWS hopes to use MOPP to
clean up contaminated Illinois
sites, including those on U.S.
EPA’s Superfund list.

oP iad i

Assistant Chief of Water Survey Retires

Richard J. Schicht, Assistant
Chief of the Water Survey,
retired on June 30 after 32 years
of service.

As an engineer in the
Survey’s Hydrology Section,
Schicht investigated groundwa-
ter recharge and aquifer yields
and collected data on ground-
water levels and use before
being appointed Section head in
1977. In addition to his ground-

water work, he supervised
research on river hydraulics,
sedimentation, urban hydrol-
ogy, aquifer and well-field
yields and watershed manage-
ment.

In 1980 Schicht was named
Assistant Chief and was
responsible for coordinating the
work of the Water Quality,
Groundwater and Surface
Water Sections.

cs

aay

= AS
i }

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

CENTERING ON WASTE

Governor’s Innovative Hazardous Waste Reduction Awards

The Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center
(HWRIC) is accepting applica-
tions for the fourth annual
Governor’s awards for waste
reduction. These are presented
to companies, educational insti-
tutions, communities and public

organizations that have made
significant strides toward
reducing hazardous wastes in
Illinois. The deadline for appli-
cations is December 29, 1989.

For more information or to
apply, contact Alisa Wickliff at
217/244-8905

Dr. David Rausch of Illinois Benedictine College instructs,
using apparatus which allows the lab to reduce chemical use by
as much as 95 percent. (Courtesy: HWRIC)

Asbestos Dust, Organic Solvents Focus of New Publications

Two new HWRIC publications
are aimed at reducing hazard-
ous wastes in automotive shops
and metal-cleaning operations.
Asbestos is a major
component of brake pads and
accounts for 50 percent of their
composition. New regulations
will restrict or prohibit the use
of asbestos in brake assemblies,
but millions of cars with
asbestos brake pads will remain
on the roads. Automotive repair
workers will continue to be
exposed to asbestos dust when
repairing brakes. Controlling
Asbestos in Automotive Shops
describes a special vacuum
assembly unit (recommended

by the National Institute for
Occupational Health) that limits
exposure to asbestos dust.

Metal cleaning with
hazardous organic solvents is a
common practice in many small
and medium-sized businesses.
Alternatives to Organic
Solvents in Metal Cleaning
Operatio, s recommends less
hazardous alternatives to
organic solvents. Manufacturers
of alternative cleaning com-
pounds, solvent recyclers,
waste haulers and disposers and
other sources of information
are listed.

To order either publication,
call HWRIC at 217/333-8940.

Matching Funds for Waste Reduction

The Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center is
accepting applications for its
Recycling and Reduction
Techniques (RRT) matching
funds program in an ongoing
grant review process.

The RRT program provides
a total of $100,000 annually for
the development of practical
waste reduction techniques in
industry. Individual awards can
be as high as $50,000 and must

GEOGRAMS

Oil Recovery

The Illinois Geological Survey
(IGS) has received an award of
$750,000 from the U.S.
Department of Energy to
develop economically viable
strategies for increasing
recovery of known oil from
Illinois reservoirs. The grant,
matched by the State of Illinois,
covers the first 12 months of a
four-year program.

“It is our belief that with
both state and federal support
and with the counsel of indus-
try, the IGS is in a position to
help increase Illinois’ oil and

be matched equally by the
receiving Company or organiza-
tion. Examples of eligible
projects include: plant waste
audits; process modifications to
eliminate use of toxic chemi-
cals; testing equipment to
reduce, detoxify or recyle a
waste stream; marketing studies
on recycling of a waste product.

To apply, call Sam Mehta
at 217/244-8900.

gas production,” according to
Dr. Morris Leighton, IGS
Chief. Leighton went on to
explain that the Survey will
initially focus on improving
hydrocarbon recovery from
existing reservoirs. Other
Survey efforts will be targeted
at locating new oil fields in
subtle traps and in deeper plays
in the Illinois Basin.

The project will serve as a
model for mature oil-producing
areas like Illinois, which
produces 24 million barrels of
oil per year.

Don Oltz of IGS demonstrates a core test system to improve

oil well completion technology. (Courtesy: IGS)

Aboard the R/V Neptune, a 67-foot-research vesse

f
i

~~

1, Michael J. Chrzastowski of IGS assists U.S.

Geological Survey colleagues with bottom sampling of Lake Michigan.(Courtesy: IGS)

Beneath the Surface

To focus research efforts on
groundwater, the IGS recently
formed a Hydrogeology Re-
search Laboratory. Its emphasis
will be on the movement of
fluids and chemicals in shales

and glacial tills of very low per-
meability.

The Survey has also
established a Quaternary
Framework Studies Section to
study the three-dimensional
structure of glacial deposits and

Scanning Lake Michigan’s Shoreline

With a grant and cooperation
from the U.S. Geological
Survey, the Illinois Geological
Survey has completed a
sidescan sonar survey along the
entire Chicago lakefront,
complementing a 1987 survey.
These surveys are used to
document the nature of the
damaged shoreline protection
structures and the processes
responsible for that damage.
The recent history of the
Illinois shore and an inventory
of properties along the shore
are also being documented by
IGS in a series of aerial photo-
graphs, digitized maps and a
revised coastal atlas. The lake-
level record is being extended
back in geologic time. The
Survey is analyzing samples
taken by hand augering,
digging soil pits and vibra-

Michael J. Chrzastowski of IGS
interprets sidescan sonar records
of underwater contitions of shore
structures along Chicago's shore
front. (Courtesy: IGS)

coring in old beach ridges and
in alluvial terraces in stream
valleys tributary to the lake.

other surficial materials that
overlie the state’s bedrock. An
understanding of the processes
that resulted in these deposits is
essential to wise economic
development.

Mapping For Landfills
Using modeling studies and
mapping, the Geological
Survey has quantitatively
ranked the potential of various
hydrogeological scenarios for
groundwater contamination by
leachates from land burial of
municipal waste. These
rankings can be used for
preliminary feasibility assess-
ments of site suitability for
municipal landfills. The
research also evaluated the
appropriateness of a compli-
ance distance of 100 feet sur-
rounding a landfill as a limit for
maximum leachate migration
during a 100-year period. This
distance is included in regula-
tions proposed by the Illinois
Pollution Control Board for
solid non-hazardous waste
disposal facilities.

Results indicate that this
distance will place limits on the

types of areas where landfills
can be located. However
regional scenarios allowing
even shorter migration dis-
tances are found over 50
percent of the state. A less
stringent compliance distance
of 150 to 500 feet would add
another five percent of the state
to the favorable area.

The proposed regulations
for non-hazardous waste
landfills will require groundwa-
ter monitoring at or within the
containment zone. An advan-
tage to the shorter compliance
distance (100 feet or less)
would be the location of
monitoring wells closer to the
potential source of contamina-
tion. This would increase the
likelihood of detecting contami-
nation should it occur during a
100-year post-closure period.
This would also decrease the
potential volume of groundwa-
ter which could be contami-
nated before detection.

Another proposed regula-
tion would require permit
applicants to demonstrate that
potential contaminants from
proposed waste cells would be
unlikely to migrate past the
compliance distance during the
100-year post-closure period.
Modeling to demonstrate
compliance with the shorter
distance will help avoid
locating landfills in certain
unfavorable hydrogeological
environments. One such area
would be over a low-yield
aquifer, where some migration
may be possible.

a

TRANSITIONS
New Board Members Named

David E. Connor

“When busy, successful people
are willing tc devote their time
and talent to an organization,
they believe in it and its
purpose,” said Society Board
Chairman Gaylord Donnelley
in welcoming four new Board
members.

An Illinois native, Charles
Marshall returned to his home
State (residing in Chicago) as
the retired Vice Chairman of
the Board of AT&T based in
New Jersey. The Greenville
native earned an engineering
degree from the University of
Illinois in 1953 and went to
work for Illinois Bell in Peoria.
He was named President of
Texas Operations for South-
western Bell in 1975, Vice
President and Treasurer of
AT&T in New York City in
1976 and President and CEO of
Illinois Bell in 1977. Back east

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Michael B. Witte

again in 1981, Marshall was
named Vice Chairman of the
Board of AT&T in 1986. He is
on the Board of several major
corporations and also serves as
President of the University of
Illinois Foundation and Trustee
of the University of Chicago.

Janice D. Florin is Man-
ager of Environmental Affairs
and Safety for Amoco Chemi-
cal Company in Chicago. She
began her career at Amoco
Corporation nine years ago. As
a member of the Company’s
Management Committee, Florin
has responsibility for corporate
environmental, industrial
hygiene and safety programs. A
native of New York, she has a
B.S. in Biology from Simmons
College in Boston, an M.S in
Environmental Science from
Drexel University in Philadel-
phia and did post-graduate
work at the University of

London, School of Occupa-
tional Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine. Florin serves on the
Board of Directors of CIIT
(Chemical Industry Institute of
Toxicology) and is a member of
the Chemical Manufacturers
Association’s Health & Safety
Committee.

Before David E. Connor
established David E. Connor
and Associates financial
advisers in 1985, he had been
President and CEO of the
Commercial National Bank of
Peoria since 1967. Except for
three periods of time - his
earliest years, service as a Navy
officer in World War II and
earning his B.A. at Yale
University - Connor has lived
his life in and devoted his
talents to Peoria, Illinois. The
list of civic and community
organizations to which he has

given time is extensive and
includes the Lakeview Museum,
Peoria Development Corpora-
tion, Y.M.C.A., Tri-County
Tomorrow and Bradley Univer-
sity Board of Trustees.

Michael B. Witte joined
R. R. Donnelley and Sons Com-
pany in Chicago as Director of
the Business Services Division
in 1986. Prior to that time, Witte
served as Director of the Illinois
Department of Energy and
Natural Resources from 1981
until 1983 and Director of the
Illinois Department of Conser-
vation from 1984 until he was
chosen for his present position.
Witte is on the Board of the
Illinois State Museum, the
Illinois Chapter of the Nature
Conservancy, the Open Lands
Project, the Committee on
the Middlefork and the Coal
Research Board.

Leo R. Whalen: Society Loses a Long-Time Advocate

The Best Little Duck Ranch in
Hanover is the title of a feature
story in the Spring/Summer
1989 issue of The Nature of
Illinois. Developing the story
of Whistling Wings in Hanover,
Illinois, and of its founder and
owner, Leo R. Whalen, was the

Society’s salute to a long-time
Board member and devoted
conservationist. Leo R. Whalen
died in July. His mallard duck
ranch and his family are a
living tribute to a man who
cared. He will be remembered.
He will be missed.

Mallard duck drawing by John Sherrod, artist,

Illinois Natural History Survey

“Earthquakes in Illinois? Oh,
come on. You’ve got to be
kidding!”

That might be the reaction
of many in Illinois, but not the
people of Richland County after
the earth shook near Claremont
on June 10, 1987. That earth-
quake was strong enough to be
felt in Champaign-Urbana, 100
miles to the north. But Althea
Williams, editor of the Daily
Mail in Olney, Illinois, 12 miles
west of Claremont, says the
quake caused little damage.
“The chimney on Wayne
Zirkle’s funeral home here in
Olney fell down, but that’s
about the only significant
damage I can remember.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

FAULT FINDING

by Tara McClellan

Certainly no one was injured,”
she said.

Earthquakes occur when
rocks can no longer withstand
the strain imposed on them by
forces in the earth’s crust. Like
breaking a stick over your knee,
the rocks finally give way along
a fault plane and slip past one
another. A small earthquake
may mean that the rock masses
have slipped only a few inches;
larger quakes may involve
displacements of several feet in
just a few seconds time. Faults
mark the position where these
breaks have occurred.

Other subsurface hazards
include sink holes, old mines
and faults according to Illinois

Illinois Power Company nuclear plant at Clinton, Illinois

Geological Survey (IGS)
Geologist John Nelson. Sink
holes occur more often in

- southern and western Illinois

Where underground cavities in
limestone bedrock cave in. A
greater hazard is old coal mines
which cave in or subside.

John Nelson has mapped
numerous fault traces in
southern Illinois in the last 10
years. Many of these are related
to the Cottage Grove Fault
System, a complex series of
faults running east-west near
Harrisburg and DuQuoin.
According to Nelson, the
Cottage Grove system is just
one of several major fault
systems that meet in southern

Illinois, but all of them are
inactive.

“The evidence in the rocks
clearly shows that none of the
mapped faults in Illinois have
moved at all in the last 200,000
years,” Nelson says. But, since
small earthquakes occur at the
rate of about 3 per year in
Illinois, active faults must exist.
According to Nelson, those
faults are too small and buried
too deep in the earth to detect.

Paul Heigold, lead
goephysicist for the IGS notes
that, within recorded history.
there has never been an Illinois-
epicentered earthquake with an
intensity greater than VII on the
Modified Mercalli scale which —
has values from I to XII. (The —
intensity scale is based on the
damage and shaking caused by
an earthquake). “Overall,
Illinois is remarkably stable and
earthquake free. There has
never been an Illinois-based
earthquake that caused serious
damage to well-made struc-
tures. We are much more
concerned about the New
Madrid seismic zone just
outside Illinois than we are
about our own faults,” he said.

New Madrid

Probably the most famous (or
infamous) Midwestern fault is
the New Madrid which caused
three major earthquakes and
hundreds of smaller ones
between 1811 and 1812. The
New Madrid starts at southern

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Mine subsidence damaged this home built over an old abandoned
coal mine. Old room-and-pillar mines removed much more coal than
today's regulated mine designs. (Courtesy: IGS)

Illinois’ tip and extends through
Arkansas. This is the “Bonnie
and Clyde” of faults. Its 1811-
1812 quakes destroyed a town
and killed several people.
Scientists believe it will strike
again, but don’t know when.

Most geologists say future
earthquakes epicentered in

_ Illinois don’t pose that great a

risk to the state. But another

“New Madrid event does. That's
the greatest seismic risk facing
Illinois, Heigold says. Since
southern Illinois is close to
Missouri (the epicenter of a
New Madrid event), the
intensity of such an event could
be at high enough levels to
cause “destructive” to “very
disastrous” damage in southern
Illinois.

According to a scheme
developed in 1969 for assessing
seismic risk based on historical
earthquakes and known zones
of weakness (faults) in the
earth’s crust, Illinois is divided
into three risk zones where

major, moderate and minor
damage from future earth-
quakes can be expected. The
zone where major damage is
likely is in southern Illinois.
Only minor damage is expected
in most of northern Illinois.
Heigold says areas along
the Mississippi River have
greater risks of quake damage.
During quakes the loose surface
material there, such as sand and
gravel, can become like
quicksand and cause buildings
to fall. Heigold says there is
evidence that this process,
called liquefaction, has oc-
curred in southern Illinois.

Industrial Hazards

While earthquakes pose a risk
to all structures, they present
special hazards to industries
using dangerous substances or
fine-tuned instruments. These
industries usually try to
construct their facilities to
withstand the most damaging
seismic event expected in that
area. Facilities like this include
nuclear power plants, utility

companies, hospitals, waste
sites, gas companies, pipelines,
dams and bridges.

Nuclear power plants have
always paid special attention to
seismic risk. The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission funded
work by the U.S. Geological
Survey to establish a national
seismic network to provide
information about seismic risks.
It also funded a ten-year study
of the New Madrid seismic
zone to understand how another
event there would affect nuclear
power plants.

Using their knowledge of
the state’s geology, IGS
scientists help industries find
geologically appropriate sites
for new plants. Paul DuMon-
telle, assistant branch chief of
the Survey’s Environmental
Geology and Geochemistry
Branch, says IGS prepares
reports for industry that review
the characteristics of a potential
site that must be considered in
engineering a plant, including
the presence of underground
mines, the strength of the
surface materials, the availabil-
ity of groundwater and the
seismic risk. DuMontelle says
reports have been prepared for
a variety of firms: the Diamond
Star Motors plant at Blooming-
ton-Normal, Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory,
Argonne National Laboratory,
Genstar (a Kankakee waste
incineration plant, Hyster (a
Danville forklift manufacturer)
and Illinois Valley Community
College among others.

Richard C. Berg, Geologist
and Head of IGS’s Groundwa-
ter Protection Section, reports
that the Survey also produced a

handbook for siting waste
facilities. It has a checklist of
about 40 various geological and
hydrological factors, including
seismic risk, to consider when
siting waste facilities.

The Survey has access to a
computer mapping system
which can help in these efforts.
The Geographic Information
System (GIS) creates multi-di-
mensional maps of an area’s
natural resources, including
aquifers, woodlands, streams,
faults and potential geological
hazards.

According to William J.
Hall, Head of the Civil Engi-
neering Department at the
University of Illinois, industry
is becoming more aware of
seismic hazards. While nuclear
power plants and waste
facilities are usually mandated
by state and federal laws to
consider a potential site’s
seismic history, other industries
are beginning to follow suit.
Companies that haven’t done so
before are now starting to look
at the “seismic fragility” of
their existing and future
facilities.

“The first worry is people,”
Hall states. “The second is to
minimize the financial loss and
service to people (that a quake
might cause).”

Once an area’s seismic risk
in determined, the facility will
have to uses materials and
construction methods that
enable it to withstand the area’s
worst potential quake. If the
building uses federal funds, it
has to meet a national building

code which has quake provi

sions. Otherwise it may have to
meet a local city code. Some of
these have quake provisions,
Hall says, but they are not
always enforced.

“The general policy in the
quake field regarding sites like
liguid natural gas companies,
pipelines, and the like is don’t
build anything over a fault if
you can help it,” he explains.

Heigold says siting a
building usually comes down to
an economic factor. “Almost
any geologic factor can be
engineered away with enough
money.” If permitted by law, an
industry may still site ina
moderate or high seismic risk
area, but it will pay dearly to
“quake-proof” the facility. a

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

%,

Yo

“5%,
Plum River t

Fault Zone

a
>
=
&
gs
Set,
St,
S )
2 ) -_ Gtastard
=> Disturbance

—@— Fault, downthrown
side indicated

—— Anticline
—}- Syncline

-3— Monocline

0 40 mi
[—- Sa SS
0 50 km

Embayment

Des Plaines \
Disturbance
@ |

Hepig- \euszew

-

Major geologic structures of Illinois, compiled by Janis D. Treworgy, Dec. 1979.

ISGS 1979

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

WHERE WATER IS GOLD

Center pivot irrigation system watering corn

“There is no substitute for good soil,” says
farmer Scott Talbott on a steamy July
morning after turning on an irrigation
system that waters his tomatoes, peppers
and sweet corn.

The soil on Talbott’s land at the
border of Mason and Tazewell Counties in
west-central Illinois is not much better than
a sand dune. The sandy soil cannot
adequately capture the moisture provided
by rainfall, so farmers like Talbott must tap
groundwater and pump it through irrigation
systems to supplement what nature gives
above ground.

Growers in Illinois who use
irrigation on their sandy soils have in-
creased crop yields significantly. Their
success, as well as the use of irrigation to
combat drought on all soil types in other
regions of the state, has swelled the
number of irrigated acres in Illinois. An
estimated 200,000 acres are now being

By Thomas E. Rice

irrigated in the state, about 20 times more
than in 1950.

“Irrigation in Illinois is an
anomaly,” says hydrologist Jean Bowman
of the Illinois Water Survey. “Most farmers
in the state will probably tell you the soil is
everything. If you talk to irrigators in
Mason County they’ll probably say their
most important resource is the water.”

Bowman and University of
Illinois agronomist Bill Simmons are
studying irrigation water use in Illinois in
response to concerns about possible
depletion of groundwater reserves because
of increased irrigation. They are assessing
irrigation patterns and the potential for
conserving irrigation water without
significantly reducing crop yields.

“Our preliminary findings indicate
that irrigation has not permanently depleted
groundwater resources anywhere in
Illinois,” Bowman says. “In fact, depletion
would be highly unlikely in most of the
irrigated regions of the state. But irrigation

does require a substantial amount of

groundwater, and it can cause well-
interference problems.

“For these reasons, there is a need
to quantify irrigation water use, to learn its
effect on groundwater levels, and to make
it as efficient as possible, so that ground-
water can be conserved, as well as farmers’
time and money.”

Soaking the Soil
Mason County and adjoining southern
Tazewell County are the chief areas of
irrigation in Illinois, with more than 800
irrigation systems in use in the area and
about 100,000 acres irrigated, or half the
State total.

Groundwater resources in the
Havana Lowlands in Mason and Tazewell
Counties are among the most plentiful in
Illinois. Groundwater is stored and
transported underground in sand-and
gravel deposits that were either washed

into ancient river valleys during the Ice

Age or were the outwash of the present day
Illinois River. These deposits comprise the
huge Mahomet-Teays Aquifer, which
covers about 720 square miles in the two
counties. These groundwater resources are
recharged by precipitation that percolates
down from the soil surface.

Leo Pfeiffer, who farms 3,500
acres in Mason County with sons Dean and
Darrell, is said to have been the first Mason
County irrigator. “In the fall of the drought
year 1953 I was picking corn,” Pfeiffer
remembers, “and I knew I wanted enough
moisture for the next year’s crop, so I
thought I’d try something different.” He
began irrigating corn the next growing
season.

“Water is our gold,” says Manito
grower J. D. Proehl, whose family has been
farming in the area since 1891. His father
Walter also began irrigating crops in the
early 1950s.

Scott Talbott and his father Gnile
head a large family operation that includes
almost 3,000 acres of farmland, irrigation
system sales, and produce stands. Scott
farms 700 acres and helps manage the rest
of the family acreage.

“The advent of irrigation meant
making the same acreage twice as produc-
tive,” Scott says. “It changed a lot of farm
situations from minimally productive to
competitive with those farms with heavier
soils.”

The primary system used for
irrigation in the Mason-Tazewell area is
the center-pivot system, an electronically
or diesel-powered watering system that
moves slowly around a stationary center
pivot in a circular pattern while watering
crops with groundwater pumped from a
nearby well. These systems allow irrigators
to grow a variety of crops that thrive on the
controlled amounts of water that irrigation
provides.

Cornucopia of Crops
Ed Whitaker, Mason County Farm Bureau

President, proudly wears a cap stamped

18

Talbott family cantaloupes ready to go to family’s produce stands and local grocery stores.

with the slogan, “The Imperial Valley of
the Midwest,” after the California desert
valley made lush by irrigation and noted
for nationwide distribution of its fruits and
vegtables. The slogan is appropriate.
Besides field corn and soybeans, farmers in
Mason and southern Tazewell Counties
grow a variety of specialty crops, including
cantaloupes, watermelons, potatoes,
cucumbers, popcorn, sweet corn, green
beans, peas, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers,
and pumpkins.

“In many parts of the state
farmers are very unwilling to try anything
new,” Whitaker says. “I would say it’s just
about the reverse here. Farmers here don’t
just jump into anything, but if they think
there’s a chance to make a profit, theyll
try it. We’re a completely different breed
of cat here.”

The controlled growing conditions
attract major food companies and whole-
salers. Many of the specialty crops are
contracted to Del Monte, Heinz, Stokely,
Dean Foods, and other food companies, or
to brokers who supply harvested crops to
these companies and to food store chains.
Some produce goes directly to farmers’
markets.

Northeast Illinois Irrigation
Kankakee and Iroquois Counties have the
state’s second highest concentration of
irrigated farmland and a long history of
irrigation dating back to at least 1926.
Irrigators in the area grow many of the
same specialty crops as the Mason-
Tazewell farmers.

Water Survey hydrologist Stu
Cravens has worked closely with

Kankakee-Iroquois irrigators. He is
studying the area’s irrigation water use to
aid in planning and development of
groundwater resources in the region. “I
think the farmers feel that the water is their
lifeblood,” Cravens says, “and that the only
reason they can irrigate at all is the
availability of groundwater.”

Kankakee County Farm Bureau
President Bob Dyer says irrigation is a
management decision that takes one of the
variables out of production, that of having
enough water. “The return is also greater,”
he says. “I would say the value of irrigated
crops, although there are far fewer acres of
them, would approach the value of non-
irrigated crops in this county, probably 60
to 70 percent of the value of non-irrigated
cor and soybeans.”

Kankakee-Iroquois irrigators drill
from 60 to 400 feet deep to tap their main
groundwater reserves, stored in the
crevices and fractures of bedrock. These
reserves are recharged primarily from
vertical leakage of groundwater, that is,
precipitation that has filtered down through
sand, silt, and clay deposits above the
bedrock.

A variety of irrigation systems
that are either fixed in a location or are
moved by motors or water pressure are
used in Kankakee and Iroquois Counties.
Sod, which is grown in the area primarily

Strawflower in Schaafsma/Soucie field

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Mason County pickers

for the Chicago and suburban commercial
and residential market, uses several
different systems. A fixed-pipe system
with outlets that water between rows is
common for irrigating flowers.

Flowers Galore

Elwood and Ken Miedema grow 100 acres
of flowers in southern Kankakee County -
nothing but gladiolus, 40 varieties - in
addition to 1,500 acres of corn and
soybeans. Large orders of flowers are
contracted to florists and flower wholesal-
ers in Chicago, Milwaukee and cities in
Ohio.

The Miedemas depend on irriga-
tion for watering all their flowers. “We
couldn’t do without it and still grow our
glads,” says Elwood. “The heat of 95-
degree summer days can burn them up.”
The Miedemas and many other farmers in
the area around Wichert are among the
many descendants of Dutch settlers who
came to the area from South Holland,
Illinois. Craig Schaafsma, whose great-
grandfather was a Dutch grower in the
area, irrigates 30 varieties of flowers on 40
acres. It is his only crop. Schaafsma

follows his father and grandfather in the
flower-growing business.

Schaafsma’s partner, Bob Soucie,
is one of many southern Kankakee-
northern Iroquois County residents
descended from French-Canadian settlers.
“Before we became partners in the busi-
ness, Bob was a forest ranger in South
Dakota and I worked in a factory in
Kankakee,” Schaafsma explains. “I was
going to farmers’ markets on the side and
growing a few things while I was working
in the factory. Every year the flower
business was getting a little better. I told
Bob about it, and here we are.”

Almost all of the Schaafsma/
Soucie flowers - from asters to zinnias - go
to farmers’ markets in northside neighbor-
hoods in Chicago.

Flowers for the dining room table,
pickles and catsup for hamburgers,
popcorn while watching television,
watermelon for a picnic, pumpkins for
jack-o-lanterns, or sod for the front yard -
these are just a few of the products that
come from tapping our natural groundwa-
ter resources for irrigation. It’s nature

below helping nature above. &

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

A SMALLER WORLD

Adult acorn weevil

Male tiger swallowtail feeding at ironweed

20

by Michael Jeffords

The question often arises whether insects,
rather than their relatively frail human
counterparts, will ultimately inherit the
Earth - and not only among science fiction
writers. After all, insects have been around
for many millions of years longer than
humans, and certain species like the
cockroach have changed very little during
that time. Obviously, insects have
stumbled upon a very successful design
and show no inclination to decline in the
near future. If we examine the facts
closely, we must conclude, “No, the insects
will not inherit the Earth, they already
have!” Approximately 1.4 million species
of organisms that have been described by
scientists currently inhabit the Earth.
Approximately 65 percent of those, nearly
900,000 species, are insects and their close

Fall aggregration of ladybird beetles

preparing to overwinter

relatives. For every human being on Earth,
there may be 200 million insects! In
Illinois alone over 25,000 species of insects
have been found, ranging in size from a
six-inch walking stick from southern
Illinois to tiny beetles that will fit on the
head of a pin. Although most people are
difficult to convince, the vast majority of
insects do not inhabit our homes, eat our
crops, bite us, or otherwise cause distress.
Rather, they are essential parts of the
natural world - as pollinators, as food for
other animals, as food producers and as
fascinating creatures that deserve our
attention. Take a close look at a few of
these remarkable creatures that share

Our state. ic)

White-marked tussock
moth on fern frond

Redwing blackbirds nest in cattails

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

NATURE AMONG THE RUINS

Scrap metal yard
along shoreline

by Tara McClellan

“It’s been over a century since the Army
Corps of Engineers and George Pullman
decided to turn the sprawling marshes
between Lake Calumet and Lake Michigan
into an industrial center... They took an area
about four miles square and filled it with
dirt, with clay dredged from Lake Calumet,
with phenols, oils, ferrous sulfide, and
thousands of other substances you not only
never heard of, you never want to.”
(Paretsky, Blood Shot, Dell Publishing,
1988.)

The only thing Sara Paretsky
forgot to mention in this excerpt from her
mystery, set in the polluted Lake Calumet
area, is the incredible nature that still
survives there.

Chicago’s southeast side has been
called a “chemical quagmire” and a “toxic
trap.” Those are some of its nicer names.
Yet its patchy marshes are deemed
ecological paradises.

Lake Calumet’s approximately 60
square mile area has nearly 100 abandoned
or barely operating industrial plants, about
50 open or closed waste disposal facilities,
toxic waste dumps, sludge drying beds,
dumps, a hazardous waste incinerator,

landfills, neighborhoods, major highways,
and yes, wetlands with wonderful wildlife.

The area is a living battlefield. It
is checkerboarded with squares of nature’s
attempts to beat the industrial wasteland
engulfing it. Many question why no victor
has arisen yet. The real question is who the
victor will be.

One of the many groups tackling
that question is the Hazardous Waste
Research and Information Center. “We're
trying to address the full range of environ-
mental problems in the southeast Chicago
area,” says Gary Miller, Assistant Director
and Research Frogram Manager for the
Center. The Center studied the area’s
development and pollution history, and the
contamination of its air, surface, and Lake
Calumet’s sediment.

The Center is building an inven-
tory of possible sources of contamination
and chemicals used there. It is also trying
to monitor the area to see what the sources
are and what risks people are exposed to.

Fort Calumet
“The Lake Calumet area was originally a

low, swampy area...kind of a no-man’s

land” according to Craig Colten, Associate
Curator of Geography for the Illinois State
Museum, who has studied the area’s
history. “In the 1860s some local boosters
felt it would be an ideal site for a new port
for Chicago...the Chicago River was
getting too congested. So the developers
thought they could shift the industrial heart
of Chicago and develop large-scale port
facilities there.”

Developers believed the area had
several advantages: water and rail access,
proximity to Chicago, cheap land, low
taxes, low construction costs, and marsh-
lands which could be used for industrial
growth and waste disposal.

“The developers began lobbying
Congress and got money for the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers to make improvements
at the mouth of the Calumet River to
enable larger ships to enter,” Colten
explains.

In the 1870s industry began
moving in. Iron and steel manufacturers
were first and remained foremost. Their
support industries followed. Others
included grain and wood handling facili-
ties, the Pullman railroad car company,
chemical companies, a paint manufacturing
company, flour mills, beverage firms and
agricultural producers.

A Century of Waste

With industry came waste. Industry’s
disposal methods evolved over the years,
shifting slowly from an emphasis on water
to land disposal. The disposal methods
mirrored public perception regarding the
value of wetlands and waterways, and the
origin of disease.

“Originally (before 1890) wet-
lands were associated with health dangers
like mosquitoes and disease-carrying
fumes. So people put waste in them to
reclaim them,” Colten says.

In the 1890s industry started
dumping toxic wastes in streams in the

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

belief that this diluted the wastes and
carried them far from urban areas. “People
thought the wastes killed bad germs in the
waterways,” Colten adds. (There was one
early dissenter. In the 1890s the Army
Engineers voiced their concern about this
practice.) In 1922 the Calumet River’s flow
was reversed so waste-carrying streams
would not taint Lake Michigan, but drain
into rural Illinois.

By the 1940s Congress had
become concerned with the obvious

Tires and debris along shoreline

damage to America’s waterways and
enacted legislation to control water
pollution. Industry slowly started dumping
wastes onto land instead of into water.
Landfills became popular and the City of
Chicago opened a major one on the lake’s
northern end.

The environmentally conscious
sixties ushered in new concern for clean
land, tougher federal legislation and the
creation of the United States Environ-
mental Protection Agency. With new
restrictions on water dumping, manufactur-
ers once again focused on land dumping.

After 110 years of practically
uncontrolled dumping it has become
difficult to determine how much of what
substances are where. Industry did not keep

effective records of its waste disposal until
the late seventies.

A Toxic Trap
Colten says land wastes included toxic
metals like cadmium, chromium, acids, and
slag from the steel mills. Water wastes
included acids, oils from refineries,
phenols from steel mills, ammonia,
sulphur, cyanides, and arsenic.

A 1986 Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency study of the area found

20 chemicals polluting the land, 13
polluting the water, and 28 polluting the
air. Arsenic, cadmium, iron, lead, benzene,
xylenes, and pyridine dot the landscape.
Ammonia, lead, cyanide, PCBs, chlor-
danes, and DDT swirl in the water. Ozone,
lead, arsenic, acetone, hexane, naphtha,
methanol, and phenol pepper the air.

Doctor Philippe Ross, Associate
Professional Scientist with the Illinois
Natural History Survey (INHS), studied the
lake sediment’s toxicity for the Center. He
found “really high concentrations of heavy
metals...and lots of polynuclear aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the sediment.”
Ross says these substances are very

hazardous and many are carcinogens

Ah, Wilderness

Despite this, small pockets of nature thrive.
“We went up not expecting to find a single
twig” says Pamela Tazik, INHS Associate
Research Biologist, who studied the
wetlands’ aquatic plants. “But we found
beautiful arrowhead, cattail and pond
weeds. We were shocked.”

William E. Southern, Professor of
Biological Sciences at Northern Illinois
University, discovered similar results when
he studied the wildlife in 1982.

“If you base the quality (of the
wetlands) on the plant and wildlife there,
their quality was surprisingly high. But if
you look at it aesthetically and smell it,
you think ‘what a dump.’ You don’t expect
anything to be there, but the species just
kept rolling in, and we were overwhelmed
by the wealth.”

Fifteen of the 175 bird species
there are listed as threatened or endangered
in Illinois including the double-crested
cormorant, great egret, Wilson’s phalarope,
short-eared owl, marsh hawk, and osprey.
The area also has a herring gull rookery
and ring-billed gull colony which are rare
in Illinois, and it is a popular resting place
for migratory waterfowl.

Southern found a much more
diverse fish population than expected with
a total of 27 species, including 10 game
fish species. While none were threatened or
endangered he concluded that “fish fauna
was of good quality, which blew our
minds.” (A Center report says historical
records show that the fish community’s
diversity has declined over the years.)

How do the flora and fauna
survive in this toxic trap? No one is sure.
The area still offers good, though sparse,
habitats. And Tazik says aquatic plants
have a kind of defense mechanism which
“stores certain levels of some toxic
substances in their system and allows them
to carry out life processes.”

“The big question is what’s
happening to them in the long term...they

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

may be picking up pollutants,” Southern
says, verbalizing the Big Question.

An Abundance of Death

A 1988 Center environmental assessment
report concluded that the aquatic ecosystem
has probably been altered by toxic contami-
nants, and these contaminants may be
entering the food chain and could endanger
wildlife. It states “Chemical compounds
common to industry in the Calumet region
since the 1870s have concentrated in the
sediments of the lake, and consequently, the
potential for bioaccumulation in aquatic
plants, invertebrates, fish, and perhaps
waterfowl and humans is high.”

There is a scary epilogue to the
story. In July 1988 a scientist studying water
runoff into the lake found “an abundance of
death.” Four dozen dead gulls and numer-
ous dead fish surrounded the storm drain
where Bill Fitzpatrick collected water
samples. Fitzpatrick, an Associate Hydrolo-
gist with the Illinois Water Survey, says
other agencies investigating the situation
told him they found thousands of carcasses
in the area’s rookeries.

While there’s “no definitive
answer regarding the cause of the deaths”
Fitzpatrick says it’s possible that what killed

ATVB?

Yellow-headed blackbird along shoreline

the animals could have come from the
storm drain emptying into the lake. He’s
seen “tremendous amounts of toxic metals”
entering the lake at various times, and there
are “dozens of pollution sources to Lake
Calumet.”

“This means pollution is continu-
ing there and needs to be controlled,”
Fitzpatrick says. He thinks it’s endangering
the wildlife and has the potential for
contaminating Lake Michigan, the water
supply for millions of Midwesterners. The
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
is investigating the matter and has fined at
least one polluter. The Center, Fitzpatrick,
and most scientists who’ve studied there
recommend further studies of the area’s
pollution and possible effects on flora,
fauna and people.

Southeast Chicago is full of
chemical ghosts in its land, air, and water.
Some of these contaminants-can remain
hazardous for several decades. Disturbing
the landscape will literally stir up long-
buried pollutants.

The future is uncertain. A Center
report says “Continued habitat degradation
and contaminated food could affect the
future status of (some of the area’s endan-
gered) birds.”

Fitzpatrick echoes that concern:
“The wetlands have been carved up in such
small pieces, I’m not very optimistic
regarding their long term survival.”

But Chicago has ideas for
Calumet. The Chicago Port Authority has
plans to fill in most of the lake for an
industrial park with recreational areas. It’s
uncertain when or if these plans will be
implemented. The future of the area is a
big, unanswered question...and Lake
Calumet has lots of those. a

_ Board of Directors
_ Gaylord Donnelley
_ Chairman, Society for the Surveys

RR. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago
_ Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Society for the
: Surveys
_ Ottawa Silica Company
_ Foundation, Ottawa
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Treasurer, Society for the Surveys
Marine Bank of Springfield,
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F, Company, Hinsdale

David E. Connor
David E. Connor & Associates,
Peoria
;
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Bloomington

"Janice D. Florin
~ Amoco Chemical Company,
Chicago

“Clayton Gaylord
Ingersoll Milling Machine
tagail Rockford
Walter E. Hanson

Founder, Hanson Engineers, Inc.,
- Springfield
Richard C. Hartnack

The First National Bank of
Chicago, Chicago

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Illinois Consolidated Telephone

Company, Mattoon

Charles I Marshall

_ AT&T, Chicago

Stephen Mitchell

Chea B. Knight & Associates,
Chicago

fiemies D. Nowlan

Knox College, Galesburg

Albert Pyott

Director, Nature Conservancy,

Winnetka

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

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Forest Park Foundation, Peoria
Harvey Sheldon

McDermott, Will & Emery, Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Joseph Spivey

Illinois Coal Association,
Springfield

Harold B. Steele
Green Prairie Products, Inc.,
Princeton

Susan C. Stone
Urbana

Michael Witte

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff

Jane A. Bolin

Executive Director

Estie Karpman

Assistant Director

Jane Christman
Assistant to the Director

_ William Rooney

Communications Consultant

Illinois Scientific Surveys
Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief

Illinois Natural History Survey
Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey —

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Illinois Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center

Supporters*

Corporate and Foundation:
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Foundation; Arthur Andersen &
Company; James and Marjorie
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Baxter Woodman, Inc.; Bell &
Howell Foundation; Benton | ifn
Associates, bet Bi-Petro; Borg-

Warner Foundation, Inc.; Boulevard
Bancorp, Inc.; Elizabeth F. Cheney
Foundation; Chicago Community
Trust; Chicago Title & Trust;

Coffield, Ungaretti, Harris & Slavin;

Collins & Rice; Commonwealth
Edison; David E. Connor &
Associates; Crawford, Murphy &
Tilly; Arie & Ida Crown Memorial;
Dames & Moore; Gaylord
Donnelley Trust; Gaylord &
Dorothy Donnelley Foundation;
R.R. Donnelley & Sons; Dow
Chemical; Draper & Kramer
Foundation; Du Quoin State Bank;
Farnsworth & Wylie; Field
Foundation of Illinois; Jamee &
Marshall Field Foundation; First
Chicago Bank; Forest Fund;
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Company; William B. Graham
Foundation; Greeley and Hansen;
Hamilton Consulting Engineers;
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Foundation; Henry, Meisenheimer
& Gende; Claude H. Hurley
Company; Hurst-Rosche Engineers;
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Asssociation; Illinois Consolidated
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Company; Klingner & Associates;
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i i HISTO B oe

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

Winter 1990

The Society Page

The natural riches of Illinois have long been a magnet to immi-
grants from every part of the world, and many utopian societies
found their Eden on the prairie. Three are profiled in this issue.

From the Pottawatomi Indians to the descendants of
European settlers, the Kankakee River has been a haven and a
way of life. Tom Rice of the Illinois Water Survey chronicles the
river’s rise and decline.

There’s something in the air, and it can leave you
breathless. Whether you have respiratory problems or healthy
lungs, you should know more about ozone.

Our Art of Nature series focuses on Karl Bodmer’s
Illinois. “The man who stopped to paint America” did a beautiful
job of illustrating nineteenth century Illinois.

This issue also features the first article in a new series on
the history of the Illinois Scientific Suryeys. Amos Worthen, a
small town merchant with a passion for geology, conducted the
first real geological survey of all 56,000 square miles of the
Prairie State.

Old Iron, by Natural History Survey scientists Susan
Post and Michael Jeffords, looks at the men who buy, restore and
exhibit the old workhorses of Illinois farming - antique steam,
tractor and gas engines.

I hope you will join me in becoming a member of the
Society.

Warmest regards,

Pr bid Mhwe ay

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Table of Contents

Heaven On Earth: Utopians on the Prairie
Illinois was the land of milk and honey for many
early utopian societies.

The Grand Kankakee

The Pottawatomi Indians called the Kankakee River
Ti-yar-ac-ke, “wonderful land.” By the 1920s it became
known as the Vanishing River.

Old Iron

Antique steam and gas engine clubs are holding
Grandpa's Days and Thresherman’s Reunions to recapture
the good old days of Illinois farming.

Surveying Illinois

Biorhythms Currents
Geograms Centering On Waste
Breathless

The prospect of driveless days and manufacturing
restrictions made Chicagoans sit up and take notice as
officialdom tried to get a clearer picture of ozone.

>

The Art of Nature: Karl Bodmer’s Illinois

As part of the Maximilian Expedition, journeyman
artist Karl Bodmer captured the haunting essence and
raw energy of a new land.

The Works of the Creator
A failed dry-goods merchant, Amos Worthen went on to
become Illinois’ pre-eminent geologist.

About the Cover

Confluence of the Fox River and the Wabash, watercolor on

13

= hampgats

17

20

paper by Karl Bodmer. (Courtesy: Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha,

Nebraska)

Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

Volume IV, Number II
Winter 1990

Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin Editor

Jane Christman Assistant to the Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation, Chicago

Copyright 1990 by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys.
All rights reserved.

FPS y/

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY

vi Un

AUG i 6 1990

HEAVEN ON EARTH:

UTOPIANS ON THE PRAIRIE

by William Furry

UTOPIA: (/) An imaginary island
depicted by Sir Thomas More as enjoying a
perfect social, legal and political system;
b. Any imaginary, indefinitely-remote
region, country or locality. (2) A place or
condition ideally perfect in respect of
politics, laws, customs and conditions.

b. Any impossible ideal scheme, esp. for
social improvement. From the Oxford
English Dictionary.

Paradise, to recoin an antique adage, is in
the eyes of the beholder, and for some
nineteenth century Illinois settlers, the
wide-open prairie was, indeed, a paradise
to behold. To a fifth generation tenant
farmer newly immigrated to Illinois in the
1840s, the boundless, fertile and inexpen-
sive prairie farmland open for settlement
must have seemed paradisaical.

But to another group of settlers,
the expansive prairie presented social, even
theological possibilities. These settlers
were the utopians - the men, women and
children who gave up their homes, their
families and often their lives to come to
Illinois and build a new heaven on earth.
To the utopians - the Mormons and the
Icarians at Nauvoo and the Jannsonites of
Bishop Hill - Illinois was a prophecy
fulfilled, the proverbial land of milk and
honey, a new Canaan for a chosen people.

Paradise on the River

Way down upon the Wabash, such
land was never known,

If Adam had passed over it the soil
he'd surely own.

He'd think it was the garden, he
played in when a boy,

And straight pronounce it Eden in
the state of El-A-Noy.

American folk song

Rainbow over Bishop Hill

Illinois wasn’t everyone’s idea of paradise.
The English novelist Charles Dickens, on
his first visit to America in 1842, found the
young state a land of “swamps, bushes and
chirping bullfrogs.” Even a prairie sunset
had little to offer Dickens. Pausing outside
of Levanon, Illinois, one spring evening,
Dickens appraised the prairie thusly:
“There it lay,” he wrote, “a tranquil sea or
lake without water...It was lonely and wild,
oppressive in its barren monotony...It’s not
a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely
one...to be remembered with much
pleasure, or to covet the looking on again,
in after-life.”

In 1825, seventeen years before
Dickens raised his indifferent eyebrows
over the prairie, paradise already existed on
the banks of the Wabash River. It was in
that year that Robert Owen, the Scottish
industrialist and philanthropist, established
his own edenic experiment at New Har-
mony, Indiana. Contrary to the folk song
quoted above, Owen’s Eden got its start on
the opposite bank of the Wabash, which
may go a long way toward explaining why
the New Harmony experiment winked out
after only two years.

Although Owen’s utopia - an
economic community founded on his
unconventional beliefs in universal
suffrage and education, and better living
and working environments for workers -
did not last, its influence was extensive,
especially in the fields of education and
geology. Owen’s son, David Dale Owen,
was named the nation’s first U.S. Geolo-
gist, and he established at New Harmony
the country’s first headquarters for the U.S.
Geological Survey in 1839.

In 1842, 200 miles up the Missis-
sippi River from the spot where Dickens
was taking in the prairie sunset, Joseph
Smith and his Church of Jesus Christ
Latter Day Saints were building their “city
on the hill” at Nauvoo (a Hebrew word
roughly translating “beauty and repose”).

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Joseph Smith of Nauvoo (Courtesy: Illinois

State Historical Library)

For the Mormons, a millenarian sect
composed of reformed Methodists, Baptists,
and members of unorthodox religions,
Nauvoo would be their third attempt to
build “God’s City” on the frontier. The sect
had settlements in Ohio and Missouri, but
in 1839, after violence broke out between
Mormons and “gentiles” in the Mormon
settlement known as Far West, Missouri,
Smith decided to pack up his disciples and
move someplace else, either to Illinois or
Iowa. First Smith had to get out of jail.

A Town Called Commerce
Meanwhile, the Mormons sans Smith had
relocated to Quincy, Illinois, until a site for
their new kingdom could be decided upon.
When Smith arrived on the scene (he finally
escaped from jail), he settled his flock in
Hancock County on a peninsula jutting out
into the Mississippi River near a town
called Commerce, Illinois. Smith’s recorded
observations of the settlement site weren't
all that descriptive of paradise. In fact, he
sounds a bit Dickensian when he writes:
“The place was literally a wilderness. The
land was mostly covered with trees and
bushes, and much of it so wet that it was
with the utmost difficult that a footman
could get through, and totally impossible
for teams.” Still, Smith thought it “wisdom
to make an attempt to build a city.”

The Mormons had their choice as

to which side of the river they would locate

on, and they bought and settled land on
both banks. Their ultimate decision was to
settle on the Illinois side.

Rip Sparks, an aquatic biologist
for the Illinois Natural History Survey at
Havana, Illinois, suggests why the
Mormons chose to settle where they did.
“The bluffs,” says Sparks, “must have
played a role in their decision to locate in
Illinois. On the west bank of the river,
there are steep bluffs,” which would have
made it difficult to load and unload
supplies from the flatboats. But, says
Sparks, “At Nauvoo the bluffs were set
back from the river, and the flatboats were
much more accessible.”

“Farther down the river,” Sparks
explains, “are the Keokuk rapids,” an
extensive shelf of limestone and blue clay
that made navigation on the river impos-
sible. “Boats had to off-load before they
came to the rapids and there was a good
trade to be made from shipping.”

In 1839, 5,000 Mormons “in-
vaded” Nauvoo. Soon after settling,
construction began on the Mormon
Temple, an architectural wonder that
would soon be the tallest structure in
Illinois. The temple rose out of the bluffs, a
beacon to all “God's People” in the last
days of life on earth, which the Mormons
believed imminent. Nauvoo’s population
reached 12,000 in 1844, making it the
largest city in the state. The Latter Day
Saints had their own charter, a special
dispensation from the State of Illinois to
govern themselves. They even had their
own militia, the Nauvoo Legion. But there
were big problems looming in paradise.

The tremendous growth of
Hancock County due to the Mormon
settlement rapidly eroded the political
stability of the area. Whig and Democratic
politicians worked hard to woo the
Mormons to their party platforms, but the
Mormons had an agenda of their own.
Politicians endorsed by Joseph Smith -
most often gentiles who had been friends to
the Mormons - were consistently voted into

office. The Mormon influence
reached its peak in Hancock
County in 1844, when Joseph
Smith decided to run for Presi-
dent of the United States.

That same year, Smith
and his brother Hyrum were
murdered at the county jail in
Carthage, Illinois, and the
Mormons’ dreams of a city on the
hill were once again dashed. In
1846 under the leadership of
Brigham Young, the Mormons
began their trek to Utah.

The Mormons, however,
would not be the last utopian
community to settle in Nauvoo.

Voyage of the Icarians

In 1849 the followers of a French
social theorist named Etienne
Cabet migrated from their utopian settle-
ment on the Red River in Texas to the
abandoned city of Nauvoo where they set
up their own temporary paradise in the
ruins of the Mormon utopia. The Icarians,
as they called themselves, took their name
from Cabet’s book, The Voyage to Icaria.
Cabet had for forty years been the leader of
the French Republican Party, but he had
been exiled from his homeland for speak-
ing out against the reign of Louis Philippe.
In 1846 Cabet and nearly 300 disciples
immigrated to Texas. Life there proved
inhospitable, so they regrouped in New

Sunstone from the Nauvoo Temple

Steeple building at Bishop Hill

Orleans and moved to Nauvoo upon
hearing that the Mormons had abandoned
their city.

The agnostic Icarians* agrarian
society was founded on the principle of
shared communal property. They were the
most democratic of the Illinois utopians
and the most family-oriented. At Nauvoo
the Icarians bought houses but very little
land, since they intended to settle later in
Iowa. At one time the Icarian population at
Nauvoo reached 1,500, but Cabet and his
followers believed an additional 30,000
disciples would eventually immigrate.
They never came. Cabet died on a trip to
St. Louis in 1856, and the remaining
Icarians, frustrated and fractionalized,
moved across the river and established a

permanent colony near Corning, lowa.

The Search for Perfection

The Icarians were one of the few utopian
societies in America founded on non-
theological principles. By far the greater
number of utopian communities in the
United States during the nineteenth century
had origins in the religious persecution

taking place in Europe.

Nowhere was this
religious immediacy more
evident than in Sweden in the
1840s. In the village of
Hallsingland, a group of
separatists led by a charismatic
lay minister named Eric Jannson
turned away from the doctrines
of the state church of Sweden,
the Lutheran Church. For this
they were persecuted. Jannson,
an itinerant wheat flour mer-
chant, preached a gospel which
had antecedents in the primitive
Christian church. Contrary to the
state church, Jannson affirmed
that freedom from sin was
possible, and that perfection
could be achieved through a life
of devotion, work and prayer.
Arrested for his heresies,
Jannson was jailed six times. His ministry
and his church persisted.

In October 1845 the first of the
Jannsonite emigres, a man named Olaf
Olsson and his family, sailed from Sweden
to America to reconnoiter and report back
on what he had found. After searching for
settlement sites in Wisconsin and Michi-
gan, Olsson arrived in Henry County,
Illinois.

Federal land surveyors had
mapped the Illinois Territory in 1817 and
recorded their descriptions of the Henry
County terrain in terse field notes. Their
writings were understated and are instruc-
tive. Occasionally a surveyor, impressed by
what he saw on the wind-swept prairies,
would jot down what may have been an
emotional response to the landscape, here
noting that the soil was “rich” or “good for
farming,” and there a section was “entirely
fit for cultivation.”

According to Henry County
histories, the woods along the South
Edwards Creek abounded in fruit and wi
game. Louis Iverson, terrestrial plant
ecologist for the Illinois Natural H

(continued on p. 24)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE GRAND KANKAKEE

The French adventurers carried
their canoes on a long and tedious
journey overland until they finally
came upon flowing waters in what
is now northwestern Indiana. It
was December 1679, and the
explorer La Salle and his 30-man
party might have been the first
white men to see the Kankakee
River.

The Frenchmen launched
their canoes and continued their
journey on the meandering river
through new and strange country.
To mark their trail and record their
progress for those who might
follow, the Frenchmen tied letters
to trees at their camp sites along
the way.

The explorers started their
journey on the Kankakee at the
river’s beginning near present day
South Bend, Indiana. They
eventually traveled over the entire
run of the Kankakee River - over
300 miles - to where it meets the
Des Plaines River and forms the
Illinois River.

Today an island in the Kankakee
River that La Salle used as a campground
is a recreational and historic site for the
town of Momence, Illinois. A large group
of ducks flocks to anyone who approaches
the wooden footbridge that leads to the
island, hoping to get a handout of corn or
bread. Nearby, proud Canadian geese keep
their distance and quietly roam the shore-
line.

The people of Momence are very
protective of the waterfowl that have made
the river and its shores their home. Mom-
ence historian Kay Hess says this same
type of concern is expressed for the welfare
of the river.

Story and Photographs by Thomas E. Rice

Trapper Billy Allgood, who became an authority on the river, lived
on the Kankakee’s bank near Momence in the 1860s. Kit Carson and
many other mountain men and trappers were his friends. (Courtesy:
Kay Hess, Momence)

With an encyclopedic mind she
relates local history, the legacy of the
Indians and settlers that lived in the area,
and the importance of the river to the
people of the area. “You can’t separate the
river from history,” she says. “It’s all one
and the same.”

The River’s Heritage

The Pottawatomi Indians, believed to be
the first inhabitants of the Kankakee River
basin, called the river Ti-yar-ac-ke,
“wonderful land.” The name was adopted
by the French as The-a-ki-ki, and Quin-
que-que. The name Kankakee is thought to
be the English version of the later French

word. The river and its marshes were a

fishing, hunting, and trapping
haven for the Indians.

One of the first white
settlers in Kankakee County, fur
trader Gurdon Hubbard lived and
traded with the Pottawatomi for
years. His appreciation of the area
was reflected in a letter he wrote
to the Kankakee Old Settlers” As-
sociation in the 1880s: “You are
citizens of one of the most
beautiful portions of our grand
state. | can never forget my first
impressions, in 1822 (it was my
first visit), as I traveled up that
stream (the Kankakee). I thought I
had never before enjoyed the
sight of so much natural beauty as
met my gaze, of river, woods and
lands so delightfully inter-
spersed.”

But like many others
who live on the river today, Kay
Hess knows of the creeping
problems that have beset the river
for many years. She blames much
of it on what was done to the river
and the Grand Marsh upstream in
Indiana.

The Demise of the Grand Marsh

The 400,000 acres of swampland called the
Grand Kankakee Marsh once stretched
from near South Bend, Indiana, and across
the Illinois state line to just east of Mo-
mence. Various public and private groups
in Indiana used steam dredges beginning in
1906 to drain the marsh and straighten and
channel the river so the land could be used
for agriculture.

When the work was completed in
the spring of 1917, the effect of the drain-
age on wildlife was devastating. Hundreds
of thousands of newly-hatched ducks and

Ki
;

Rock Creek, a tributary of the Kankakee, near Kankakee River State Park

geese died for lack of water. Dead fish lay
thick in the drained lagoons. The odor of
decaying flesh of beaver, otter, and
muskrat was unbearable.

For the Indians, and later the
trappers and fishermen who settled in the
area, the Marsh had been a good provider.
Presidents Grover Cleveland and Theodore
Roosevelt, as well as European nobility,
had also hunted there. But the Marsh was
now gone, and the vast natural habitat and
sportsman’s paradise was lost.

In the end, 250 miles of meander-
ing river and marshland known worldwide
for its beauty and diversity were turned
into a straightened, deepened channel 82
miles long. “They murdered the land,”
concluded an old “swamp rat” who had
witnessed the devastation.

In his 1920 book Tales of a
Vanishing River, Earl Reed lamented the
loss of the Grand Marsh area of the
Kankakee River. “The Kankakee of old has
gone,” Reed wrote. “The realization of this
great economic wrong must be left to
future generations. Man has scarred the
earth he lives upon and annihilated its
creatures. The Vanishing River moves on

through a twilight of ignorance and error.”

“Leave the River Alone”

A 1981 report detailing the findings of
studies conducted by the Illinois Water,
Geological, and Natural History Surveys
concluded that the Kankakee River as we
see it today is the result of many natural
and manmade activities. The channelization
of the upper river in Indiana has increased
the slope of gradient of the river. This led

to an increased sediment load as the river

Fishing the river, Cobb Park at Kankakee,
Illinois

scoured its bed and banks or picked up

materials from the watershed. When this
increased sediment load was delivered
downstream in Illinois, where the gradient
had not been changed, the sediment was
deposited, forming sandbars or islands.

This was evident in aerial photos
of the river between the Indiana state line
and the city of Kankakee. The photos,
taken between 1939 and 1954, revealed
that increasing sedimentation in the river
resulted in the growth of beaches and
islands, particularly at the confluence of
the Kankakee and Iroquois Rivers.

The sediment (mainly sand) that is
accumulating in different parts of the river
is a threat to recreation and aquatic life. As
the sediment reduces the water storage
capacity of the river, shallow waters
endanger boat safety and destroy aquatic
life

Sediment continues to travel
downstream into Illinois from Indiana. The
report of the three Surveys warns that
although the river is basically stable in bot!
states, any change will result in an unbal
ance. “Further dredging, clearing, o1
construction can lead to more bed

erosion and more sediment, and t S

Swans in the Kankakee River at Aroma Park

disturbance to aquatic life,” the report
states.

One general conclusion comes
from the several preventive or restorative
measures recommended by the Surveys: “If
at all possible, leave the river alone - work
on improving the land around it.”

Paying a Debt
Gordon Graves has a deep-rooted apprecia-
tion of the Kankakee River. As a lifelong
resident of Kankakee, the 75-year-old
retired general contractor has a strong
personal link to the waters of the river.
“The Depression came and my father lost
his business,” Graves says. “When he died
during this period, I was the oldest of four
children. I often noticed the river rats as
they went out to fish. I started fishing and
learned all I could from those old river rats.
Then I began selling the fish and I made
enough money to survive.”

Graves supported his family and
eventually prospered. “I owe a debt to the

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

river and I always pay my debts,” he says.
“T want to protect its natural resources.”

For his many years of work to
protect and preserve the Kankakee River
basin, Graves was honored by President
Ronald Reagan at the White House in 1988.
The President praised Graves and 93 other
winners of the national “Take Pride in
America” award for “protecting the
abundant majesty of our nation.” Graves
was one of only 11 individuals who
received the award, the others given to
schools, businesses and environmental and
civic groups.

Although Graves is in the forefront
of efforts to preserve and protect the
Kankakee, he knows it is going to take a lot
more effort and money to correct all that
has crippled the river. “It is a long, drawn-
out proposition,” he says. “I would say the
river’s situation is terminal.”

Illinois has opposed Indiana’s
alterations of the river in the past. “We've
been at war,” says Graves. “We've won
most of the battles, but not the war. They
pulled the plug on the Grand Marsh in 1917
when it was one of the greatest waterfowl
and fish habitats in the United States.”

Taking Pride in the River

In Illinois, the Kankakee River is still a
sturdy, scenic river. Area residents and
visitors come to the river to fish, take
canoe trips, hike and camp along its shores,
or to participate in the many festivals and
events on the river.

Between the state line and
Momence the river is a meandering stream
with a sandy bottom, traversing an area of
forests and relatively undisturbed wetlands,
known as the Momence Wetlands. These
wetlands, which cover nearly 1,800 acres,
are one of the largest and finest wetlands
remaining in Illinois. Recently the Illinois
Department of Conservation acquired a 72-
acre portion of the wetlands and designated
it a state nature preserve. But most of the
wetlands are privately owned and unpro-
tected.

Between the town of Aroma Park
and the city of Kankakee, a deep-water
area called Six Mile Pool was formed by
the construction of the Kankakee dam. The
deeper water is ideal for boating.

One of the projects of the North-
ern Illinois Anglers Association, an
environmental group co-founded by
Gordon Graves, is the Annual River
Cleanup. “We thought the river was a
disgrace in some places,” Graves explains,
“so we decided to clean up the whole damn
thing.” From the state line all the way
downstream to Wilmington, where the
river drains into the Illinois River, the
cleanup has been organized. Volunteers
from many communities collect trash that
has accumulated along the riverway.

There are those who believe the
Kankakee is dying as a result of the
buildup of sedimentation, but they and
others who respect the river and what it has
to offer continue to hope and work for its
survival. &

“buying an engine was quite an era in
my life. Ever since | was a boy I have
wanted an engine. 1 have stood for hours
watching the motions of those ponderous
creatures that move the commerce of the
world on sea or land and thought it was
every intelligent man’s education to
understand an engine. After six months of
careful study and comparison, I at last with
some trepidation, gave the order to have
one shipped to me...”

Pennsylvania thresherman 1871

This 120-year old statement from the
Pennsylvania thresherman could be from
any member of a steam, tractor or gas
engine club of today. There are 30 such
organizations now active in Illinois. At first
glance these steam and gas engines appear
to be ponderous mechanical dinosaurs kept
from extinction by a small group of men
traveling to festivals, threshings and shows
like the medicine men of old, willing to
share their knowledge and enthusiasm with
all who will listen and question. Beginning
in mid-spring and running through autumn,
every weekend in Illinois offers at least one
antique engine festival, threshing
demonstration or historic farming day.
Throughout the United States there are
over 540 antique farming shows with
thousands of participants, all striving to
preserve a piece of the past.

Men and Machines

The list of men and their machines is
endless. Richard Post, a founding member
of the Tazewell County Olde Threshers
Association, had always wanted a hit-and-
miss John Deere gasoline engine like his
father used to pump water. This was the
first engine he bought and restored. His
collection now includes over 100 such
machines.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

OLD IRON

by Susan Post and Michael Jeffords

Taking a break before threshing, Tazewell
County, mid-1930s

At a recent show in Jacksonville,
an Iowa man demonstrated the “art” of
fencemaking. Simply by turning a crank,
an intricate-looking collection of gears
twisted wire this way and that as it traveled
vertically along prestrung wires. New
fence rapidly appeared to the obvious
delight of the operator. He had started his
hobby 40 years ago after picking up a piece
of homemade hogwire in his neighbor’s
junk pile and wondering how it was made.
Six years ago he bought the fencemaking
equipment at a farm sale.

The first portable steam engine
designed for agricultural purposes was
manufactured in 1849. “Portable” meant a
team of four to six horses could haul it
through the woods or across the fields. By
the 1870s, self-propelled steam engines
had reached the farm. Advertisements
boasted that the steam engine could be con-
veniently moved from place to place and
set up as readily as a common cook stove.
Today, a semi-trailer truck hauls these still
portable engines to the various demonstra-

tions. Before an engine can be used, the

boiler must be washed, fittings greased and
oiled, and a fire built in the firebox.
Patience is required to “wait for gettin’ up

steam” so the engine can go.

Smoke, Steam and Sparks
The sight of a portable steam engine at
work in 1874 was not a scene to instill
confidence into the hearts of the timid or
uninformed. These iron and steel contrap-
tions loaded with a bellyful of fire and
sending forth smoke, steam and sparks
tended to command respect and occasion-
ally fear. Even when the engine stood idle,
the escaping steam from the hot boiler
sizzled out through leaky valves and
pumps in an ominous manner. The
inexperienced person held it in mortal
dread as an infernal machine of potential
death and destruction, reminiscent of an
encounter between Saint George and the
dragon. The machines make even modern
day observers uneasy. Clouds of dark
smoke and sooty black water belch from
the long smokestack and steam hisses from
the valves. The long belt that connects the
steam engine to the thresher is taut and
dangerous-looking.

The boom of the steam engine
was from 1885 to 1912, peaking in 1910.
During the 1920s and 1930s steam engines
were pushed aside to slowly accumulate in
junkyards or rust in the fence rows. The
metal scrap drives of World War II almost
eliminated these engines from the Ameri-
can scene. A few men who never lost their
love for steam engines were able to keep
them by proving to the local scrapdrive
authorities that these machines were still in
working condition. By the late 1940s, men
were demonstrating the art of threshing at
special threshing bees and local fairs. In
1948 Pontiac, Illinois held the first anr

Thresherman’s Reunion. Because th

Fence-making machine

operation of these machines is so unusual,
their performance still attracts considerable
interest. The Tazewell County club offers a
Steam Engineers School. The school has
both classroom and hands-on training in
the steam tractor engine. The class is
designed to create an interest in and respect
for the steam engine and its unique role in
the growth of American agriculture.

Steam Versus Gas

The transition on the farm from steam
power to gasoline was part of an inevitable
cycle of progress by the American farmer.
The desire to do his work more easily, effi-
ciently and economically spelled the doom
of steam as a power source on the farm.
The stationary gasoline engine could
provide power at a moment’s notice. It was
safe, reliable, easy to operate and truly
portable. Operation was possible both
indoors and out. Gasoline-powered tractors
took over as the chief source of power on
the farm around 1913. Prior to this, most
tractors were large, heavy and unwieldy.
They had been built from the same
patterns as their steam predecessors, only

with a gas engine substituted for a steam

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

engine and boiler. With the introduction of
smaller tractors and Henry Ford’s automo-
tive system of mass production, gasoline
tractors became the workhorse of the farm.
Tractor shows soon became the order of
the day with a circuit of plowing demon-
strations. As many as 50,000 people
attended these shows to tramp up and
down the fields watching the new tractors
perform. Today the engine clubs stage
plowing bees and slow races (the object is
to run the tractor as slowly as possible, last
one in wins) to showcase their lovingly
restored machines.

“Good Old Days”

Like the prairie, the early methods and
equipment of farming are being preserved.
Gas engine and steam clubs hold Thresher-
man’s Reunions and Grandpa’s Days on
the farm to demonstrate the equipment and
old-time farming skills. Threshing oats and
wheat with steam and gas, shockloading
with horse-drawn bundle wagons, tractor
and horse plowing, corn-shelling and
grinding, and log-sawing are only a few of
the attractions. Antique tractors and
stationary gas engines are displayed, and if

they demonstrate a labor-saving chore, so
much the better. One enterprising youth
hooked his Maytag engine up to a wringer
washer and proceeded to do his week’s
laundry with lye soap.

The Tazewell County group holds
their annual show on the Al Beutel farm
near Tremont. Al plants four acres of oats
to be cut with an antique binder for this
special threshing day. Al remarked that it
takes four days to do something that his
modern equipment could do in less than an
hour. The smile, however, belies the good-
natured grumbling. The “good old days” of
farming bring a warm and wonderful
feeling to the participants, keeping alive
the heritage of rural America.

When antique gas engine collec-
tor Richard Post was asked if he would
like to “pitch some straw” to get the feel of
what it’s like, he answered with a wry
smile and a shake of the head, “No thanks.
I remember.” 5

Susan Post and Michael Jeffords are
scientists at INHS. Michael Jeffords is staff
photographer for The Nature of Illinois

WARRISON-
MACHINE =”
“WORKS >

“Portable” tractor heading for the fields (photo by Susan Post)

Ae BIORHYTHMS

A Kinder, Gentler Army

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Rare cactus growing at Savanna Army Depot near Savanna, Illinois

(Courtesy: INHS)

Threatened and endangered
species at approximately 60
U.S. Army installations east of
the Mississippi River are the
subject of a new annotated
directory developed by the
Illinois Natural History Survey
(INHS). Under the Endangered
Species Act, federal agencies

including the Army are required
to protect any such species
under their control. Survey
researchers provided the Army
with specific information about
species and habitats at military
installations, including species
management and recovery
strategies.

A Bear Market For Rabbits

Cottontails in a specific area of
Robert Allerton Park in Piatt
County were inventoried by
INHS for the 33rd consecutive
year this fall. This unique rabbit
census represents one of the
longest continuous collections
of data on annual fluctuations
in local abundance of Midwest

cottontails. Populations crashed
in the late 1970s and rabbits did
not redux at all in the winter of
1981-1982. Recolonization
occurred in the spring/summer
of 1982 and has been followed
by a slow recovery. Old ideas
of rabbit numbers affected by
equilibrium, regulation of
abundance and balance of
nature have been rejected by
researchers. Abundance is now
thought to be determined more
by changes in survival and
dispersal and less by reproduc-
tion.

=~ Toxicity Testing
wel etn
. The toxicity of 10 common waste dis

aminants can noW be measured

yosal cont sae
. a team of INHS re-

with a six-test battery developed by ba
ae i C sted Wl

searchers. Few toxicity tests can be conductec
small samples, low-cost testing nee
tical reliability, W hich is exactly what 1s needec
variety of environmental cont wees
tored ‘The Survey’s new testing techniques mee a

, ' os collected from
reeds and will soon be used on samples collectec
needs ¢ ‘

periods and high statis-

aminants must be moni-

waste disposal landfills.

Maples To the Left, Pines To
the Right

Concern about the greenhouse
effect, habitat fragmentation and
loss of biodiversity has generated
new interest in tree planting.
Survey scientists caution about
the importance of proper species
selection and location. Too many
of the same kind of tree leaves
the newly forested landscape
highly vulnerable to disease,
while some species will simply
not adapt well to certain loca-
tions. Those communities
planning tree planting campaigns
should obtain forestry manage-
ment expertise.

Lepidoptera Come To Light

Monarch butterfly
(Courtesy: INHS)

The Natural History Survey’s
Illinois Lepidoptera database
collects historic information on
the state’s approximately 2,000
species of moths and butter-
flies. Records obtained from
visits to 13 institutional and
private collections covering 470
locales and the period 1876-
1988 are now being computer-
ized. This information will help
to identify species that should
be placed on Illinois” endan

gered species list.

Street scene with trees
(Courtesy: INHS)

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

ee CURRENTS

Good Fishing

The state-operated Jake Wolf
Memorial Fish Hatchery near
Manito needs a plentiful water
supply for the tanks and ponds
it uses to breed over 40 million
fish each year.

In a study of groundwater
withdrawals at the fish hatch-
ery, the Illinois Water Survey is
addressing concerns about the

effects of heavy withdrawals on
the area’s aquifers and the effi-
ciency of the hatchery’s wells
after years of pumping. Re-
searchers have installed ground-

water monitoring wells near the
hatchery, and ongoing tests will
be conducted to determine if
there is any deterioration in the
hatchery’s wells.

Left: Just hatched fish at Jake Wolf Hatchery. Right: Egg hatching jar
containing 200,000 walleye eggs (Courtesy: Illinois Department of

Conservation)

Storm brewing (Courtesy: IWS)

The Weather In Three Dimensions

Illinois Water Survey research-
ers study the atmosphere and its
changing weather using ad-
vanced radar, aircraft stocked
with sophisticated instruments
and a variety of other equip-
ment. With the help of a grant
from AT&T, scientists will now
be able to generate three-di-
mensional illustrations from the
vast amounts of meteorological
data they have collected on
computer screens.

Computers can, for
example, process data on radar-

tracked clouds in a developing
storm system and transmit that
data to a high-powered com-
puter that calculates such cloud
properties as color, shading and
transparency. The clouds then
appear as three-dimensional
shaded objects on the screen.

These illustrations will
enable scientists to visualize the
inside of a developing storm
and study the nature of such
components as ice particles,
temperature, humidity and
wind.

The Big Picture On Groundwater

Groundwater contamination
problems are common to most
areas of Illinois and the nation,
and monitoring of groundwater
quality has become a critical
issue.

Water Survey researchers
are conducting a three-year
study of groundwater monitor-
ing methods at Sand Ridge
State Forest in Mason County
and at an industrial site near
Beardstown. Project activities
involve purging and sampling
monitoring wells, taking more
than 2,000 measurements of

groundwater levels, and con-
ducting more than 55,000
chemical analyses.

The critical finding was that

groundwater quality in shallow
sand-and-gravel aquifers varies
substantially with time, even in
the absence of contamination.
One-time “snapshots” of
groundwater conditions can be
quite misleading as to the actual
quality of groundwater near
sites of high water use or near
likely sources of chemical con-
tamination.

Hydrogeological factors
must be carefully considered in
all monitoring efforts. If moni-

Preparing to monitor a well at Sand Ridge State Forest (Courtesy: IWS)

toring is properly designed and
conducted, most routine quality

assurance measures required by

state and federal agencies should

be sufficient. Results from the
investigation can be applied to
monitoring efforts worldwide.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

When the Illinois Department
of Transportation (IDOT) con-
siders buying or building ona
site, it turns to the Illinois Geo-
logical Survey for information
on manmade or natural hazards.

These hazards include location
of landslide-prone areas, expan-
sive soils, landfills and mined-
out areas. As many as 300 envi-
ronmental site assessments will
be conducted during the
contract year.

The Survey collects
information for its reports from
its geologic and hydrogeologic
databases, review of historical
documents and computerized
geographic information
systems, on-site inspections,
and limited field analysis of
soil, water and air.

Twenty Thousand Leagues
Under The Lake

Coastal sedimentary changes
near the newly constructed
North Point Marina on Lake
Michigan, adjacent to the
Illinois-Wisconsin state line, are
being measured. This effort will
identify shoreline, beach and
lake bottom alterations as the
coastal zone adjusts to the
construction of the marina
breakwaters. Surveys in 1988
and 1989 documented lake
bottom changes. Shoreline and
beach alterations continue to be
measured weekly. This informa-
tion will be used by marina
engineers and managers in
planning for additional shore

defense and shoal area dredging.

Surface Waste and Shallow
Groundwater

A series of statewide maps have
been compiled by the Geologi-
cal Survey for the Hazardous
Waste Center showing the
density of current waste
generation and disposal
activities. Using the Geographic
Information System (a compu-
terized natural resources
database), these maps were
overlain with a map showing
the potential for contamination
of aquifers in Illinois. These
composite maps identify areas
where the density of current
waste activities may be a
significant threat to groundwa-
ter resources.

Lake Michigan From The Air

Photographic documentation of
Lake Michigan’s shoreline
changes is part of a two-decade
program at the Geological
Survey. To record changes
along the shoreline during the
summer of 1988, scientists flew
the area and took 1,100 color
transparencies.

Again in May 1989 a photo
flight was made over the
Illinois shoreline with exten-

The Aggregate Industry
The production of aggregate
for construction is a major
industry in the Chicago
metropolitan area. In recent
years depletion of known
resources and urban encroach-
ment on undeveloped sites
have resulted in an uncertain
future for the industry.

To identify additional
sources of aggregate and to
assist quarry operators, the
Survey is studying existing
quarries and exposures, along
with subsurface cores in
northeastern [llinois, to
provide a good picture of the

area's geology.

sions into Wisconsin and down
the Illinois Waterway. Over
3,000 aerial color slides were
collected in addition to 500
ground slides. The Survey
photo collections are used to
respond to public inquiries
about rates of shoreline erosion
and location and condition of
shore-defense structures, as
well as supplying basic data to
researchers.

Dr. Don Mikulic of IGS studies
quarry in northeastern Illinoi

(Courtesy: IGS)

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

CENTERING ON WASTE
eles

New Publications To Aid Businesses

“Management of Used Lead-
Acid Batteries” is the first ina
series of new fact sheets
developed by HWRIC. The fact
sheet discusses regulations
governing disposal of these
batteries, how auto maintenance
shops and other users can better
manage batteries, and gives
general recycling information.
The second fact sheet (available

February 1990) will cover
regulation, management and
recyling options for used oil.
For more information, call
HWRIC at 217/333-8940.

engineers in waste reduction techniques.

Waste Reduction
Means Pollution
Prevention

The new state Toxic Pollution
Prevention Act directs the Haz-
ardous Waste Research and
Information Center (HWRIC) and
Illinois EPA to promote pollution preven-
tion. The Act strengthens the Center’s four-

year old waste reduction plan through

development of a Toxic Pollution Pre-
vention Assistance Program.

The Act will mean expanded
education and training efforts. One such
program is already in place for regulatory
inspectors, permit writers, and others who
customarily work with Illinois businesses

that generate hazardous waste. The
program teaches them how to identify
waste reduction opportunities when they
visit factories and businesses.
The one-year old program will now be
offered directly to businesses. Pollution pre-
vention educational materials for universities

will be developed in order to help train

The WRITE Stuff

MPI Label Systems specialist and HWRIC engineers discuss MPI's
printing line (Courtesy: HWRIC)

Chosen for a $300,000 three-
year national waste reduction
research program by USEPA,
the Hazardous Waste Center
will work with selected indus-
tries to demonstrate and
evaluate five or more new
options for reducing industrial
wastes.

The Center is negotiating
with several companies to work
on WRITE (Waste Reduction
Innovative Technology)
projects. One of these is
Danforth Corporation of Elk
Grove, an electroplating
operation that is experimenting
with a method to reduce both
waste volume and toxicity.
Danforth plans to substitute
zinc hydroxide for zine cyanide
in its electroplating solution,
eliminating the use of a highly
hazardous solution and saving

money. Recyling the zinc

— hydroxide solution is also a

priority.

MPI Label Systems of
Monee will save more than
$6,000 per year by switching
from volatile solvent-based inks
to water-based inks in its label-
printing process. This will
increase worker safety and
decrease waste. MPI also plans
to use a citrus-based cleaner in
place of a chlorinated solvent
cleaner for its flexigraphic
printing presses.

The American
Foundrymen’s Society of Des
Plaines is assisting in the
development of a method to
recycle zircon sand, a vital
material in the investment
casting process. This minimizes
use of an important material
and reduces waste sent to
landfills.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

BREATHLESS

Chemically defined as a form of oxygen
with three oxygen atoms instead of the two found
in regular oxygen, ozone is the Jekyll and Hyde of
the atmosphere. In the upper atmosphere, the
ozone layer absorbs and offers protection from ul-
traviolet radiation. It is a benefactor to mankind
and is in danger from a variety of manmade
sources. At ground level ozone is a harmful pollut-
ant. Both natural and manmade ozone are the result
of sunlight acting on gases in the atmosphere,
occurring in roughly equal parts in
the environment.

Elusive and Mobile
Manmade ozone is an urban
creature, in environmental
parlance a secondary pollutant.
It doesn’t come from any one
direct source, but instead is
formed when volatile organic
compounds (VOCs) like
benzene and nitrogen oxides
interact and are baked in
sunlight. The resulting stew is
popularly known as smog.
Ozone is the largest part of that
unsavory mixture.

Ozone precursors are
emitted from large and small
sources, both stationary and
mobile. Household products, dry
cleaners, petroleum refineries,
oil storage tanks, chemical
manufacturers, printing indus-
tries, and America’s beloved
automobile all contribute.
Recent estimates point a finger
at automotive vehicles as the
source for over half of the
ozone-creating compounds in
the Chicago area atmosphere,
with large industrial plants
accounting for another 20
percent.

Southern California, the
East Coast, Texas and Chicago
are all major ozone producers.
Not only do these areas manu-
facture ozone, they export it.
Ozone travels. In Chicago it
bakes south of the city, rises into
the atmosphere during the day
and then rides the air currents to
Evanston, the northern suburbs,
and, no respecter of state
boundaries, drifts up to Racine
and Kenosha. Lake Michigan’s
off-shore winds complicate an
already unstable meteorological
mess.

Chicago’s ozone season

lasts from April through

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Lake Shore Drive on a smoggy afternoon

October, with the highest
concentrations measured in
June, July and August. Ozone
levels are generally high during
hot summers, low during cool
summers. No fewer than 20
ozone alerts were prompted by
the unseasonably hot summer
of 1988, while last summer’s

cool weather elicited only four

Corrosive and Dangerous
According to the U.S. Environ-
mental Protection Agency
(USEPA), ozone is particularly
dangerous for the young, the
old and those with upper
respiratory ailments. New
findings indicate that it also has
significant adverse health
effects for large segments of the
normal healthy population.

The national standard for
ozone 1s .12 parts per million
(ppm) averaged over a one-hour
period. In a series of studies

conducted on people with

healthy lungs, federal research-
ers found that ozone exposures
as low as .12 ppm administered
for one to three hours, coupled
with intermittent heavy exer-
cise, can reduce normal lung
functioning by 10 percent or
more in about 5 to 20 percent of
the subjects tested, including
both adults and children.

At concentration levels
from .12 ppm to greater than
.20 ppm, healthy subjects expe-
rienced chest pain, coughing,
wheezing, pulmonary and nasal
congestion, labored breathing,
sore throat, nausea and in-
creased respiratory rate.

Permanent lung structure
damage has been observed in
animals exposed to ozone levels
of .20 ppm.

Studies conducted by
USEPA’s National Crop Loss
Assessment Network estab-
lished that flora as well as fauna

is in danger from ozone. Major

cash crops such as soybeans,
peanuts, corn and wheat suffer
10 percent or higher yield losses
when the average seven-hour
daylight ozone concentration
during the growing season
exceeds .04-.05 ppm. Other
studies have shown reduced
plant yields of up to 33 percent
in tomatoes, 26 percent in beans,
20 percent in soybeans and 22
percent in snapbeans. Federal
researchers estimate potential
crop losses due to ozone at two
to three billion dollars annually.

Ozone is also a major
suspect in the decline of the San
Bernardino National Forest in
southern California and in
damage to pine and spruce
forests in the eastern United
States.

Ozone can also attack non-
biological materials. Elastomers,
textile fibers and dyes, and
certain types of paint are

particularly susceptible.

Regulated But Still Pervasive
When Congress passed the
Clean Air Act in 1970, the
USEPA Administrator set
National Ambient Air Quality
Standards (NAAQS) for six air
pollutants: sulfur dioxide,
nitrogen dioxide, particulate
matter, lead, ozone and carbon
monoxide. The standard for
ozone is .12 ppm. Ozone levels
are measured at 39 sites in
Illinois, with the greatest
number of standard violations
occurring in Chicago and the
Metro-East St. Louis area.
Neither Chicago nor the Metro-
East area has yet met the
national standards for ozone.

Progress has been made.
According to Illinois EPA
(IEPA), from 1979 through
1986, a reduction in ozone
emissions of 38.3 percent was
achieved in the area covered by
Cook, Lake, Kane, DuPage,
Will and McHenry counties.
During the same period, actual
VOC emissions declined from
519,235 tons per year to
320,204 tons per year. Of six
counties classified as nonattain-
ment for ozone in 1977 - Cook,
Lake, Kane, DuPage, Will and
McHenry - only two (Cook and
Lake) are now in monitored
nonattainment.

It would be an understate-
ment to say that 1988 was a bad
year for ozone. Record heat and
drought regionwide brought
more ozone exceedances in
Illinois than in any of the last
10 years and the first yellow
ozone alert since 1978. It was a
particularly bad year for Lake
Michigan's western shores,
with eastern Wisconsin

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

recording 146 exceedances at
15 sites on 28 days. The
Racine-Kenosha areas were
especially hard-hit. By com-
parison Illinois experienced a
total of 88 ozone exceedances
at 23 sites on 32 days.
Wisconsin, convinced that
its neighbor to the south wasn’t
progressing far enough or fast
enough in its ozone reduction
plans, sued USEPA in federal
court. It asked U.S. District
Court Judge Terence T. Evans
to force the federal agency to
formulate its own plan for
ozone control in Chicago. The
judge agreed, and in January,
1989, USEPA found itself in
the unenviable position of
having only 14 months to

Runners near the finish of a 10k race

develop a crash ozone control
program.

Crash it did. Visions of
such draconian measures as
carless days and manufacturing
restrictions made Chicagoans
sit up and take notice. The
numbers generated by USEPA
kept changing as individual
industries challenged their
statistics. Almost everyone
agreed that Lake Michigan’s
meteorological mysteries were
contributing to the problem, but
how, where and how much?

Settling and Re-regulating
The federal agency was
unprepared, even reluctant, to
formulate a plan it believed to
be a state responsibility.

Incongruously, at the same
time the federal government
was looking at sanctions for
Illinois’ delays, a federal audit
of Illinois’ automobile inspec-
tion and maintenance program
found it to be one of the best in
the country.

In October the uncertainty
came to an end with an an-
nouncement that USEPA,
Illinois and Wisconsin had
settled the lawsuit.

According to Bernard
Killian, IEPA Director, the
agreement has four key parts.
The first is that Illinois will
improve its auto inspection and
maintenance program. This
could mean geographically
expanding the program into
western DuPage, eastern Kane
and portions of Kendall, Will
and McHenry counties, or
adding various checks on a
car’s anti-pollution equipment,
or some combination thereof.
This program, which requires
approval by the General
Assembly, must be enacted
into law by December 31,
1990 or the state faces federal
sanctions.

The second element of the
suit calls for Illinois and
USEPA to cooperate in re-
working the state’s RACT
(Reasonable Available Control
Technology) rules. Various
industry exemptions granted by
the Illinois Pollution Control
Board will probably come to an
end, bringing more and smaller
industries under the regulatory
gun for hydrocarbon emissions.
Illinois must revise its RACT
rules by December 31, 1990
USEPA will do it for the

Ozone damage to bean leaf

“The cornerstone of the
plan calls for a much more
thorough urban airshed model-
ing effort than we’ve ever tried
before,” explains Killian.
“TIlinois, Wisconsin, Indiana,
Michigan and USEPA must
work together to develop a pho-
tochemical reactive grid model
that will more correctly account
for the lake’s meteorological
effects on ozone transport in the
region. The model we use now
(EKMA) has a plus or minus 30
percent degree of accuracy. Its
chemical analysis is O.K., but
the meteorology is definitely
not.”

The four-year modeling
effort carries a price tag of $12
million, with USEPA picking
up one-third of the cost, Illinois
picking up 72 percent of the
non-federal contribution and
the other states paying the

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

remainder. The states have
three tasks: compilation of an
inventory of all sources of
ozone precursors in the region,
meteorological modeling, and
finally, more controls.

“The last part of the
settlement states that if Con-
gress changes standards and
sets new deadlines, Illinois
would proceed on that basis,
except for the modeling. We
really need that information,
and we'll go forward with that
no matter what,” Killian states.

Reauthorization of the
Clean Air Act by Congress is
the wild card in every state’s air
pollution control strategy. Both
House and Senate committees
are looking at new car stan-
dards that would apply
California’s strict auto exhaust
rules to the entire country, use
of cleaner alternative fuels, and
new deadlines. Those deadlines

don’t only affect ozone

programs, but acid rain, air
toxics and global warming
efforts as well.

“Right now Congress
doesn’t seem to be heading in
any direction clearly enough for
me to see the general shape of a
new Clean Air Act. Best case
for a full program to emerge is
in the spring,” Killian reports.

Researching

Supplementing IEPA’s ozone
efforts is an ozone research
agenda developed by the
Illinois Department of Energy
and Natural Resources
(DENR). One major study just
begun is an inventory of VOC
emitters, with data on their full
potential for VOC emissions.
The study is looking at indus-
trial, area and mobile sources of
hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides
and carbon monoxide in order
to provide a point of compari-

son for inventories already in

place. The area to be surveyed
includes the northeastern eight
counties of Illinois.

A second major study is
well underway. This tests an
innovative inventory technique
for mobile sources (motor
vehicles) based upon a new
remote sensing process.

Automobiles pass through
an infrared beam that splits,
rejoins and takes measurements
at the exhaust plume of the
vehicle. The measurements are
recorded on computers and
license plate numbers are
videotaped.

Data has already been
collected on 12,000 cars at an
entrance ramp onto Chicago's
Eisenhower Expressway last
August. A measurement of the
amount of carbon monoxide in
the exhaust coming from each
vehicle was collected. Dr.
Donald Stedman, an atmos-
pheric chemist at the University
of Denver, designed and
conducted the study.

“Preliminary results
indicate that 10 percent of the
vehicles measured were causing
50 percent of the pollution. The
data is now being subjected to a
further analysis that will reveal
what proportion of that 10
percent are older automobiles,”
according to Bill Denham of
DENR. “We're confident that
these studies will make a
positive contribution toward
Illinois* ozone control strate-
gies.”

The hazy picture on ozone

may be getting a little clearer. &

THE ART OF NATURE

KARL BODMER’S ILLINOIS

Twenty-three year old Swiss draftsman and
embryonic landscape painter Karl Bodmer
landed at Boston Harbor on July 4, 1832.
Neither he nor his fifty-one year old
German patron, Prince Alexander Philipp
Maximilian, dreamed that the pictures
Bodmer made and the words Maximilian
wrote would become the world’s most
admired and respected record of a new land
and its people. Before Bodmer the novice
began his work, several experienced
American artists had recorded their
impressions of the untamed, awesome land
west of the Appalachian Mountains, its
settlers and its native Americans. Experts
seem to agree that Bodmer’s work captures
quality and depth beyond the reach of all
others.

Awesome Landscape and
Passionate People
It was Bodmer who captured the haunting
essence of a diverse land and its contend-
ing cultures. It was Bodmer alone who
captured for history the raw magic of a
land and its people as the Maximilian
Expedition moved along the often fearful
rivers and primitive trails from the East
Coast to Fort McKenzie at the headwaters
of the Missouri in present day Montana
between 1832 and 1834.

Maximilian was a product of the
German renaissance in science. As was the
case with many educated Europeans of his
class, he was a naturalist who already had
explored parts of South America. His
Special interest was zoology. He collected
specimens (transporting a caged bear for
thousands of miles from the near west
where the creature was captured, to the far
west and then to the East Coast), and he
was an ethnologist when ethnology was
still a very young science.

Cave-in-Rock, View on the Ohio (Courtesy: Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska)

Many of Karl Bodmer’s most acclaimed
works are meticulous visual studies of
native Americans and the symbols, rituals
and tools of their cultures. That is what
Maximilian expected of the virtually
untrained young man he chose to accom-
pany him as illustrator. Art experts assume
that Maximilian was simply lucky when “a
friend of a friend” mentioned a young
aquatint engraver apprentice named
Bodmer as a possible artist and traveling
companion. Nothing achieved in his life
before the expedition foretold Bodmer’s
talent - his eerie ability to perceive and
record the nuances of the American
frontier and its inhabitants.

“From the standpoint of an
anthropologist,” said Dr. W. Raymond
Wood of the University of Missouri at
Columbia, “Bodmer’s greatest legacy is his
portraits of the Indians of the Great Plains.
His meticulous attention to detail tells us a
story that otherwise would have been lost

forever.” Wood has studied and lectured on

the Indians of the Great Plains for thirty
years.

“Bodmer’s colors are laid on with
extreme care and in such detail that certain
very small features, such as the beadwork,
can be missed in careless reproductions,”
writes William H. Goetzmann in the
Introduction to Karl Bodmer’ s America
(published by the University of Nebraska
Press in 1984). A professor of history at the
University of Texas in Austin, Goetzmann
speaks of Bodmer’s Indian portraits as an
accurate record of an “archaic language” -
each detail of dress conveying symbolic
significance. To this day, the artist’s subtle

messages are being translated by scholars.

Karl Bodmer in Illinois

The Prince planned to stop at New Har-
mony, Indiana to visit with entomologist
Thomas Say who had shared Stephen
Long’s expedition west in 1819. Maximi!
ian became ill soon after they arrived |
October of 1832. Their five-month

allowed Bodmer to explore southeastern
Illinois at his leisure and to make a two-
month trip to New Orleans alone (Max-
imilian avoided exposure to cholera by
remaining at New Harmony).

Perhaps this quiet period contrib-
uted to Bodmer’s deep realization that he
was indeed seeing a new world. Biographer
William J. Orr says it was at this point in
his long journey that Bodmer’s work
changed dramatically. The influence of
classical European style landscape paint-
ing, evident in the work he did between the
East Coast and the frontier, dropped away.
The raw energy and mystery of the land
and its primitive settlements are captured
in the pictures he began to paint at New
Harmony and continue to the end of the
expedition more than a year and a half
later.

David C. Hunt, a curator at the
Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska,
annotated many of the 359 watercolor, pen-
and-ink and pencil drawings reproduced in
the Bodmer book. Hunt says the artist’s
dramatic representations of the forested
banks of the Fox and Wabash Rivers
(White, Wayne, Clay and Richland
counties) reveal a love of nature that
increasingly characterized his later career
as a landscape painter in Europe. These
more leisurely months also gave Bodmer
time to work in the mode of European
artists of the time. Maximilian’s journals
reveal that the artist returned again and
again to the same site; working and re-
working his picture, adding depth, charac-
ter and raw passion to his vision of the
untouched terrain. Bodmer is said to have
complained to his patron that he could have
produced twice the work had he been able
to use oils rather than “too intricate”
watercolors which required that there be
“spaces left behind.”

The Prince was nearly twice
Bodmer’s age and saw the new land
differently, sometimes sadly. “By way of

THE ART OF NATURE

settlement,” his journal says, “we may
preserve here in America neither the
aborigines nor the wild beasts because the
beginning of settlement is always the
destruction of everything. The elks, bears
and beavers have already vanished and the
rest will follow soon.” His royal origins are
revealed when he speaks of his “canoe
man” explaining “Congress land” where
people can fell trees “without permission
or punishment.” As for the “aborigines,” at
this point in his adventure, Maximilian
could not know that in 1837 smallpox
would devastate western tribes of native
Americans at the height of their cultures.

If Bodmer’s principal legacy is his
visual record of native Americans, he saw
few of the many inhabiting Illinois before
it became a state in 1818. When the
expedition stopped at St. Louis in March of
1833, Bodmer was able to do a portrait of
Fox Indian Chief Keokuk and a Sauk
leader who were there to plead for the life
of their imprisoned compatriot, Black

Hawk. The Prince's journal says these
were the first “wild” North American
Indians his party had seen.

Bodmer the Man
Rejection of a proposed contract was the
way the lifelong relationship between
Bodmer and Maximilian began. To
illustrate the trip, Bodmer wanted more
money (45 instead of 33 thalers per
month), first rights to some of his art, and
permission to exhibit before Maximilian’s
“Atlas” of the trip was published. The
Prince acquiesced to the unproven artist’s
demands except in keeping first rights to
most animal and people pictures. Maximil-
ian’s growing admiration for Bodmer’s
work is certain. Journal entries indicate that
the Prince found Bodmer an interesting,
intelligent companion during the often
difficult and dangerous conditions of their
two-year journey together.

Bodmer was never able to
persuade Maximilian to publish a record of

Massika, Saki Indian: Wakusasse, Musquake Indian

(Courtesy: Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska)

their trip that was moderately priced.
Successive versions in various languages
were published between 1839 and 1843.
Retained by the Prince, Bodmer was
involved in producing and promoting each
version. None was a financial success nor
of particular interest to a European
audience. Until his death in 1867 Maximil-
ian encouraged and frequently subsidized
Bodmer, enabling him to pursue excellence
in his chosen medium - oils. For a time,
Bodmer was quite successful and finan-
cially independent.

Biographers say that Bodmer’s
overpowering need for security prevailed
in his later years, restricting him within the
conventions of the European artstyle of the
time. His talent soared only during his
youth, those two years in North America.

Various illnesses plagued Bodmer
during the last years of his life. He contin-
ued to work without acclaim. At the time
of his death in 1893, he was deaf, blind and
impoverished.

Recognition at Last

After World War II, Maximilian’s heirs
found 400 Bodmer prints stored at the
family estate on the Rhine River. In 1959
they were sold to a New York art firm. The
Northern Natural Gas Company (now
InterNorth, Inc.) purchased the collection
in 1962 and placed it on permanent loan at
the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Ne-
braska.

Karl Bodmer’ s America is the
result of intensive research and study by
scores of specialists determined to preserve
the early history of the United States. The
book can be purchased through the Joslyn
Art Museum Gift Shop, 2200 Dodge
Street, Omaha, Nebraska, 68102.

In Illinois, 40 Bodmer watercolors
and sketches can be seen at the Newberry
Library in Chicago. a

THE ART OF NATURE

The Fox River near New Harmony (Courtesy: Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska)

A Collection of Mysteries
Prince Maximilian, in the company of
fellow naturalists Thomas Say and
Charles Lesueur, made frequent speci-
men-hunting forays into the unsettled
lands around New Harmony, Indiana.
Whether any of the specimens collected
by the three early scientists during the
winter of 1833 still exist is an open
question.

Kevin Cummings, with the
Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS),
and Bill McKnight, a curator at the
Indiana State Museum who was with
INHS until 1987, intend to further
examine scores of dusty boxes long
stored on the second floor of the
Workingmen’s Institute and Library at
New Harmony. The two researchers are
convinced that these boxes contain
8,000 to 10,000 animal bones, fossils,
Indian artifacts and freshwater shells
wrapped in 1800s newspapers. They are
further convinced that the collection
belongs to Thomas Say, and they are

hopeful that thorough examination of
the boxes will yield solid proof of Say’s
association with Maximilian.

“With such a priceless collec-
tion, you can’t just plunge in. If you did,
you could destroy notations that would
prove origin, ° Cummings warns. It may
be that notes written by Lucy Say for
her husband will prove when, where and
who collected the items. “We know
these are some of the earliest collections
from what was then the western
wilderness,” McKnight states.

Efforts to link this collection to
Maximilian may prove futile, but any
record of collaboration among the three
men would be very valuable. The
ultimate resting place of Say’s collec-
tions, and of specimens collected by
Say, Lesueur and Maximilian remains a
mystery. The dusty, dirty boxes stored
at the Workingmen’s Institute may yet

yield treasures instead of mysteries.

19

HISTORY OF THE SURVEYS

THE WORKS OF THE CREATOR

AMOS WoRTHEN’S GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF ILLINOIS

Like a sailor in a Rudyard
Kipling poem, Amos Worthen -
had he been free to choose -
probably would have settled
somewhere near the sea. But
family connections led him
instead to western Illinois, where
he took up the humdrum life of a
small-town merchant. If he had
been good at it, the brilliant
history of American science
might well be dimmed by the loss
of one of its brightest stars.

Amos H. Worthen was
the second Illinois state geologist
and, later, first curator of the
State Museum of Natural History.
His work had profound impact on
nineteenth century science. Even
today, his shadow looms large
over American geology - the
image of a giant intellect whose
remarkable publications on the
geology of Illinois became an in-
dispensable source for paleon-
tologists all over the world.

Merchant to Scientist
Worthen was a Vermont native who
immigrated to Illinois after working for a
time as a teacher in Ohio. In 1836 he
settled in Warsaw, Illinois, where his
wife’s family had moved earlier. And
Warsaw was not without other
attractions. He was fascinated by the
geology of Hancock County, especially the
rich beds of geodes in the bluffs near the
Mississippi River. Such surroundings
whetted his growing fascination with
natural science.

The new IIlinoisan’s heart
apparently never was in his dry-goods

business; waiting on customers must have

by Robert G. Hays

Amos H. Worthen

been tedious and boring for a man impa-
tient to climb among the rocks and marvel
at the mysteries of geologic ages. He was
2ager to share the things he found with
others whose interests were like his own.
And he preferred trading geological speci-

mens to trading the merchandise in his

little store for customers’ hard-earned cash.

In the early 1840s, hard financial
times forced Worthen to make a business
trip back East. Before he left, he packed
several barrels with geodes. He knew they
were of value to mineralogists throughout
the world. He wanted something he

couldn't get in Hancock County, and he

found it in Boston - a fine collec-
tion of seashells. He acquired
them in trade for his geodes. But if
the business trip saved his store in
Warsaw for a few years longer,
the seashells ruined forever any
interest he might have had in
being a merchant.

The shells added greatly
to Amos Worthen’s curiosity
about the world around him. He
saw similar forms fossilized in the
limestone of Hancock County. He
was intriqued. How did they get
there, so far from the sea? He
spent every spare hour, hammer in
hand and satchel over his shoul-
der, clambering over bluffs and
ravines, exploring every rock
surface he could reach.

Through vigorous
exchange with other collectors
around the country, he accumu-
lated an extensive collection of
specimens. He also gained an
impressive library of books and
other scientific publications, using
funds that might have gone more
profitably into his sagging business. He
kept up a vigorous correspondence with a
number of persons with similar interests, in-
cluding some of the best known figures in
the academic world. When the American
Association for the Advancement of
Science held its annual meeting in Cincin-
nati in 1851, Worthen was elected to
membership. But the endless hours spent
studying his rocks and seashells had taken
their toll on his business. A few months
later, Worthen sold his declining enterprise
and gave himself over entirely to science.
His timing probably could not have been

better.

Economic Geology

Illinois’ geology had been subjected to
limited study. Dr. J. G. Norwood, whose
interests had led him to leave medicine in
favor of geology, had just been named the
first Illinois state geologist. Dr. Norwood
had worked with David Dale Owen, a
European-trained geologist whose father,
Robert Owen, was the leader of the utopian
community of New Harmony, Indiana. The
younger Owen had received a U.S.
government mandate to study the lead
region of northern Illinois, Wisconsin and
lowa in 1839. That hastily organized
survey, though somewhat meager, was the
best effort to study the geology of Illinois
until Dr. Norwood’s appointment in 1851.
Amos Worthen worked for a time as Dr.
Norwood’s assistant, then joined a team of
scientists Carrying out a similar study in
lowa.

Dr. Norwood’s performance never
fully pleased members of the Illinois
legislature, who must have agreed to fund
his work in hopes that he would discover a
wealth of valuable minerals. Dr. Norwood
vigorously pursued the collection of
specimens representative of the state’s
geological formations. The legislature
clearly wanted a more “practical” survey,
and Dr. Norwood was fired. Amos
Worthen was named to succeed him.

Worthen had no formal training in
geology, itself still a young discipline. But
through self-study, collecting and ex-
changes with other scientists, he had
gained a good understanding of the way
sedimentary rocks were formed and how
the remains of plants and animals were
fossilized in these rocks. It was this special
area of geology - paleontology - that most
intrigued him, and he was content to hire
other well-qualified specialists to round out
his geological survey staff.

Like Dr. Norwood before him,
Worthen began his survey with a study of
southern Illinois. Dr. Norwood initially had

undertaken an examination of the lime

HISTORY OF THE SURVEYS

Pine Hills limestone bluffs in Union County (Courtesy: John Taft, INHS)

stone cliffs along the Ohio River between
Shawneetown and Cairo. Worthen began
with a cross-section study near the southern
end of the state, then moved to points along

the Mississippi River for more detailed

observations. He then set a team of
geologists to work 1n the northern lead
district and the Known coal regions, and
eventually began a county-by-county

survey

.)

Worthen understood the impor-
tance of “economic geology.” In Volume I
of his published Geological Survey of
Illinois, appearing in 1866, he set forth the
objectives of his work: “First, to determine
the location and extent of whatever natural
resources the state may possess...and
second, to prevent the unnecessary
expenditure of money and labor in search-
ing after valuable minerals in those
portions of the State where such minerals
do not exist.” He was determined to do
much more. His was a gigantic undertak-
ing, one that occupied him and a group of
carefully selected assistants for more than a
decade.

The Illinois General Assembly
continued to support active geological field
work until 1872. Then regular appropria-
tions were discontinued. Four massive
volumes of the Geological Survey of
Illinois had been published by this time
and additional volumes were in prepara-
tion. Small supplemental funds were ap-
propriated until 1875, when all provision
for the geological survey of Illinois ended.

Two years later, the State Mu-
seum of Natural History was established in
Springfield with Worthen as curator. He
spent the next decade studying his fossil
collections and preparing the remaining
volumes of the geological survey reports
for publication. The eighth and final
volume, unfinished when death overtook
him in 1888 at age 74, was left to be
completed by his successor, Joshua
Lindahl. It was finally published in 1890.
There would be no state agency specifi-
cally charged with coordinating geological
research in Illinois until the modern Illinois
State Geological Survey was established in
1905.

Appreciated Elsewhere

Given the extent of Worthen’s success to
that point, why did the Illinois legislature
allow the geological survey to languish
and, finally, to die? The most obvious
reason is that, from the legislators’ point of

HISTORY OF THE SURVEYS

view, the work appeared to be finished.
Few American legislators in the nineteenth
century understood or appreciated the
concept of a state geological survey as a
continuing institution. By 1872 Worthen
had completed a geological catalog of the
state, county by county. He had found no
gold or other precious metals. Illinois was
primarily an agricultural state. Rock
formations, for the most part underground,
seemed of little importance in comparison
with the rich prairie soil. The value of coal
was not yet fully appreciated, nor had the
value of oil for fuel or stone for building
fully materialized. Further investigations of
the geology of the state probably seemed
futile to most residents. Fossils might be
interesting, but their study hardly merited
the expenditure of taxpayers’ money.

Amos Worthen, very much aware
that laymen would have difficulty compre-
hending the significance of his pioneering
work in paleontology, had made every
effort to justify its value. Imbedded organic
remains (plant and animal fossils), he
explained, provided the geologist with a
guide to the period in which a stratum of
rock was formed - a kind of roadmap to
potential mineral deposits.

Coal and other valuable minerals,
which his survey was seeking to locate,
were not just indiscriminately distributed
through the earth but were deposited
during particular geologic periods. There-
fore, a careful and thorough investigation
of the organic deposits to be found in the
state was the first step in the prosecution of
a thorough geological survey. “Indeed,”
Worthen noted in the second volume of his
reports, “without the aid of Palaeontology,
Geology would scarcely be entitled to rank
as a science at all.”

Worthen was astute enough to
recognize that scientific activities like his
geological survey could hope to succeed
only so long as they enjoyed some level of
public support. He appealed to state pride.
The rocks of Illinois, he wrote, were
unusually rich in fossils. He expressed

Crinoid fossil grouping

confidence that Illinois citizens “will feel a
commendable pride in contributing their
share to the general knowledge, in a
department of science now claiming so
much attention from enlightened minds
throughout the civilized world.” And he
stated his desire that students in Illinois
colleges and universities have ample
supplies of geological specimens - those
“wonderful works of the Creator, so
profusely scattered at our feet.”

But whatever compromises to
“practical” science he had been willing to
make in the interest of public support.
Amos Worthen was determined that his
contributions in paleontology should be
valued beyond mere utilitarian considera-
tions. It never ceased to amaze him that the
fossilized remains of fishes and seashells
were found in such numbers so far inland,
proof that in some age in the distant past
the region had been covered by water.
There was so much in the history of “these
mute relics of by-gone ages,” he insisted,
that they should be of profound interest to
all reflecting minds.

The failure of the legislature to
understand all this left Worthen somewhat
bitter. In a letter to Governor John L.
Beveridge in 1875, transmitting Volume
VI of the Geological Survey of Illinois, he
stressed once again that he had always kept
in view the dual considerations of eco-
nomic benefit to the state and the search
for scientific knowledge, in that order.

His contributions to geological
science probably never would be fully
appreciated by the people of Illinois, he
wrote, but “I have the satisfaction of
knowing that they are (appreciated)
elsewhere, and that the //linois Reports are
esteemed a desirable acquisition to all
scientific libraries.” He went on to outline
the financial limitations under which he
had been forced to conduct his survey, lest
anyone might suppose “there has been an
unnecessary expenditure of money in the
prosecution of this work.”

Indispensable

Even today, it is difficult to characterize
justly the magnitude of Amos Worthen’s
accomplishment. The eight massive
volumes of his Geological Survey of
Illinois embraced both the structural
(surface and stratigraphic) and economic
geology of the entire state - 56,000 square
miles. They included individual reports on
the geology of each of the state’s 102
counties. The productive coal field of more
than 37,000 square miles was mapped in
considerable detail, as were regions where

HISTORY OF THE SURVEYS

lead and other minerals were to be found.
General geological principles were treated
at length, along with topical subjects such
as the origin and formation of the prairies.

But the most important portion of
his monumental series was in the area of
paleontology - ironically, as Worthen
himself had noted, the part of his work least
likely to be appreciated by the people of his
own state. Charles A. White of the U.S.
Geological Survey, a contemporary of
Worthen’s, described that part of the series
as “so extensive and so elaborate that the
volumes of the Illinois survey have long
been indispensable to every palaeontologist
in every part of the world where the
Palaeozoic formations are studied.”

The sheer size of Worthen’s
achievement is indicated by the fact that his
reports described and illustrated nearly 300
species of vertebrate animals and more than
1,000 invertebrates identified among fossils
found in Illinois. There were, in addition,
256 species of ancient plants. And as White
pointed out, nearly 1,500 of these species
were first made known to the scientific
world through Worthen’s publications.

Close-up of geode interior

Worthen was never inclined to take
a narrow view of the need for state-sup-
ported scientific activity in Illinois. His
fascination with the rich variety to be found
in the natural environment simply would not
permit such a limited perspective. He
recognized that Illinois’ great north-south
length resulted in a wide range of climate.
This meant a variety of plant and animal life
ripe for exploration by botanists and
zoologists. But many plant and animal
species were becoming increasingly rare,
Worthen warned. With every passing year, it
would become more difficult to make a
complete collection of natural history
specimens native to the state. He strongly
favored state support for such work.

Whatever discouragement he may
have felt when the legislature ceased to fund
his geological survey, Worthen was confi-
dent that at some point such investigations
would go forward again. New discoveries
about the state’s enormous coal resources
were being made regularly, he advised
Governor Beveridge, through experimental
drilling. He was adamant that such informa-
tion be made available to the public.

Throughout the later years of his
life, Amos Worthen was vigorous in his
defense of state-supported science. He was
convinced from his experience with the
geological survey that government financing
of scientific activity was important not only
to the advancement of scientific knowledge,
but also to the economic development of
Illinois.

Time, of course, would prove

him right. 5

Robert G. Hays teaches communications at
the University of Illinois. His book, State
Science in Illinois (Southern Illinois
University Press, 1980), traces the history of
the Illinois State Surveys and their forerun
ners from 1850 to 1978. This is the first ina
series of articles on the history of the Ilir

Scientific Surveys

tw

Jannsonite Painter Olof Krans’ “It Will Soon Be Here”

(continued from p. 3)

Survey reports that the area was aestheti-
cally pleasing and that there was an
interspersion of prairies and forests along
the South Edwards branch of the Edwards
River. Along the creek a grove of red
oaks met the prairie. For Olaf Olsson, the
ingredients for paradise were all there: a
good water supply; tillable, fertile land; a
wood supply for building; and a stream
for turning a saw mill and a grain mill.
And the land was available for $1.25 an
acre. His reports back to Sweden encour-
aged the Jannsonites to immigrate.

Over the next three years, 1,100
disciples crossed the Atlantic, the wealth-
ier members of the sect paying the
passages of the poorer Jannsonites. This
initial pooling of community wealth
became one of the founding principles of
the Jannsonite community in Illinois.
Like the early Christian church, the
Jannsonites would be communalist, at
least during the formative years of the
colony.

The voyage from Sweden was
fraught with peril. Nearly a dozen ships
carried Jannsonites to Bishop Hill, the
trip lasting anywhere from three to six
months. One schooner, the Betty Cathar-
ina, left port on August 8, 1846, with 60
Bishop Hill passengers on board and a
cargo bay full of iron ore. It never
reached America. High winds and heavy
seas caused the cargo to shift, capsizing

he ship and sending its unfortunate

passengers to a watery grave. Another ship,

the Wilhelmina, set sail with 119 passen-
gers, many of whom were women and
children. Three children were born on the
voyage across the Atlantic, but 21 children
died before the ship reached New York.
The Swedish settlers arrived in
New York speaking no English. They
traveled by steamer to Albany, passed
through the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and by
steamer through the Great Lakes to
Chicago. From there, all but the weakest
walked the 100 miles to the banks of South
Edwards Creek on the southeast quarter of
section 14 in Weller Township. They
named the site Bishop Hill, after the
Swedish birthplace of their leader.

Prophet and Loss
That first year in Illinois the Jannsonites

endured great hardship. Arriving in the fall,

colonists had little time to prepare for

winter. Makeshift shelters were constructed

and burrows were dug into the side of a
hill. Of the original 1,100 immigrants, 350
died that first winter or deserted the sect
once their passage to freedom had been
paid. Nearly all of the colonists” funds
were consumed in the passage over, and
the Jansonnites could afford to buy only 40
acres of land.

But by 1849 the colony had
constructed a splendid church and four-
story dormitory and dining hall, all built
from brick molded and fired by colonists

on the site.

Tragedy struck the settlers again
that year. The cholera epidemic, which
would continue to ravage the Midwest
until 1854, came to Bishop Hill. Before it
left, 200 more lives were lost, including
Jannson’s wife and children. The surviv-
ing colonists numbered fewer than 400.

Things were improving by 1850
and Bishop Hill showed signs of prosper-
ity. The colonists owned 4,000 acres of
land, a steam-run flour mill and a grist
mill. The Jannsonites had also earned a
reputation for their excellent breeds of
cattle, the direct result of the colony’s
trade with the Shakers of Pleasant Hill,
Kentucky. The Shakers, another commu-
nal religious utopian sect with 19 villages
from Maine to Kentucky, also taught the
Jannsonites how to cultivate broom corn,
grow fruit trees and other useful horticul-
tural skills.

That year death again visited the
colony. Jannson, the colony's charismatic
leader, was murdered in nearby Cambr-
idge, the result of an ongoing marital
dispute between Jannson’s cousin Sophie,
and her estranged husband, a non-
believer named John Root. Despite the
loss of their spiritual leader, the
Jannsonites endured and continued to
build their utopia on the prairie.

In 1853 the colony incorporated
under the laws of Illinois and experienced
several years of growth. By 1856 Bishop
Hill could boast a $36,000 annual profit
from the sale of its broom corn alone.
There was, however, considerable debt.
Although the colonists” assets in 1859
included 10,000 fenced-in acres worth an
estimated $300,000, they owed nearly
$100,000. In 1860, the Bishop Hill
utopian experiment came to a frustrated
end. When the Civil War broke out in
1861, the colony’s able-bodied young
men Were organized into a regiment and
marched off to war, leaving the
community’s older residents behind to

watch paradise fall into decay.

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Society for the Surveys

RR. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Society for the
Surveys

Ottawa Silica Company
Foundation, Ottawa

Michael O. Gibson
Treasurer, Society for the Surveys
Marine Bank of Springfield,
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale
.

David E. Connor
David E. Connor & Associates,
Peoria

John Doxsie

A.E. Staley, Decatur

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie,

Bloomington

Janice D. Florin

Amoco Chemical Company,
‘Chicago

Clayton Gaylord

Ingersoll Milling Machine

Company, Rockford

Walter E. Hanson

Founder, Hanson Engineers, Inc.,

Springfield

Richard C. Hartnack

The First National Bank of

Chicago, Chicago

John Homeier

Bi-Petro, Springfield

Richard A. Lumpkin
Illinois Consolidated Telephone
Company, Mattoon

Charles Marshall

AT&T, Chicago

Stephen Mitchell

Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Chicago

James D. Nowlan

Knox College, Galesburg
Albert Pyott

Director, Nature Conservancy,
Winnetka

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

William L. Rutherford

Forest Park Foundation, Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
McDermott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

JR. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Joseph Spivey

Illinois Coal Association,
Springfield

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Michael Witte
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff

Jane A. Bolin
Executive Director
Estie Karpman
Assistant Director
Jane Christman
Assistant to the Director

William Rooney
Communications Consultant

Illinois Scientific Surveys
Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey
Lorin I. Nevling, Chief

Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

David Thomas, Director
Illinois Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center

Supporters*

Corporate and Foundation:
Amax Coal Foundation; Amoco
Foundation; Arthur Andersen &
Company; James and Marjorie
Anderson Foundation; Archer

Daniels Midland; Baxter Woodman,

Inc.; Bell & Howell Foundation;

Benton & Associates, Inc.; Bi-Petro;

Borg-Warner Foundation, Inc.;
Boulevard Bancorp, Inc.; Elizabeth

F. Cheney Foundation; Chicago
Community Trust; Chicago Title &
Trust; Coffield, Ungaretti, Harris &
Slavin; Commonwealth Edison;
David E. Connor & Associates;
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly; Arie &
Ida Crown Memorial; Deere &
Company; Gaylord Donnelley
Trust; Gaylord & Dorothy
Donnelley Foundation; R.R.
Donnelley & Sons; Draper &
Kramer Foundation; Du Quoin
State Bank; Farnsworth & Wylie;
Field Foundation of Illinois; Jamee
& Marshall Field Foundation; First
National Bank of Chicago; Forest
Fund; Freeman United Coal
Mining Company; William B.
Graham Foundation; Greeley and
Hansen; Hamilton Consulting
Engineers; Hanson Engineers;
Harris Foundation; Henry,
Meisenheimer & Gende; Claude H.
Hurley Company; Hurst-Rosche
Engineers; Illinois Bell; Illinois
Coal Asssociation; Illinois
Consolidated Telephone Co.;
Illinois Farm Bureau; Illinois Mine
Subsidence Insurance Fund;
Illinois Power Company;
International Minerals &
Chemicals Corp.; Joyce
Foundation; Kankakee Industrial
Disposal; Kankakee Water
Company; Klingner & Associates;
Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Inc.; Kraft, Inc.; Lakeridge
Kennels, Inc.; Marine Bank of
Springfield; Material Service
Foundation; Brooks & Hope
McCormick Foundation; Robert R.
McCormick Charitable Trust;
Patrick Engineers, Inc.; Peabody
Coal Company; Rand McNally &
Company; Randolph & Associates:
R & H Construction; Regenstein
Foundation; Rhutasel &
Associates; Sahara Coal Company:
Sargent & Lundy Engineers;
Schaumburg School District; Shell
Oil; Sheppard, Morgan &
Schwaab, Inc.; J.R. Short Milling
Company; A.E.Staley Company;
Webster, McGrath, Carlson, Ltd.:
Whistling Wings.

Individual Supporters:

James Anderson, Henry
Barkhausen, Monika Betts, Jane
Bolin, Wesley M. Dixon, Jr.,
Gaylord Donnelley, James & Nina
Donnelley, Laura Donnelley,
Strachan Donnelley, Ph.D., Mr. &
Mrs. Thomas E. Donnelley II,
Clayton Gaylord, Walter Hanson,
Ben W. Heineman, Fredrick Jaicks,
Estie Karpman, Dr. Morris
Leighton, Richard Lenon, Richard
A. Lumpkin, Middleton Miller,
Thomas R. Mulroy, Al Pyott, John
Shedd Reed, Robert P. Reuss,
William Rooney, William
Rutherford, Mrs. Len H. Small,
Harold Byron Smith, Edmund B.
Thornton, Fred L. Turner, Mrs. Leo
Whalen, William W. Wirtz, Louise
Young.

*Contributions of $200 or more

The Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys

Scale of Contributions

Personal Memberships**

Founding $1,000 per year
Contributing 100 per year
Family 50 per year
Individual 25 per year

**$6 processing fee

Corporate/Business
Memberships
Founding $10,000 per year
Benefactor 5,000 per year
Associate 1,000 per year
Sponsor 500 per year
Patron 250 per year
BUALD Mies
In cooperation with the Marketin
Bureau of the Department of C: e
and Community Affairs

a
Non-ProfitOrg, |

U.S. Postage Paid
~ Springfield, IL |

Permit No. 453

Pi plished ve

4,4

‘by the
“Ss ociety
... for the
* Illinois
Pry scientific
“Survey

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

Earth Day 1990

AG STATE
KE Os

si
%
UG Sern 18

Dear Illinois Citizens:

Welcome to this special Earth Day Illinois 1990 commemorative
issue of The Nature of Illinois, which marks the 20th anniver-
sary of the first Earth Day celebration. More importantly, it kicks
off a new decade of environmental awareness and action as we
approach the 21st century. Nearly a dozen state agencies and
numerous environmental groups are planning special events such
as exhibits, fairs, seminars and field trips to promote environ-
mental issues.

Illinois citizens are genuinely interested in the environ-
ment. One of the issues currently at the forefront and likely to be
around for a long time is solid waste management. Unlike some
environmental issues, garbage is something that we, as individu-
als, can do something about. By participating in community
recycling, yard waste composting programs and making wise
purchasing decisions, we can reduce our dependence on landfills
and incinerators. Therefore, we can reduce the amount of waste
generated in the first place.

I hope you will read and save this issue. Remove the
insert and use it as a constant reminder of what you can do
everyday to help the environment. I encourage all individuals and
groups to become involved in community Earth Day events. Each
person can make a difference. Nature is counting on you.

Sincerel

(1 Slog ~

James R. Thompson
Governor

Printed on recycled paper

Table of Contents

A Message From The Chairman 1

Taking Out The Trash 2
More than 46 million cubic yards of garbage are disposed

of in Illinois landfills each year. We are running out of places

to stash our trash.

Down To Earth In Illinois 5
A pictorial guide to some of the natural resources worth
cherishing and protecting in the Prairie State.

Special Earth Day Take-Out Guide Insert

What Have You Done for Your Planet Today? I
101 Ways You Can Improve The Environment

Earth Day Schedule and Resource Guide VI

Waste Not, Want Not 9
Nobody wants to live next to a landfill, but everyone has
garbage. The time to recycle is now.

Earth Day Every Day 13
Attorney turned environmental developer Bill Rutherford

has created the Wildlife Prairie Park, where the buffalo, deer,
bobcats, black bears, cougars, and other Illinois species

still roam.

About the Cover
Baled drink cans awaiting recycling.

Published by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys
Volume IV, Number III
Earth Day 1990

Editorial Staff
Jane A. Bolin Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation, Chicago

Stay In Touch

Name, address or delivery changes, membership or contribution inquirires,
letters to the Editor, should be addressed to The Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, 319 W. Cook St.., Springfield, IL 62704, (217) 522-2033.

If at present you are receiving more copies of the magazine than usual it is
because we are using many new mailing lists. While we are cross-checking to
eliminate duplication, please give your extra copies to friends.

Copyright 1990 by the Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys.
All rights reserved.

EARTH DAY 1990

A Message From The Chairman Of The Society

As a child living in Lake Forest, I was
brought up on the edge of a big prairie. The
public school I went to had no athletic pro-
grams, and so much of my recreational
time was spent tramping around the marsh.
One of the highlights of my childhood was
trout fishing in Wisconsin with a friend of
my father. For several summers I worked
as a ranch hand in Wyoming. My love of
the outdoors and open spaces has carried
through my whole life. As a child I took
these natural riches for granted, assumed
they would always be there.

We certainly didn’t worry about
air pollution. One of the great attractions of
my grandmother’s Chicago home was the
railroad bridge at 47th Street, where my
brother and I would hang over the side
breathing in deeply the coal-fired fumes of
the trains passing below. We thought it
great fun.

In 1932 I started working in
Chicago as a printer. It was obvious even
to my untutored lungs that the air was
better in the country. I liked the city, but I
always knew I could escape to my father’s
home in the country, the country then of
course being Lake Forest. We used to fish
off the pier there and come up with some
great perch catches. When fishing was

slow, we swam in Lake Michigan. We
assumed that the lake’s waters were clean,
never worried about it. We didn’t worry
about garbage either. Someone came along
and picked it up and that was the end of it.

I started duck hunting with my
friends in the fall of 1933 and every year
after that near Hennepin on the Illinois
River. But things were changing, and not
for the better. The fishing was off because
of the pollution from Chicago. They
cleaned that up, but sediment began to
build up in the river, the ponds and the bot-
tomlands, filling in the backwaters and
killing off vegetation and waterfowl
habitat. There was much less wildlife,
fewer open spaces around the city, and the
suburbs were spreading out.

What I had enjoyed as a child I
now saw would not last forever. I became a
Chicago sponsor for the National Recrea-
tional Association in 1935. The
Association’s mission was to promote rec-
reation - especially outdoor recreation - for
inner city residents as well as suburbanites.
After World War Two, I became chairman
of the National Recreation Association’s
Chicago Committee. I believed, and still
do, that the need for people to be connected
to the outdoors, to what we now call the
“environment”, is as fundamental as
breathing.

It was in the 1950s that I became
involved with the Illinois Natural History
Survey through Dr. Glen Sanderson’s
efforts to save the prairie chicken from
extinction. The Prairie Grouse Committee
of the Nature Conservancy raised sufficient
funds to establish official sanctuaries for
the prairie chicken in Jasper and Marion
counties.

So much of what I had taken as a
matter of course, as second nature if you

NATURAL HISTORY Suayey
AUG 1 6 1999
yee

will, was now disappearing. I expanded my
efforts on behalf of the natural riches of
Illinois. We need the work of groups like
the Natural History, Water and Geological
Surveys to research and protect our natural
resources. They are not finite. They will
not sustain themselves unless each one of
us takes a hand, whether it is recycling our
garbage or becoming a participant in

the many volunteer efforts to clean the
environment.

What is good for nature is good
for humankind. If we preserve and restore
our wetlands, for example, we can help
control flooding, reduce pollution and
provide for wildlife habitat. It’s a natural
thing to do.

This special Earth Day issue of
The Nature of Illinois, with an emphasis
on solid waste management and recycling,
is a joint effort of the Society and the
Illinois Department of Energy and Natural
Resources. We hope that it will prompt all
of us to reflect on what we have done fo -
and what we can do for - our planet.

Warmest regards,

Prod Mowe ey

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Printed on recycled p

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT

TAKING OUT THE TRASH

“Nobody wants to live next to a landfill, or
a transfer station, or an incinerator. Well,
how about if we passed a law that said,
‘O.K., folks, you don’t have to. We’ ve got it
all taken care of. From now on everybody
buries his garbage in his own backyard.’
How long would we get away with that?
But how long are we going to get away
with opening the kitchen door; putting out
the garbage; opening the kitchen door the
next morning; seeing the garbage is gone;
and saying: ‘Isn't that terrific.’ ”

Governor James R. Thompson

State of the State Address

January 10, 1990

Governor Thompson signed the Illinois
Solid Waste Management Act three-and-a-
half years ago, but that was just the first
step in an extended process to address the
multi-faceted problems of solid waste in
Illinois. In his State of the State speech this
year, the Governor said that the shrinking
availability of landfill space is one of the
state’s most pressing problems. The 1986
act and a flurry of legislative activity
during the last two sessions of the General
Assembly have made important inroads
into addressing solid waste management.

Illinoisans are now recycling
more glass, paper, metal, and even plastic
materials than ever before. County govern-
ment officials now realize that the “out of
sight, out of mind” attitude toward solid
waste is no longer viable. Illinois’ 102
counties are in the process of drafting plans
to manage solid waste more effectively.
Progress is being made, but as Thompson
said to the state on January 10, much more
needs to be done.

The Cold, Hard Facts
Each Illinoisan churns out a startling five
pounds of garbage every day, roughly

by Bill Kemp

Scrap metal shredder, Chicago

twice the amount a European or Japanese
citizen produces. Each year Americans
dispose of approximately 50 million tons
of paper, 28 million tons of yard waste, 12
million tons of glass, and 10 million tons of
plastic. Most of these discarded materials
are recyclable. The Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency (IEPA) estimates that
more than 46 million cubic yards of
garbage are disposed of in Illinois landfills
each year. The agency estimates that of the
total amount of solid waste generated in
Illinois, 92 percent is eventually sent to
landfills, two percent is incinerated, and
only six percent is recycled.

Forty percent of municipal solid
waste is residential in nature, and the
remaining 60 percent originates from
commercial and industrial sources.
Roughly 37 percent of the solid waste
stream, by weight, is paper and paper
products. Eighteen percent of the waste
comes from yard waste products like grass
clippings and leaves. Metal and glass

products make up approximately 18 .
percent, food waste and plastics another 16
percent, and wood, textiles, and rubber
products comprise the remaining 10
percent.

In the past, Americans were
content with an “out of sight, out of mind”
solid waste philosophy. But with landfill
space rapidly shrinking in Illinois and
elsewhere, people are beginning to realize
that throwing the one-liter polyethylene
terephthalate (PET) soda bottle into the
trash has local, as well as state, national,
and global implications. Like the rest of the
nation, Illinois is running out of places to
stash its trash.

The Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency estimates that, given
current disposal trends, statewide landfill
capacity could be depleted by the late
1990s. The northeast region of the state
and the Chicago metropolitan area face the
most immediate landfill shortages. In short,

Illinois has historically been over-depend-
ent upon landfills, a practice that must
change.

The Five-Point Hierarchy
The cornerstone of the state’s solid waste
program remains the Solid Waste Manage-
ment Act. Although there have been
significant pieces of legislation since, the
1986 act laid a philosophical and policy
groundwork for a battle plan to address the
state’s growing solid waste problems. The
purpose of the act was to reduce reliance
on landfills, and to encourage alternative
means of solid waste management like
recycling. The act established as state
policy a “waste management hierarchy” of
ideal steps to reduce waste. The five
approaches to handling waste, in descend-
ing order of preference, are:

* Volume reduction of waste at

the source

* Recycling and reuse

¢ Incineration with energy recovery

+ Incineration for volume reduction

* Disposal in a landfill

According to the act, hauling solid

waste to a landfill should only be consid-
ered if all other avenues have been
exhausted. Landfills should be a measure
of last resort.

The state would like to see
Illinoisans reduce their reliance upon such
items as the eight-ounce cardboard and

plastic juice packets that are popular today.

These juice containers are not easily
recyclable, so alternative products should
be bought in order to reduce the volume of

waste at the source. Fancy and unnecessary

packaging of consumer goods should be
avoided.

Second, all recyclable products
should be recycled. Nothing should be
pitched into the trash can if it can be
recycled or reused. Recycling programs
today are more than just newspapers and
aluminum cans. Many plastic products,

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT

batteries, and motor oil, among other
frequently used household goods, are
recyclable.

Third, the state would like to see
Illinoisans’ remaining trash converted into
energy at an incinerator, combusted, or
composted to reduce garbage volume.

Finally, if all else fails, the
remaining trash would be landfilled.

Source Reduction

The idealized hierarchy of the Solid Waste
Act remains largely a goal, not a reality.
Witness the fact that an estimated 92
percent of the state’s solid waste is still
placed in landfills. Overall waste reduction
has not yet occurred, although more
products than ever before are being
recycled. Simply put, Illinoisans are
generating approximately the same amount
of solid waste today that they were
generating ten years ago, if not slightly
more. If individual and business habits
cannot be modified, even great strides in

ARAN

Christmas trees waiting for processing

recycling will not be enough to reduce the
strain on the state’s landfills.

“Without a substantial reduction
in the waste stream, all our efforts at
management will fail, and facilities for
disposal will be overwhelmed,” says Tim
Warren, a solid waste expert at the Illinois
Department of Energy and Natural
Resources (ENR). A Waste Reduction
Task Force comprised of representatives
from state and local governments, waste
haulers, environmental advocacy groups,
and community recyclers is scheduled to
present its findings this spring.

One of the most innovative
programs in the state aimed at reducing
waste at the source is occurring in the
Champaign-Urbana area. Central States
Education Center has created a model
community program that includes a waste
hauler who gives discounts to households
that cut waste to one trash can a week.

“Financial incentives are a key to
reducing waste,” says John Thompson,

Executive Director of Central States.
Thompson says opening more landfills is
akin to a doctor prescribing bigger pants
for an individual with a weight problem.
“The state needs to put the patient on a
diet,” he says in calling for more state
resources aimed at waste reduction at the
source. In addition to discounts, the
Champaign-Urbana program includes an
advanced labeling initiative at two local
grocery stores. One environmentally
acceptable category is “least waste
packaging,” which allows the consumer to
choose products that will generate the
least waste.

Recycling

Most state activity has concentrated on the
recycling aspect of the solid waste manage-
ment equation (see Waste Not, Want Not,
this issue, page 9). The Department of
Energy and Natural Resources has awarded
approximately five million dollars in grants
and loans to fund community curbside
recycling programs, buy-back centers, and
most recently, municipal composting
programs. State grants are financed
through a fund created by the 1986 Solid
Waste Management Act. “Tipping” fees
are charged by landfills for disposal of
solid waste. David Buckner, ENR’s Deputy
Director, says that because of the grant
program, an estimated 400,000 Illinois
households can participate in curbside
recycling programs today. Buckner says
that in 1986, a mere 20,000 households
participated in such programs.

The department has helped
finance 70 curbside programs, 20 drop-off
facilities and 26 composting programs. XL
Disposal, based in south suburban
Crestwood, for example, received a
$500,000 loan from ENR to install state-of-
the-art automated recycling equipment.
The facility, which uses magnetic and
pneumatic separators to divide recycled
materials, processes 400 tons of solid waste

SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT

a day from five suburbs and parts of
Chicago.

Ironically, the state’s success in
opening many community recycling
programs has drawn criticism from some
who believe ENR has devoted too much
money to the collection of newsprint, glass,
and aluminum, and not enough money to
the task of creating markets and alternative
uses for recycled products. A glut of
newsprint and a lack of markets for
recycled newsprint continues to depress the
recycling industry.

Karen Witter, ENR’s Director,
says that Illinois’ industrial base has the
potential to absorb recycled materials, but
acknowledges that “much of that potential
remains untapped.” For newsprint, the
necessary ingredient currently missing in
the recycling loop is that newspapers must
use more recycled newsprint.

Nationally only 3.5 million tons
of the 13.6 million tons of newspapers
printed in 1988 were recycled. And of the
3.5 million tons recycled, less than 1.5
million tons were recycled again. Con-
necticut passed a law in 1988 mandating
that newspapers with a circulation greater

Biodegradable bags of leaves in a compost pile

than 40,000 use 40 percent recycled fiber
in at least 20 percent of the newspapers’
sheets by 1993. California imposed
legislation requiring up to 50 percent
recycled content in all of the two million
tons of newsprint consumed annually in the
state. Similar legislation appears unlikely
in Illinois. The Illinois Press Association
recently organized a Newsprint Recycling
Task Force that is expected to recommend
voluntary standards for Illinois newspa-
pers, according to Beth Philips, a lobbyist
for the association.

Incineration

The goal of incinerating more solid waste,
either for energy conversion or simply to
reduce the volume of trash heading to
landfills, has made little progress. Accord-
ing to Tim Warren, stringent state environ-
mental controls make building and
operating an incinerator a costly proposi-
tion in Illinois. In addition, because of the
availability of relatively cheap energy, a
garbage-to-energy facility is not yet
economically feasible.

Warren says if tipping fees in the
Chicago area continue to rise, incinerators
might become a popular alternative to
landfills for some communities. Already,
several economically depressed Chicago
south suburban communities are making
plans to build either privately or publicly
owned incinerators.

An Unfinished Job

The Solid Waste Management Act of 1986
laid a strong foundation for subsequent
legislation; and Illinois, most notably in the
area of recycling, has made significant
progress in four years. In 1987 two percent
of the state’s garbage was recycled. Today
that figure has increased to six percent.
Progress, yes, but much more needs to be
done. The monumental problems associ-
ated with the question of “What do we do
with our garbage?” still plague our state.

EARTH DAY 1990

Down To EARTH
IN ILLINOIS

by Susan Post and Michael Jeffords

Showy lady's slippers

A commonly held misconception about IIlinois is that

it contains corn, soybeans and Chicago, and that it is a state
traveled through to get somewhere else. Historical accounts of

Illinois speak of huge trees, vast grasslands and extensive
wetlands. Unfortunately, these impressive landscapes rapidly
became timber leases, farmsteads and urban sprawl, and the
organisms that inhabited them were left to survive in isolated
remnants. Nevertheless, woods, wetlands and prairies can still

be found, often in “miniature” and preserved by law or by

individuals who cared enough to save these fragile

habitats for future generations.

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Cardinal flow

View of Mississippi River from the Pallisades.

Illinois is a water-rich state, almost completely

surrounded by four bodies of water.

EARTH DAY 1990

Stephen Forbes, the founder and
first Chief of the Illinois Natural History
Survey, understood the importance of
enjoying the resources of the state. In 1891
he wrote, “The children must be drawn
towards and not away from the woods and
fields and waters and must be led to see
more clearly that...a man cut off from
fellowship with the creatures of the open
air is like a tree deprived of all its lateral
roots and trimmed to a single branch. He
may grow down and up, but he cannot
grow out. His resources of enjoyment are
so narrowed that he is often an object of
pity when seen away from the city street.”

Because only a few patches of
wilderness remain, they are often over-
looked. Much of the natural beauty of
Illinois escapes our notice because we have
formed the habit of looking only at broad
outlines and ignoring fine detail. To
overlook the details is to becomes Forbes’
“object of pity.” These fragments of
Illinois are part of our heritage - as

Illinois leads the nation in the value of crops exported.

~ ~ 7 fa =

The opossum, Illinois’ only marsupial, has
adapted well to living with humans. Other
species have not been so fortunate.

important as art, language and culture.
They possess a soundless explosion of life
that is ours to treasure. The Society hopes
you enjoy this pictorial guide te Illinois’
explosion of life on this Earth Day--and
beyond.

..Please Take Out and Keep This Insert...

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

AUG 1 6 1990

_UBRARY

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
FOR YOUR PLANET TODAY?

101 Ways You Can Improve the Environment

Every American, every Illinoisan, can take steps to improve the
environment. We hope you will keep this Guide in some handy
place as a reminder of how you can change the world.

IN THE HOME

The United States makes up only five percent of the world’s
population, yet we use one-third of the total amount of energy
produced in the world each year. Nearly 50 million tons of carbon
are emitted into the air each year in Illinois through the burning of
fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. Much of this energy
is used unnecessarily, and energy use within the home is one
major contributor to this waste and potential pollution.

PURCHASING TIPS
1. If you’re purchasing a home, check its energy efficiency.

Get an energy audit and examine past heating bills.

2. Buy energy-efficient appliances.

Compare Energy Guide Labels on various models.

HEATING AND COOLING TIPS

3. Ask your utility company for a home
improvement survey.

4. Obtain home energy conservation information.

Your regional Government Printing Office and local environ-
mental organizations are good sources.

5. Insulate your home.
An estimated 20 to 30 percent of the load on heating and
cooling systems can be reduced by good insulation.

6. Caulk and weatherstrip your doors and windows.
This can save the average home up to 10 percent annually on
energy costs.

7. Install storm windows and double-paned windows.

8. Close off all unused areas in your home

9. Unless you have a fire going, keep your fireplace
damper closed.
An open damper can let up to eight percent of your home’s

heat escape through the chimney.

10. Use a clock thermostat for heating and air

conditioning units.

11. Wear warmer clothing in cooler temperatures.

12. Keep the windows near the thermostat tightly closed.

13. Keep your water heater at 120 degrees.

LIGHTING

14. Substitute compact flourescent lighting for traditional
bulbs whenever possible.

This reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

15. Turn off lights in any room you aren’t using.

16. Reduce overall lighting.

Replace existing bulbs with lesser-wattage bulbs and remove
one bulb from multi-bulb fixtures. (Remember to replace bulb
with non-working bulb for safety.)

17. Clean all lamps and lighting fixtures regularly.

Dust and dirt absorb light, making fixtures less efficient.

18. Use outdoor lights only when necessary.

Printed on recycled paper I

SAVING ENERGY IN THE KITCHEN
19. Whenever possible, use cold water rather than
hot water for kitchen tasks.

This saves the energy used in heating water.
20. Use small electric pans or ovens for small meals.

21. Run your dishwasher only when it’s full.
The average dishwasher uses about 14 gallons of hot water
per load, so combine loads to avoid energy waste.

22. Avoid keeping your refrigerator or freezer too cold.

The government-recommended temperature for the fresh food
compartment of refrigerators is 38 degrees Fahrenheit. For
the freezer, it’s five degrees Fahrenheit.

SAVING ENERGY IN THE LAUNDRY
23. Fill your washer, but don’t overload.

Combining loads saves on electricity and hot water.

24. Presoak very dirty laundry.

This helps prevent having to wash things twice.

25. Don’t use excessive amounts of detergent.
Too much detergent makes your washer work harder and con-
sume more energy.

26. Runa full load in the dryer, but air-dry your laundry
when possible.

27. Keep the lint screen in your dryer free.
A clogged lint screen stops the flow of air in the dryer and
makes it consume more energy.

28. Use the automatic dry cycle of your dryer.
Use this cycle to avoid over-drying.

29. Instead of ironing, hang your clothes in the bathroom
while you’re bathing or showering.

This saves on electricity.

BATHROOM ENERGY SAVINGS
30. Instead of baths, take showers of five minutes or less.

It takes about 30 gallons of water to fill the average tub. A
five-minute shower - with a 3-gallon-a-minute flow - uses
only about 15 gallons. Over a year, this can save thousands of
gallons of hot water.

31. Install a flow control device in the showerhead.

d RECYCLING

About 14 million tons of garbage are produced in Illinois each
year. More than 90 percent of it ends up in our landfills. Ten years
ago Illinois had 600 active landfills. Today only 132 remain. The
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency estimates that, given
current disposal trends, statewide landfill capacity could be
depleted by the late 1990s, and even earlier for large metropolitan
areas. The average Illinoisan churns out an average of four to five
pounds of garbage each day. You can make a difference!

32. Contact your local community recycling center and start
separating recyclable waste into appropriate categories.

Separate waste material into five basic groups: newspaper,
other paper, glass, aluminum and organic wastes.

33. Contact local officials and urge them to begin curbside
pickup of separated recyclable waste and household toxic
materials. Participate.

The easier it is for people to recycle, the greater the participa-
tion. Hazardous products including paints and solvents,
furniture polishes, pesticides and oven cleaners must be
separated from other wastes, since they can cause serious
pollution problems.

34. Recycle all household goods, not just the obvious ones.

You can recycle and reuse many materials: from plastic _
containers to virtually all metals; from motor oil to clothing;
even appliances. Your local recycling center can provide
more information.

35. Encourage family, friends, colleagues, neighbors,
and local organizations to recycle and sponsor
recycling efforts.

36. Encourage local fast food chains to modify current
packaging procedures and instead opt for environmen-
tally sound, recyclable packaging.

Packaging accounts for 13 percent of food costs and 50
percent of waste disposal costs.

b ON THE ROAD

There are now nearly 120 million cars on the nation’s roads. Each
of these cars emits an average of five tons of carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere each year. That means we’re putting 600 million
tons of carbon dioxide into the air just by driving. Scientists
predict that over a period of time carbon build-up could cause
global temperature changes, resulting in unusual flooding in some
areas and extreme drought in others.

37. If you’re shopping for a car, buy the most fuel-efficient
one you can. Aim for 35 mpg, and don’t buy a bigger car
than you need.

38. Avoid buying optional equipment.

Convenience options may decrease fuel economy.

39. Properly maintain your vehicle; get it tuned up every five
to ten thousand miles.

The average car experiences a five to eight percent fuel
economy after a tune-up.

40. Make sure your brakes are properly adjusted.

Dragging brakes can rob a car of fuel efficiency.

41. Use unleaded gas.

Recent surveys show that about 14 percent of this country’s
drivers use leaded gas in vehicles requiring unleaded gas.
Fuel switching adds significantly to harmful! auto emissions.
Don’t fuel switch. Use unleaded gas.

42. Use a high quality multi-grade oil, and change oil
according to the manufacturer’s recommendations.

This helps reduce engine friction and increase fuel efficiency.

43. Use radial tires.

Radial tires generally improve fuel economy.

44. Check tire pressure at least once a week.
When properly inflated, tires can save up to 10 percent on
gas.

45. Greatly reduce or eliminate the use of your
air conditioner.

A major source of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC’s) emissions in
America is car air conditioners.

46. Encourage your local auto service to install
and use CFC’s recycling equipment for auto air
conditioner repair.

47. Buy a light-colored car with tinted glass if legal or use
sunshades for front and back windows.
48. Remove unnecessary items from your car.

The lighter the car, the less fuel it burns.

49. Don’t speed. Drive at a moderate pace.
As car speed increases, so does wind resistance - a big factor
in gas mileage.

50. Drive smoothly; accelerate and slow down gradually.

51. Plan your trips carefully. Choosing the shortest, least-
congested route will save fuel.

52. Avoid short trips whenever possible. Walk or
use a bicycle.

53. Avoid city driving
City driving consumes twice as much fuel as highway
driving.

54. Arrange or join a car pool for commuting.

55. Use public transportation whenever possible.

Om AT THE MARKET

What and how we buy can have a major impact on the environ-
ment. Many products are made with unnecessary energy con-
sumption or are excessively or non-recyclably packaged.

56. Buy recyled - or recyclable - products that are
sensibly packaged.

57. Buy products that will last.
Cloth diapers, razors with replaceable blades, and glass mugs
are examples of durable products.

58. Avoid products containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s).

Some CFC products are still on the market, including aerosol
dust removers and various cleaning sprays for electronic
equipment.

59. Don’t buy Halon fire extinguishers.

They contain ozone-depleting Halon gases. Purchase tradi-
tional types of fire extinguishers instead.

60. Avoid impulse buying. Read labels and research the
products you plan to buy.

61. Rent or borrow items you don’t use often. Maintain and
repair the items you own to insure longer product life.

62. Reuse paper bags or bring your own tote bag
when shopping.

63. When possible, use hand-operated equipment instead of
motorized or electric tools to do the job.

64. Avoid foods treated with preservatives, pesticides
or herbicides.

65. Shop at farmers’ markets or cooperatives.
66. Encourage your market to stock locally-grown produce.

67. Combine shopping trips. Keep a list of what needs to be
purchased. Buy in bulk.
68. Eat low on the food chain.

The higher on the food chain we eat, the more natural
resources are used for food production.

69. Discourage your family from eating fatty or “junk” foods.

Besides a healthier diet, this will cut down on meat consump-
tion and the use of CFC packaging.

70. Buy substitutes for household items that generate
hazardous wastes - for example, use a mousetrap instead
of a rodenticide.

. TREE PLANTING

Trees are the primary absorbers of carbon dioxide. In fact they are
10 to 20 percent more effective in absorbing carbon dioxide than
crop or pasture land. Long revered as a symbol of life, the tree is
now emerging as key to environmental improvement.

71. Plant shade trees next to your home.

They help cut down on air conditioning and provide wind-
breaks, enabling savings on heating energy consumption.

72. Landscape your lawn with trees and shrubbery.

73. Call your local environmental organization and get
involved in tree-planting activities.

74. Improve schools, churches and other public areas by
planting trees.

‘ '
of PLANTS AND ANIMALS

There are 500 plants and animals on the threatened and endan-
gered species lists in Illinois. Destruction of habitat - loss of
forests, wetlands and prairies - is the major cause of animal and

plant extinction. Only seven-hundreths of one percent of Illinois’
original habitat remains today.

75. Join environmental groups working to preserve
native habitat.

76. “Design” a natural habitat in your own yard with native
fruit and nut species and vegetative cover.

77. Buy a “living’’ Christmas tree.

78. Encourage major landowners to set aside “‘acres for
wildlife.”

79. Use the non-game checkoff on your state income
tax return.

80. Support wetland and prairie restoration projects and
reforestation. :

81. Retain and restore windbreaks and stream buffers on
your own property.

82. Leave water out for birds and wildlife. Use a heating
device or brick in winter to keep water usable.

Make sure to change the water often to avoid mosquito
infestations.

IN THE GARDEN

Planting a garden benefits both you and the environment. Vegeta-
tion of all sorts absorbs carbon dioxide, and the more home-grown
vegetables you plant, the less you'll have to purchase.

83. Start a garden/try intensive gardening.

84. Grow items you’d normally buy at the store.

85. Buy plants with vigorous leafing patterns.

86. Actively support organic gardening and sustainable
agriculture.

oo
—

Consult your garden nursery on the best native plants and
on plants that require little or no watering.

88. Minimize use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and
herbicides.

89. Plant a garden instead of grass.

90. Start your own compost pile/mulch grass clippings into
your lawn.

Yard waste accounts for 18 percent of all materials put into
landfills. As of July 1, 1990, Illinois landfills cannot accept
yard waste.

WATER

Half of Illinois’ 11 million citizens use surface water - lakes,
streams, and rivers - and half depend on ground/well water. These
vital water sources are vulnerable to many potential pollutants,
including: leaking underground storage tanks, pesticides, aban-
doned wells, industrial wastes, leaching landfills, improperly
placed septics and privies, discarded paints, solvents and other
household hazardous wastes. Alongside the issue of water quality
is water quantity. The average American uses 160 gallons of water
each day. Help conserve and protect precious water resources.

91. Use as little water as possible when washing your car.

92. Turn off water in your sinks, baths and showers when
you’re not using them. Repair all leaks.

93. Report accidental spills or illegally dumped waste
to 1-800-782-7860.

94. If you live in an area without certified well or spring
water, drink distilled or filtered water, or install faucet
filters in your home.

95. Have a low-flush or air-assisted toilet installed.
96. Buy water-efficient appliances.

97. Reuse water from washing and other household tasks.

98. Collect rainwater and set houseplants outside
during rainstorms.

99. Water lawns and gardens very early in the morning.

100.Use a broom rather than a hose to sweep instead of
wash sidewalks.

A.
wi AT THE WORKPLACE

All of us can find ways to reduce the waste that is generated at our
business or place of work.

101.For information on how industry can economically
practice waste reduction and recycling, contact the Haz-
ardous Waste Research and Information Center, Depart-
ment of Energy and Natural Resources, 1 East Hazelwood
Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61821, 217/333-8940.

Two publications of interest that can be ordered from the
Center are Waste Reduction for Illinois: Information and
Services and The EPA Manual for Waste Minimization
Opportunity Assessments.

This article excerpted from “A Citizen's Guide: The Greenhouse
Crisis, 10] Ways to Save the Earth” published by the Greenhouse
Crisis Foundation, 1130 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Suite 630,
Washington, D.C. 20036, and from information supplied by the
Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources. Copies of
"A Citizen's Guide" can be purchased for $5 from the Greenhouse
Crisis Foundation.

EARTH Day SCHEDULE AND RESOURCES

NORTH

VI

Chicago Earth Day ’90 Project
Festival - Lincoln Park (4/22)

Chicago Illinois Department of Energy &
Natural Resources (ENR)
Display on Household Hazardous Waste and
Solid Waste Reduction - State of Illinois
Center (4/16 -4/20)

Chicago Open Lands Project
Tree planting and “Urban Greening”
(4/16-4/22)

DeKalb County Student Environmental Action
Coalition
Five-day program - Speakers, discussions,
letter writing, films, art, festivals, concerts
(4/16-4/20)

DuPage County DuPage County Earth Day
Committee
Eco-Fair, parade and nature walks - County
Fairgrounds (4/22)

Elgin Elgin Earth Day Committee
Festival celebration. Displays, vendors,
speakers and workshops - Trout Park (4/22)

Elmhurst Elmhurst Park District and City of
Elmhurst
Tree plantings along Salt Creek
(April-October)

Fox River Valley Fox Valley Earth Day 1990
“March for the Environment’’(4/21)
Environmental Festival - Geneva (4/22)

Freeport Northwest Aububon Society
“Benefit for the Rain Forest” - Highland
College(4/22)

Hoffman Estates/Palatine/Barrington
Community clean-ups (4/22)

Itasca Spring Brook Nature Center
Earth Day Festival (4/22)

Kishwaukee Kishwaukee College
Tree plantings, educational programs (4/18)
Field trips (4/21)

McHenry County McHenry County Earth Day
Committee
“Forum on the Environment” - McHenry
College (4/20)
“Education Fest” (4/21)
Major Earth Day Celebration - Pleasant
Valley Outdoor Center (4/22)

Middle Fork
Middle Fork canoe trip (4/21)

Palatine Prairie Woods Audubon
Displays, seminars - Rolling Meadows
Library and local mall
Tree seeding give-aways (April)
Field trips - Twin Lakes Reservoir, Spring
Valley Nature Center, and Crabtree Nature
Center (4/22)

Rockford Rock River Earth Day
Nature bus tour - Winebago County (4/29)
Rock River Family Celebration (4/21)
Tree planting along Mississippi, recycling
event - Rockford Discovery Center (4/22)
Environmental Rally - Rock Valley College
(4/22)

Rock Island Quad City Audubon Society ~
Clean-up - Princeton Marsh (4/22)
“Walk through Springtime” - Rock Island to
Blackhawk State Park (4/22)

Rock Island Trail Friends of Rock Island Trail
hike and bike ride (4/22)

Sunday, April 22

illin@is
earth day 1990

‘our commitment to the future’

CENTRAL

Bloomington Miller Park Zoo
Earth Day Festival - Zoo (4/22 1-4p.m.)

Bourbonnais Bourbonnais Township Park
District Festival - Groselin Park (4/22)

Champaign Illinois Scientific Surveys (ENR)
Eco-Fair - Champaign Mall (4/20-4/22)
Field trips (Earth Week)

Champaign University of Illinois
Seminars on biodiversity/sustainable
agriculture and other topics - Spring
semester

Jacksonville Turner Jr. High School
Solid waste/composting demos (4/15-4/22)
Community celebration - Nichols Park
(4/22)

Macomb Audubon/Western Illinois University
Environmental seminars (4/19 and 4/20)

Normal Illinois State University Earth Day
Committee
Teach-ins, campus rallies, tree plantings,
entertainment, speakers (4/16-4/23)

Peoria Wildlife Prairie Park
Natural Resource Celebration (4/22)

Quincy Earth Day 1990 & Beyond
Environmental Fair - Mormon Park (4/22)

Springfield 12 State Agencies, Central Illinois
Earth Week Committee, Illinois Environ-
mental Council, Midwest Universities for
Earth Day

Natural Resource Celebration - State Capitol
Complex (4/22 10:30a.m.-7p.m.)

5K Run - State Journal Register Newspaper
(4/22)

Springfield Illinois State Museum (ENR)
“Ethics of the Land Exhibit” (thru 4/15)
Family Camp-in (4/21)

Educational activities (4/22)

Wapella 4H Clubs
Recycling - Wapella High School
(4/21-a.m.)

SOUTH

Belleville Belleville Earth Day Committee
Recycling project - Belleville College
(4/15-4/22)

Tree planting (March-April)
Community clean-up (4/21)

Carbondale Clean and Green
Community clean-up (4/21)

Carbondale League of Women Voters/Jackson
County
Energy-efficient Home Tours, recycling and
composting demos. (4/22)

Carbondale Southern Illinois/Shawnee Earth
Day Committee.
Eco-Fair - Turley Park (4/22)
Bike-a-thon - Southern Illinois University
Tree distribution (4/22)

Centralia Centralia Clean & Green
Tree planting (4/15 and beyond)
Recycling and “Adopt-A-Spot” (4/22-4/27)

Dixon Springs University of Illinois Forest
Resource Center
Field trips, tree planting (4/22 and 4/27)
Workshops for school groups (4/23-4/26)

Granite City Tri-City Chamber of Commerce
Poster contest/community clean-up (4/21)

Madison County Southwestern Illinois Earth
Day
Tree plantings, speakers and films -
Southern Illinois University (4/15-4/22)
“Fellowship Meal” (4/18)
“CROP Hunger Walk” (4/22)
Environmental Fair (4/23)

Newton
Tree planting - Fairgrounds (4/15-4/22)

Staunton
Environmental Logo Contest for Schools
Sunrise service/nature walk (4/22)

Vil

STATEWIDE

CONTACTS

Illinois Department of Conservation

Massive tree planting - 11.5 million by end
of decade.
Distribution of 164,000 tree seedlings to all
3rd graders.
“Kids for Conservation” (KFC) will

’ distribute 80-100,000 tree seedlings.
KFC will sponsor 50 membership events
around state (4/15-4/22)

Illinois Environmental Protection Agency

Will pass out Redbud tree seedlings at
vehicle emissions testing sites (March-
April).

Will sponsor Household Hazardous Waste
pickups at selected sites. (Spring 90)

Illinois Department of Mines & Minerals

Video on Mine Reclamation Techniques for
school children in southern Illinois. (Spring/

Illinois Department of Energy & Natural

Resources

Programs and promotion of recycling
and waste reduction. School programs
through ILEED (Illinois Energy Education

Day Project).

Field trips, displays and seminars on
geology, plants and animals, and water

quality and quantity. (April)

EARTH DAY 1990 AND BEYOND

STATEWIDE:

State Agencies
Agriculture:
217/782-4884

Commerce & Community
Affairs:

217/785-6079
Conservation:
217/782-7454

Energy & Natural Resources:
1-800-252-8955
Environmental Protection:
217/782-3397

Mines & Minerals:
217/782-6791

Nature Preserves Commission:
217/785-8686

Vill Printed on recycled paper

Other Organizations
Sangamon State University
Environmental Studies
217/786-6720

Illinois Environmental Council
Virginia Scott
217/544-5954

REGIONAL:

Northern Illinois
Earth Day ’90 Project
North Pier Terminal
Paul Miller
312/321-8088

Illinois Audubon Society
Mary Blackmore
815/235-8274

Earth Day Coordinating
Committee

Severson Dells Nature Center
Don Miller

815/335-2915

Natural Land Institute
Karen Johnson
815/732-2111

Armchair Activists
Sinnissippi Audubon Society
Lynda Cornwell

Quad Cities Audubon Society
Tom Rockwell
309/799-5812

DuPage County

Department of Environmental
Concerns

708/682-7373

McHenry County Defenders
815/338-0393

Central Illinois

Channel 12 - WILL/TV
Leslie Epperson
217/333-1070

Earth Day °90 Coalition
Kim Majerus

217/351-4016

Summer *90)

Illinois Department of Transportation
Will display environmental/educational in-
formation at Illinois rest stops (April)

McLean County

Soil & Water Conservation
District

Jane Brown

309/662-1014

Sangamon Valley Sierra Club
Tom Smith
217/522-1011

Southern Illinois

Proud Partners

Louie Tiemann
618/233-1000

Carbondale Clean and Green
Jean Foster

618/529-4148

Shawnee Sierra Club

John Kirkpatrick, Chair.
618/893-4663

RECYCLING

WASTE Not, WANT NOT

Every year Americans bury
250 million tons of trash in
landfills - everything from
dirty diapers to refrigerators,
aluminum soda cans to empty
jars of peanut butter, chicken
bones to newspapers. In
Illinois we bag up 14.2 million
tons of garbage every year, and
like some unconscionable
hound with a soup bone, we
dash outside and bury our
treasure in the ground. But
Illinoisans don’t unearth their
treasure at some later date and
make good use of it. We bury
it and try to forget it.

A New Plan of Attack

Illinois is running out of time for finding a
solution to its solid waste problems. “All
things remaining constant,” says Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA)
spokesperson Will Flower, “that is with no
new landfills and waste disposal continuing
at the present rate, Illinois landfills will be
filled to capacity by the late 1990s.” For
some regions of the state, especially
metropolitan areas, a five-year timetable is
more realistic.

In 1986 Governor James
Thompson signed into law the Solid Waste
Management Act (SWMA), with specific
mandates to reduce solid waste production
throughout the state, reduce Illinois’
reliance on landfills, and encourage
alternative means of solid waste manage-
ment like recycling. The act set out a five-
point waste management hierarchy of ideal
steps to reduce waste. In descending order
of preference, these steps are:

* Reduce the volume of waste at
its source
* Recycle and reuse

by William Furry

Sorted glassware

* Incinerate solid wastes to recover
energy
+ Incinerate solid wastes to reduce
volume
* Dispose of solid wastes in landfills
The Illinois Department of Energy
and Natural Resources (ENR) is the lead
agency in adminstering the act. “It’s an
umbrella policy,” according to Tim Warren
of ENR’s solid waste office, “defining
what the state’s programs and roles should
be in assisting local governments in
dealing with their solid waste problems.”

Funding Alternatives to Landfills
The recently enacted Solid Waste Planning
and Recycling Act provides financial
incentives for counties to emphasize
alternatives to landfills. That act and
subsequent legislation require all of
Illinois’ 102 counties to submit plans to the
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
detailing how they will conform to the
five-point waste reduction hierarchy in the
Solid Waste Management Act.

Counties with populations of
100,000 or more have until 1991 to submit
their plans to IEPA. At the end of the third
and fifth years of each plan, 15 percent and

25 percent respectively of all
municipal wastes generated
in each county are to be re-
cycled. Counties with less
than 100,000 population have
until 1995 to submit their
plans and until the year 2000
to achieve the 25 percent rate
of recycling.

The Solid Waste
Management Fund was
established under the 1986
legislation to finance IEPA
and ENR assistance pro-
grams. The fund, derived
from a surcharge on tipping
fees imposed on waste
haulers, allows ENR to offer grants and
loans for solid waste recycling, market
development, composting, education,
technical assistance, and research and
demonstration projects. Recently $18.3
million was released from the fund to ENR
and IEPA.

According to Warren, “Our
recycling grants program initially assisted
communities with recycling activities, such
as drop-off/buy-back centers and curbside
collection programs. We have provided
matching funds to 126 communities.
Curbside service didn’t exist anywhere in
Illinois just four years ago. Now we have
curbside service in 46 communities serving
close to 450,000 households, or about one
million people statewide.”

The department’s Market Devel-
opment Program provides low interest
loans and grants to private industry,
government agencies and not-for-profits
for manufacturing operations that use
recycled material feedstock, promotional
and marketing expenses for recycled-
content products, and procurement and

testing of recycled-content products. The

Market Development Program works to
stimulate demand for recycled materials in
Illinois, with an overall goal of sending
less waste to Illinois landfills.

Should We Legislate Recycling?

The solid waste problem is not unique to
Illinois. Several states have passed manda-
tory recycling laws which prohibit the
landfilling of newspaper, magazines,
corrugated boxes, glass, aluminum cans,
plastic packaging, tires, and other recy-
clable items. New Jersey, Oregon, Michi-
gan, Connecticut, Florida, New York,
Massachusetts, and Wisconsin all have
legislated or are preparing to legislate
recycling. Is Illinois lagging behind? Tim
Warren doesn’t think so.

“We have not embraced the
concept of mandatory recycling in Illinois
because we feel that we are doing an
extremely good job of making voluntary
recycling work,” he says. “Markets are
having enough problems keeping up with
the supply of materials generated on a
voluntary basis. Just look at the gluts on
the East Coast that followed mandatory
recycling. Aggressive market development
is a must.”

Warren reports that, on the
average, 62 percent of the households
participating in the 46 curbside recycling
programs statewide take advantage of the
service. Sixty-two percent participation in
just three years is commendable. But 62
percent of 450,000 households is a far cry
from full participation by the state’s 12
million waste producers. And, says
Warren, the majority of ENR’s attention
and budget has been focused on solid waste
management in the residential sector.

Getting industry involved in
recycling sometimes takes a group lobby-
ing effort. Warren tells the story of how the
Great Lakes Recycling Officials, an ad-hoc
group of midwestern state recycling
officials, sought a coding system to help

10

$y
‘ Cutt es
. Bat oaitege: Rigi Chath:

Heading to the factory

identify the various plastics used in
consumer packaging, a first step in
improving the recyclability of plastic
containers. The group invited officials
from the Society for the Plastics Industry (a
trade association for all plastic companies
in the U.S.) to help them solve the prob-
lem. The plastics industry obliged with a
voluntary plastics coding system which
places different types of plastics into seven
categories. That system will help consum-
ers in identifying plastic household items
that are potentially recyclable, and assist
processors in sorting plastic containers to
improve their marketability.

Plastics are a major headache for
recyclers. In Illinois only 11 of the state’s
curbside recycling programs are currently

JOMINGTOK
IRUCK PARTS

3LOOMINGToN IL

accepting plastic containers. Worse is that

only a few of the seven categories of
plastic packaging now on the market are
really recyclable. Multi-laminate contain-
ers like plastic juice containers, squeezable
ketchup bottles, microwave food packages,
and dozens of other packages cannot be
recycled.

But recycling plastics can make a
difference. Recycled plastic generally costs
manufacturers less to use than virgin
plastic, and it saves energy.

The Paper Chase

Old newspapers, which make up about six
percent of what goes into landfills nation-
wide, are another area of concern. Nation-
ally, paper products average 38 percent of

all landfill waste, including corrugated
cardboard (10 percent); diapers (one to two
percent); magazines (three percent);
newspapers (six percent); and miscellane-
ous paper products (18 percent). Currently
Illinois has only one mill making newsprint
from recycled papers - the FSC Paper Mill
in Alsip, Illinois. FSC is one of seven
paper mills in the country manufacturing
newsprint from old newspapers; the rest
use virgin fiber in their product. While
some Illinois newspapers use FSC sheet,
many have yet to jump on the bandwagon.
According to Warren, ENR has
been working with FSC to get more
newspapers to voluntarily use the recycled
newsprint, but “like any sort of recycled
product, there are always concerns over
quality, availability and price. The biggest
institutional barrier to a recyled product is
that people say ‘it’s inferior’, or ‘it’s not
going to work as well.’ ” The FSC mill was
built in the sixties, and the owners have
recently spent millions of dollars to
improve their technology. And in January,
FSC began marketing tissue and towel

Bale of milk jugs

RECYCLING

paper made from scrap paper recycled
in I]linois.

Getting newspaper companies to
print on recycled paper is a struggle.
According to an October 1989 article on
paper recycling in The New York Times,
approximately 60 percent of all newsprint
consumed in the United States comes from
Canada, where most of the trees and mills
are located. To be most efficient, recycling
paper mills need to be located close to
where the raw material is. The department
is trying to get a major recycling paper mill
to locate a plant in the midwest. That
facility would serve as an additional
market for midwest-generated newspaper
from Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.
It is an expensive proposition. “To bring a
recycled newsprint mill on line,” says
Warten, “costs about $100 million. It is not
a small capital investment.”

Think Globally, Act Locally

The state has done a remarkable job in a
very short time in bringing the solid waste
problem to the attention of the general

Neighborhood recycling, Champaign

public, but the bottom line is that there is
still a long way to go before Illinois
substantially reduces its reliance on the
landfill. The best way for the average
citizen to help is to “think globally and
act locally.”

Here are some guidelines
to follow:

Reduce the amount of waste gen-
erated in the home. Buy food items in bulk,
which usually come with less packaging,
(i.e. less waste). If you must buy individual
food items, look for products in recyclable
packaging.

Stop throwing away recyclable or
reusable goods. Find out where you can
take recyclable goods in your neighbor-
hood. In Illinois, call the ENR Information
Clearinghouse at (800)252-8955 for more
information.

There are three types of recycling:
reuse, reversion and transformation.
Recycling works best when you reuse the
original product over and over again (like
cloth diapers). The second best recycling

method is when you revert a product into

its original form (old newspapers into
recycled newsprint). The least efficient
recycling method is when you transform
a material into a secondary form (plastic
milk jugs into plastic lumber or

flower pots).

Material preparation is important.
At home, you should bundle up your
newspapers, wash and rinse glass contain-
ers, and bag aluminum cans. Send yard
waste to a composting site, start your own
backyard compost pile, or better yet, leave
grass clippings on the lawn. Use cloth
napkins and towels whenever possible.
Take your own grocery bags to the store, or
take reusable tote bags. If you change your
own oil, take the old oil to a service station
that recycles oil.

Start paying attention to how
your community is taking care of its solid
waste problems. Don’t assume you are not
part of the problem.

Recycling facility

12

RECYCLING

Buy recycled products. It takes
about 95 percent less energy to make an
aluminum soda can from recycled cans.

Find out if your local newspaper
is printed on recycled paper. If it is not,
find out why and see what you can do to
change the policy. A ton of recycled
newsprint can save as many as 17 trees,
and newsprint can be recycled as many as
five times.

Be an aggressive recycler. Don’t
be satisfied with the state’s minimum
recycling goal of 25 percent by the year
2000. Governor Jim Thompson challenged
all Illinoisans in his January State of the
State speech to recycle half of the state’s
waste by the end of the century. According
to IEPA, six percent of municipal waste
statewide is already being recycled. If all
landscape wastes are diverted from state
landfills by July 1, 1990 as mandated by
current law, another 15 to 20 percent of our

waste problem will be solved. With an
aggressive recycling push and waste
reduction effort, we'll see less and less
reliance on landfills.

Start a recycling program in your
office to cut down on waste. IEPA and
ENR both have information on starting an
office recycling program. Contact IEPA’s
Office of Public Information, 2200
Churchill Road, P.O. Box 19276, Spring-
field, Illinois 62794-9276. Or write to
ENR’s Information Clearinghouse, 325 W.
Adams, Springfield, Illinois 62704.

And remember, what goes
around, comes around, especially garbage. =

EARTH DAY 1990

EARTH Day EVERY DAY

“As the human impact upon our
land increases, evidence is
mounting that we have not lived as
wisely as we should. This, then, is
what Wildlife Prairie Park is all
about. We believe that it is not too
late to change our ways.”

This quote, taken from the Park’s
informational materials, sums it
up: It’s not too late. Let’s change.
But instead of verbally ramming
those beliefs down the public’s
throat, Park developer William
Rutherford personifies them. He
has energetically constructed a
living museum to teach his ideals.

A Pioneer Project

Wildlife Prairie Park...a home
where the buffalo really do roam,
not to mention the bobcat, black
bear, cougar, raccoon, elk, fox,
wolf, deer, coyote, opossum, quail,
geese, and others. The Park is
1,860 acres of natural habitats and
“buffer zones” for about 35

species of animals and numerous
plants indigenous to Illinois. Many
of the species are endangered in the
country or the state, and some are extinct in
Illinois. The Park also includes walking
trails, a visitor center, restaurant, meeting
rooms, some lodging, a museum, play-
grounds, and other facilities.

Rutherford, an attorney by
profession, never expected to develop a
nationally recognized park at the age of 60
(he’s now 75), it just evolved. In the 1960s
Rutherford heard that the Brookfield Zoo
was looking for space to raise exotic
endangered animals. Coincidentally, the

by Tara McClellan

American elk

Forest Park Foundation, a “small founda-
tion” that Rutherford’s family has run since
1939, had acquired 480 acres of land
(including abandoned strip mined land)
near Peoria with the intention of using it
for conservation and environmental
purposes. The Foundation, whose original
efforts centered around geriatrics and
handicapped rehabilitation, thought its land
was the answer. It was a good location for
the zoo’s project and would be a boost
for Peoria.

Brookfield agreed. But later their
management changed, and their plans did,
too. Since the Foundation had already

started planning for the zoo’s
project, it decided to develop its
own project.

“Instead of being a poor
cousin to Brookfield or Lincoln
Park, we thought ‘Let’s do
something they can’t do. We have
more space. Let’s show Illinois as
it was,’” Rutherford explains. “So
we tried to emphasize this part of
America at the time the pioneers
came.”

Over the next three to
four years native Illinois animals
(and those brought by the pio-
neers) and plants were acquired,
construction materials were
secured (many were “used” and
were recycled by the Park),
buildings were designed by
Rutherford’s wife, Hazel, and
were finally erected, and, of
course, money was raised.

“The head of the Peoria
park system said to me, ‘Bill, if
you do the things you're talking
about, it'll cost you a million
dollars.” And I said ‘It can’t. I’ve
got the land. I’ve got most of the
fences in. I’ve got the entrance road in.”
Well, it cost me $11 million,” Rutherford
chuckles.

Rutherford, a former Director of
the Illinois Department of Conservation,
used some seed money from his family’s
foundation and raised the rest. The sources
for nearly all of the material, land and
financial donations weren't big corporate
sponsors or other deep pockets, he says,
but “very modest people that believed so
much in and trusted us.” He gives two
examples of a lonely farmer and a former

schoolteacher, for whom he did some legal

American bison

work. They ended up leaving nearly
everything they had to the Park because
they believed in it.

A Stack of Pancakes

Rutherford’s philosophies molded the
Park’s purposes: to conserve, to educate
about wildlife and the environment, and
to be fun. The Park is a Disneyland of
conservation. But Rutherford’s message
is very different.

“T didn’t want rubber monkeys,”
he says of the Disney comparison,
though he’s flattered. “I’m not trying to
keep the animals animated, I want to
keep the real world. There’s enough
magic and marvel in our plants and
insects and birds...that all we’ve got to do
is let people learn how to see them.”

The Foundation’s main idea for
the Park was to provide an example to

EARTH DAY 1990

teach others. “We felt that somewhere,
somehow we could...innovate and find
answers to these problems of awakening
the public on a local basis. And hopefully
if that could be multiplied and magnified
by other people seeing that you can do it,
without government bureaucracy and waste
and interference, then maybe other folks
could do it. And like a jigsaw puzzle,
enough pieces will come together to do that
which is not being done.”

Rutherford’s philosophies and
hopes for the Park are manifold. He
believes in what he calls the “stack of
pancakes” theory, where each pancake
represents a different benefit that can be
derived from a single act or expenditure.
“The fun is to get as many times the value
for each hour you work and each dollar
you spend as possible,” he says. “It’s a way
of multiplying your effectiveness.”

Rutherford believes some of the
Park’s benefits include teaching conserva-

tion, decreasing waste, helping the handi-
capped, promoting the family, and helping
Peoria’s economic development. Ruther-
ford says since visitors no longer have to
travel to distant places to see a clean,
enjoyable park, gas will be saved. In turn,
fewer cars on the road mean fewer acci-
dents and fewer injured people. Family
togetherness is promoted because the Park
is a place where “three generations” can
find similar interests. Cleanliness is
promoted because children, the next
generation, will learn from the Park’s
immaculate operations (not a scrap on the
trails). Rutherford also believes the Park
will increase the area’s recreational value,
which will in turn help attract prospective
industry and keep more industrious
Illinoisans at home instead of being lured
to other states.

A World Regained
These philosophies are like gentle subplots
weaved through the Park’s design. An
example is the Clivus Multrums waterless,
flushless toilets that save a million gallons
of water annually and eventually produce a
compost that is used to create the Park’s
fertilizer supply. (Nothing is wasted here.)
And as you stroll down the pleasant trails
viewing rare Illinois animals in their
natural habitats, the importance of conser-
vation and saving the environment hits
home. It’s hard to realize that the sleepy
bobcat kits lounging in a treetop, or the
black bear napping in the sun, once
populated the length and breadth of
this state.

There are about 10 miles of
walking trails at the Park, many featuring a
particular animal or kind of animal. After
trailwalking you can picnic at a number of
tables or shelters throughout the Park or eat
at the indoor restaurant. Visit the museum,
gift shop, or country store during the
summer, or take a ride on the “Prairie
Railroad.” The Pioneer Area features
domestic prairie farm animals, a log cabin
and an 1800s schoolhouse. If you’d like to
spend the night, you can stay in a real

Visitor’ s center

EARTH DAY 1990

caboose (with “jiggler” mechanisms to
simulate train travel), in tepees, or in a log
cabin that overlooks the Park. The Park has
numerous special events and naturalist
programs throughout the year.

And Rutherford plans more. He
hopes to have a 100 to 120-room lodge
built “as soon as possible.” A new deer
park (across the street from Prairie Park)
may be completed this summer. New trails
in both parks are also on his wish list, as
well as airmail from the Park via racing
pigeons.

In terms of long-range goals,
Rutherford wants to increase the Park’s
convention business and expand the Park’s
land to prevent development from en-
croaching on and ruining the area’s
mystique. He hopes to make the Park “a
focus of applied environmental items,”
where the best of young and old students
alike can learn from each other by re-
searching environmental issues, and where
environmental foundations can experiment
with their visions.

Do Something
The point of the Park is to get everyone to
experiment, to start conserving and

William Rutherford and his dog, Frosty.

nurturing the environment today, to live
Earth Day every day.

“It’s perfectly affordable and
available to everybody,” Rutherford says.
“Let’s start on our waste, the number of
lights and the amount of heat that are used
needlessly, and the needless use of the
automobile...walk more.”

Don’t waste food, he suggests.
Instead of hunting animals, take their
pictures. (“The use of a camera gives more
satisfaction...there are better things than a
trophy.”) Practice moderation in all things,
he says. Don’t buy gas guzzler cars.
Recycle, too. And finally, volunteer.
(Rutherford, a volunteer for several
environmental and other organizations,
knows the personal and economical value
of this suggestion. At least 200 volunteers
help run the Park and provide 29,000 work
hours annually.)

Most importantly, do something.
If complacency were a china shop,
Rutherford is the bull that ran through it.
He has a plaque attached to the visitor
center with a favored quote by Rachael
Carson. It reads: “Have we fallen into a
mesmerized state that makes us accept as

inevitable that which is inferior or detri

«a ee,

oes — *.

i

Wolf, born at Wildlife Prairie Park

16

EARTH DAY 1990

mental, as though having lost the will or
the vision to demand that which is good?”

It is tempting to lionize this
vibrant 75-year-old man who still works
14-hour days seven days a week, bombard-
ing his staff with a constant stream of
memos on improvements and ideas,
bringing to life ideas that most just talk
about. He has been called a visionary.
He is.

“That’s nice,” he says. “But I
don’t worry much about those things. I just
want to get a few things done.”

The Park is located off Interstate 74 via
exit 82 (Kickapoo-Edwards) on Taylor
Road between routes 8 and 116. It is 10
miles west of downtown Peoria. Admission
is free for children aged four and younger.
The admission then varies between $1.25
and $4.00 depending on the visitor's age
and the day (weekends are slightly higher).
The Park is handicapped-accessible and is
open year-round, but closes on Saturdays
from December through March. Hours
vary depending on the season. Group rates
are available, Wednesdays offer a “special
carload rate,” and Thursdays are for
Senior Citizens. For information call the
Park at (309) 676-0998. i=}

Board Of Directors
Gaylord Donnelley

Chairman, Society for the Surveys
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Society for the
Surveys

Ottawa Silica Company
Foundation, Ottawa

Michael O. Gibson

Treasurer, Society for the Surveys
Marine Bank of Springfield,
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

David E. Connor

David E. Connor & Associates,
Peoria

John Doxsie
A.E. Staley, Decatur

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie,
Bloomington

Janice D. Florin

Amoco Chemical Company,
Chicago

Clayton Gaylord
Ingersoll Milling Machine
Company, Rockford
Kenneth Gorden

Blue Mound

Walter E. Hanson

Founder, Hanson Engineers, Inc.,
Springfield

Richard C. Hartnack

The First National Bank of
Chicago, Chicago

John Homeier

Bi-Petro, Springfield

Richard A. Lumpkin
Illinois Consolidated Telephone
Company, Mattoon

Charles Marshall

AT&T, Chicago

Stephen Mitchell
‘Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Chicago

James D. Nowlan
Knox College, Galesburg

George Oberlick

Turris Coal Company

Elkhart

Albert Pyott

Director, Nature Conservancy,
Winnetka

William A. Rooney
Wilmette

William L. Rutherford

Forest Park Foundation, Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
McDermott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Michael Witte
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff
Jane A. Bolin

Executive Director
Estie Karpman
Assistant Director

Illinois Scientific Surveys
Morris Leighton, Chief

Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief

Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief

Illinois Water Survey

David Thomas, Director
Illinois Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center

Supporters*
Corporate and Foundation:

Amax Coal Foundation; Amoco
Foundation; Arthur Andersen &
Company; James and Marjorie
Anderson Foundation; Archer
Daniels Midland; Baxter
Woodman, Inc.; Francis Beidler
Charitable Trust; Bell & Howell
Foundation; Benton & Associates,
Inc.; Bi-Petro; Booth & Hansen;
Borg-Warner Foundation, Inc.;
Boulevard Bancorp, Inc.; Carlson
Knight Kudrna, Inc.; Caterpillar

Foundation; Elizabeth F. Cheney
Foundation; Chicago Community
Trust; Chicago Title & Trust;
Coffield, Ungaretti, Harris &
Slavin; Commonwealth Edison;
David E. Connor & Associates;
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly; Arie &
Ida Crown Memorial; Deere &
Company; Gaylord Donnelley
Trust; Gaylord & Dorothy
Donnelley Foundation; R.R.
Donnelley & Sons; Draper &
Kramer Foundation; Du Quoin
State Bank; Farnsworth & Wylie;
Field Foundation of Illinois; Jamee
& Marshall Field Foundation; First
National Bank of Chicago; Forest
Fund; Freeman United Coal
Mining Company; William B.
Graham Foundation; Greeley and
Hansen; Hamilton Consulting
Engineers; Hanson Engineers;
Harris Foundation; Henry,

Meisenheimer & Gende; Claude H.

Hurley Company; Hurst-Rosche
Engineers; Illinois Bell; Illinois
Coal Asssociation; Illinois
Consolidated Telephone Co.;
Illinois Farm Bureau; Illinois Mine
Subsidence Insurance Fund;
Illinois Power Company;
International Minerals &
Chemicals Corp.; Joyce
Foundation; Kankakee Industrial
Disposal; Kankakee Water
Company; Klingner & Associates;
Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Inc.; Kraft, Inc.; Lakeridge
Kennels, Inc.; Layne-Western;
Marine Bank of Springfield;
Material Service Foundation;
Brooks & Hope McCormick
Foundation; Robert R. McCormick
Charitable Trust; Patrick
Engineers, Inc.; Peabody Coal
Company; Rand McNally &

Company; Randolph & Associates;

R & H Construction; Regenstein
Foundation; Rhutasel &
Associates; Sahara Coal Company;
Sargent & Lundy Engineers;
Schaumburg School District; Shell
Oil; Sheppard, Morgan &
Schwaab, Inc.; J.R. Short Milling
Company; A.E.Staley Company;
Edmund B. Thornton Foundation;
Webster, McGrath, Carlson, Ltd.;
Whistling Wings.

Individual Supporters:

James Anderson, Gregson Barker,
Henry Barkhausen, Monika Betts,
Jane Bolin, Mr. & Mrs. Henry T.
Chandler, Wesley M. Dixon, Jr.,
Gaylord Donnelley, James & Nina
Donnelley, Laura Donnelley,
Strachan Donnelley, Ph.D., Mr. &
Mrs. Thomas E. Donnelley II,
Clayton Gaylord, Walter Hanson,
Ben W. Heineman, Fredrick Jaicks,
Estie Karpman, Dr. Morris
Leighton, Richard Lenon, Richard
A. Lumpkin, Middleton Miller,
Thomas R. Mulroy, Al Pyott, John
Shedd Reed, Robert P. Reuss,
William Rooney, William
Rutherford, Mrs. Len H. Small,
Harold Byron Smith, Edmund B.
Thornton, Fred L. Turner, Mrs. Leo
Whalen, William W. Wirtz, Louise
Young.

*Contributions of $200 or more

The Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys

Scale of Contributions
Personal Memberships **

Founding $1,000 per year
Contributing 100 per year
Family 50 per year
Individual 25 per year

**$6 processing fee

Corporate/Business
Memberships

Founding $10,000 per year
Benefactor 5,000 per year
Associate 1,000 per year
Sponsor 500 per year
Patron 250 per year

ay BR >
BS ANGE
Mae Ge.

Illinois Department of
Energy and Natural Resources

In cooperation with the Department
Energy and Natural Resource

The I&M Canal
National Heritage Corridor
Five Years of Progress

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

The I&M Canal National Heritage Corridor—Five Years of Progress

Fall 1990

I have long been an advocate of public/private partnerships in
conservation efforts. There is no better example of this than the
Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor. While
federal funds have been spent to develop the Corridor, more than
$10 million in state, local and private monies have been put to
good use in restoring historic structures and preserving

open lands.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal is much more than a
canal. The Corridor around it extends over 100 miles from
Chicago to LaSalle-Peru, and encompasses some 450 square
miles of the industrial heartland and prime farmland of Illinois.

The Corridor’s goals are many: to preserve an important
part of Illinois’ history, to conserve some of the best of our
state’s natural areas, and to revitalize the region’s economy. It
has been six years since Congress designated the Illinois and
Michigan Canal as the nation’s first National Heritage Corridor.
It is time to look at our progress and to make sure that all
Illinoisans know about this precious historical and
natural treasure.

The Illinois Scientific Surveys have played key roles in
researching and preserving the natural riches of this area. They
are now deeply involved in current efforts to rehabilitate the
Canal itself and surrounding environs.

This special issue of The Nature of Illinois is another
public/private partnership, brought to you by The Nature of
Illinois Foundation and the Illinois and Michigan Canal Na-
tional Heritage Corridor Commission.

I hope you will join me in becoming a member of the
Foundation, and in sharing my delight in the I&M Canal Corridor
by visiting there.

Warmest regards,

Po bd Shwe

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Table of Contents

The I&M Canal: The First National Heritage Corridor
Extending from Chicago to LaSalle/Peru, the Corridor is a
treasure trove of natural and recreational areas, historic
buildings, and cultural artifacts.

A Canal Through Time

The I & M Canal’s history is an exotic intermingling of
ancient seas and geological structures, Paleo-Indians,
French fur trappers, and visionaries like Abraham Lincoln.

Threads of Wilderness
There are eight state parks and at least 39 significant
natural areas in the I & M Corridor.

A Guide to the Illinois and Michigan Canal Corridor

Rebuilding an Economy

With new businesses brought in, and a revolving loan fund
program in place, economic development in the Corridor is
moving at a steady pace.

Surveying the I&M

The expertise embodied in Illinois’ three Scientific Surveys
—Natural History, Water and Geological—has proved
invaluable in preserving and renewing the Canal Corridor.

The People of the Canal

As the Illinois and Michigan Canal channeled its way
through history, it intercepted the lives of thousands
of people.

About the Cover
Restored Lock No.1, Lockport

Published by the The Nature of Illinois Foundation
Volume V, Number I
The Illinois and Michigan Canal

Editorial Staff

Jane A. Bolin Editor

Jean Gray Associate Editor
Estie Karpman Assistant Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation, Chicago
Stay In Touch

Name, address or delivery changes, membership information, should be
sent to The Nature of Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle, Suite 1666,
Chicago, IL 60604, 312/201-0650. Master Card and Visa accepted.

Copyright 1990 by The Nature of Illinois Foundation. All rights reserved.

13
21

vow |

THE I&M CANAL

ATORAL HISTORY SORYEY

OCT 17 1990

THE ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN GadeNAL

THE First NATIONAL HERITAGE CORRIDOR

The National Heritage Corridor
movement weaves together the
historical, recreational and
economic development threads of
the region. The Illinois and
Michigan Canal has served and
will continue to serve as a model
for many future Corridors.

Dr. Bruce McMillan,

Chairman, I & M Canal

NHC Commission

A Victim of Neglect

Little more than a century after

horses and mules pulled their

first burdens along towpaths

from Chicago to LaSalle, the

Illinois and Michigan Canal lay

fractured and neglected. Hidden

by dense foliage, fouled by

siltation, and filled with debris,

its limestone levees were

crumbling and its wooden locks

no longer swung open and shut

to control the flow of waters. The

Canal was fragmented between

Joliet and the turning basin at

Bridgeport. It was totally obliterated

between Chicago and Summit, buried

beneath the Stevenson Expressway.
Between Channahon and Morris,

where spillways were still in place, water

continued to flow through the Canal, but

most neighbors counted the I & M any-

thing but a blessing. In some places

shallow, stagnant water made it a breeding

ground for mosquitoes and a medium for

an unpleasant mix of smells. During heavy

rainfalls, the Canal overflowed its banks,

flooding basements, yards, and fields. (See

Surveying the I & M, this issue, page 25.)
On the land on either bank of the

Canal, however, slumbered wonderful

Aux Sable Lock overflow channel

forest preserves and wetlands, bird
sanctuaries and prairies. Impressive
geological outcroppings provided evidence
of early dramatic Ice Age events. Hidden
beneath the land, archaeological treasures
whispered of prehistoric moundbuilders
and the early days of Indians and French
fur traders.

The area from Bridgeport to
LaSalle was a treasure trove of 19th-
century buildings in conditions that ranged
from pristine to barely standing. These
kinds of architectural gems no longer
existed farther east, destroyed either by the
Chicago Fire of 1871 or by the relentless
wrecking ball of progress.

Early Efforts at Renewal
There were early signs of
recognition of the region’s
recreational opportunities. As
early as 1933, the Civilian
Conservation Corps was building
recreational facilities on the
Canal, restoring Canal buildings
and locks from Chicago to
LaSalle, and beginning construc-
tion on the now famous Starved
Rock Lodge. The Department of
the Interior inventoried thousands
of valuable documents at the
Canal headquarters in Will
County and put together a list of
sites and structures on the Canal —
each site was to have its own
interpretive sign.

World War II halted this
progress.

Prospects for the Canal
looked bleak again in the 1960s
when the state of Illinois assessed
the value of abandoned I & M
Canal lands and prepared to sell
off parcels in order to generate
state revenue. Word got out that the Illinois
Department of Conservation was directed
to “dry it up and do away with it.”

The timing was right when the
Open Lands Project was formed in 1963 to
conserve public open space in northeastern
Illinois.

Assuming a leadership role in
preserving the I & M Canal, Open Lands
initiated a drive to establish the Canal as a
linear historical park and recreational trai!

By 1974 citizen action and the
Open Lands Project resulted in the desig
nation of the I & M Canal State Trail, a 60
mile-long park that followed the Canal and

towpath from Joliet to LaSalle/Peru

In the meantime, small but deter-
mined groups of concerned citizens organ-
ized town meetings, circulated petitions,
and confronted their legislators. The
grassroots effort drew support all the way
up to the Governor’s office.

With a $5,000 state grant, free
labor, and materials and trucks donated by
local businesses, volunteers began the
process of hacking out trails and repairing
footbridges. Restoration was begun on the
1837 Canal headquarters, now the home of
the Will County Historical Society I & M
Canal Museum.

In Utica, an 1848 limestone canal
company store (today the LaSalle County
Historical Society) was saved from demoli-
tion, as was Ottawa’s 1856 Reddick Man-
sion, one of the finest examples of Itali-
anate architecture in Illinois. The rescue
was sponsored by the National Trust for
Historic Preservation and the Ottawa Silica
Company.

The LaSalle County Volunteers
undertook restoration of several miles of
the Canal at its western end.

Expanding the Vision

The scope of the project was broadened
further when Judith Stockdale, Executive
Director of Open Lands, hired Gerald
Adelmann to spearhead the 1980 Des
Plaines River Project. His mandate was to
inventory and assess the richness of that
piece of the Canal Corridor excluded from
the state’s 1974 designation. Adelmann’s
background in historic preservation, urban
planning and American history added a
new dimension to the open space focus of
the previous project.

The picture that emerged from
Adelmann’s survey took his breath away.
There, at the doorstep of the Chicago
metropolitan area, easily accessible to
seven million residents, was a treasure of
natural and recreational areas, historic
buildings, and cultural artifacts connected
by the spine of the I & M Canal all the way
to LaSalle/Peru.

to

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

And far from the detriment it
appeared to be when the Illinois State Trail
was designated in 1974, the heavy industri-
alization of the northeast end of the
Corridor suddenly seemed to be a plus.
Steel mills, oil refineries, open quarries,
bridges, dams and water works hop-
scotched the I & M and Sanitary and Ship
Canals and the Des Plaines River. In the
backyards of Shell Oil, Commonwealth
Edison and Texaco, between the canals and
railroad yards, was hidden one of the
richest concentrations of natural areas and
open lands in the entire state. Ironically,
they were in a wonderful state of preserva-
tion due to long isolation behind industry’s
chain link fences.

Here was the story of the settle-
ment of the entire Upper Illinois Valley,
from prehistoric Indians to industrializa-
tion.

“We began looking for labels and
approaches big enough to contain the
dream,” said Adelmann. It was clear no
traditional park would emerge.

Adelmann shared his vision with
Tribune outdoor writer John Husar. He
caught Adelmann’s Corridor fever and for
three months the two explored the Canal,
gathering material for “Our Hidden

Rialto Square Theatre, Joliet (Exterior)
(Courtesy: Rialto Square Theatre)

Wilderness.” This six-part series would
appear in the Chicago Tribune in the fall of
1980 and ultimately be nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize.

The project gathered steam and
Adelmann, Stockdale and Husar began to
build coalitions.

Open Lands sponsored separate
briefings for three groups. Group one
included users and activists - the Sierra
Club, the Audubon Society, equestrians,
hikers, snowmobilers and canoe paddlers.
Group two was comprised of historians,
anthropologists, archaeologists, geogra-
phers and historic architects. The third
group - governmental agencies - included
the Metropolitan Sanitary District (now the
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District
of Greater Chicago), the Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation, the Illinois Depart-
ment of Energy and Natural Resources,
county, city and state officials.the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers and the Illinois
Scientific Surveys.

Drawn in by growing public and
private response, Senator Charles Percy
and Congressman Tom Corcoran requested
the National Park Service to draft a
conceptual plan “...to protect and enhance
the abundant cultural and natural resources
of the I & M Canal while at the same time
providing for economic development.”

More than 100 local citizens and
officials helped write the National Park
Service document. Starting with a local
initiative, it called for federal involvement
through the creation of a commission to
coordinate development of the Corridor
with technical assistance from the National
Park Service.

The Lions Lie Down With The Lambs
It was a unique marriage. Leaders from
business and industry sat down with
environmentalists.

Initially nervous that federal
involvement might trigger more stringent
air and water quality standards, land use
controls or a federal land grab, local

business and industry ultimately saw the
plan as a unique opportunity to foster
economic development.

The drafting of the legislation that
followed was as unique as the concept
itself. It was written not in Washington
but, again, by local people with help from
the Illinois congressional staff.

The aim of the legislation was
“...to retain, enhance, and interpret, for the
benefit and inspiration of present and
future generations, the cultural, historical,
natural, recreational, and economic
resources of the corridor...”

The bill was supported by the
entire Illinois delegation and signed into
law by President Ronald Reagan on August
24, 1984.

The I & M Canal Corridor was
now nationally recognized as historically
significant. Its 19-member federal Com-
mission, created by the legislation, would
be the leading public sector coordinator of
1 & M Corridor development, charged with
developing an identity for the Corridor
through interpretation, signage and public
education.

Its $250,000 annual budget
funded a small staff. The commissioners
were selected to represent the interests of
preservation, conservation, recreation,
business and industry, and governmental
agencies.

The Upper Illinois Valley
Association is the leading private-sector
organization working to coordinate the
Corridor’s diverse interests and implement
its goals. An offshoot of the Open Lands
Project, the not-for-profit association was
formed in 1982, according to Judith
Stockdale, to bring an economic develop-
ment perspective to the project and include
more Valley area participants.

The First Five Years

One of the Commission’s first acts was to
create the distinctive I & M logo to
promote unity within the Corridor. A low-
range radio transmitter system has been

THE I&M CANAL

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Rialto Square Theatre, Joliet (Interior) (Courtesy: Rialto Square Theatre)

established to broadcast messages welcom-
ing visitors to the area, telling them how to
get to the nearest visitor information
center, and pointing out the special
attractions and events. Forty new wayside
interpretive displays will be in place at
selected sites this fall.

The Commission distributes the
National Park Service //linois & Michigan
Canal brochure and Ice Age Geology, an
interpretive brochure on the geological
history of the area authored by the Illinois

Geological Survey. The National Heritage
Corridor Journal publicizes hundreds of
local weekly festivals and events in the
Corridor, and each of the forest preserve
and park districts, museums, towns and
visitor centers distributes its own interpre-
tive material.

Two extraordinary guides are
currently being prepared under the direc
tion of Michael Conzen, Professor of
Geography at the University of Chicago, as

a joint effort of the Commission and the

Upper Illinois Valley Association.
Professor Conzen, who was respon-
sible for early map work delineating
Corridor boundaries, says that a fold-
out map and auto tour guide,
patterned after a European model,
will be ready this fall.

The second project, due out
in 1991, is a comprehensive guide
with stunning photographs and
essays on the area, its history and its
heroes; interpretations of geological,
architectural and archaeological
sites; detailed maps with driving and
walking tours; a directory of places
to explore and a bibliography.

One of the earth sculptures at Effigy Tumuli, Buffalo Rock
State Park (Courtesy: Edmund P.. Thornton)

When A Canal Is More Than A Canal
When people think of the Corridor,
they think of the physical canal. “It’s
really the broader landscape,” points out
Adelmann. “The Canal in many areas is the
dominant feature. In some areas it doesn’t
even exist. There isn’t and never will be
enough money to restore it to its original
state even if that were desirable.” The
focus is on restoration where feasible,
stabilization where restoration is out of the
question, and general beautification
through landscaping and interpretation.

Since its transfer to the Illinois
Department of Conservation (IDOC) in
1974, more than $4.5 million has been
spent by that agency on the Canal, its trails
and its towpaths. David Carr, regional land
manager for IDOC, says that the Canal’s
prominence since 1984 has led to an
increase in state allocations. One-and-one-
half million dollars is budgeted for the
current fiscal year.

Twenty-six miles of trails have
been restored by IDOC between Chan-
nahon and Morris, and more trails are
planned. Additional systems of trails for
biking, hiking and snowmobiling wind
through forest preserve districts, and there
are miles of canoe trails. (See A Guide to
the I & M, page 13).

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

A vital key to the National
Heritage Corridor system is The Centen-
nial Trail, a project of the Metropolitan
Water Reclamation District (MWRD) of
Greater Chicago. It will join the city of
Chicago to the Lockport Historical Trail
and, when completed, run through lush
forests and wetlands and weave among
three historic waterways: the I & M, the
Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the Des
Plaines River. The trail will originate at the
Chicago Portage site at Harlem Avenue (a
National Historic Landmark), where a
major visitor center is planned. An
important link in the integrated 900-mile
trail system envisioned for northeastern
Illinois, it is a stunning example of
intergovernmental cooperation. It is located
largely on land owned by the MWRD and
will be managed jointly by the Cook,
DuPage and Will County Forest Preserve
Districts.

The River Edge Renaissance
proposes a green belt scenic corridor and
trail along MWRD’s river edge land. It will
have a historical site at each end of the Cal-
Sag Channel supported by a mix of public
and private funding. Within a generation,
as lands leased to industry turn over, new
regulations will require river edge set-

backs. The last lease turns over in
2053. “It may seem like a long
wait,” says George Kelley, supervis-
ing architectural planner for the
District, “but from then
on...forever!”

St. James of the Sag
Church and Cemetery is honored
with a designation on the National
Register of Historic Places. The pic-
turesque church and tombstones (the
oldest identified in Cook County)
have been saved for long-term
preservation.

The Gaylord Building in
downtown Lockport is a private/
public partnership forged to meet the
goals of the Corridor. Built in 1838,
the building originally warehoused
Canal construction equipment. Under the
leadership of Gaylord Donnelley, an
approximately $2 million rehabilitation
project was undertaken to restore the
dilapidated limestone building to pre-Civil
War grandeur. Today the Gaylord Building
houses the acclaimed Public Landing
Restaurant, a gallery of the Illinois State
Museum, and a visitor center operated
by IDOC.

Completed in 1987, it was the first
major restoration project of the National
Heritage Corridor and inspired other
revitalization projects in downtown
Lockport. The building was honored by
President Reagan in 1988 as one of the
nation’s most significant historic
restoraions.

Gallery records counted 48,582
visitors from May, 1987 to June, 1990, and
an economic impact study reported that
visitors spent in excess of $315,561 in the
Lockport region during this period. Of this
amount, $131,169 was spent during 1989.

The Rialto Theatre in Joliet is a
spectacular $8 million restoration that
today is serving as a major cultural
attraction and anchor for the revitalization
of downtown Joliet.

(Total Corridor attendance grew
from four to four-and-one-half-million
visitors between 1986 and 1989. Suzanne
Bobinsky, Executive Director of the
Heritage Corridor Visitors Bureau, reports
that tourists spent $216 million on enter-
tainment and in restaurants, hotels, motels
and gas stations in 1987.)

The Effigy Tumuli at Buffalo
Rock State Park is second in scope and size
only to Mount Rushmore. Eighty miles
southwest of Chicago, on sandstone bluffs
overlooking the Illinois River, perch five
earth effigies - a snake, a turtle, a catfish, a
frog and a water strider - created by artist
Michael Heizer. These geometric versions
of native Illinois Valley water animals
reach 1,800 feet in length and 26 feet in
height and refer back in time to the ancient
tradition of prehistoric mound builders.

The project was initiated by
Edmund B. Thornton, former Chairman of
the Ottawa Silica Company, donor of the
abandoned coal strip mine site. Mr.
Thornton, president of the company’s
foundation (which paid the artist’s fees), is
an active member of UIVA and was the I
& M Commission’s first Chairman. The $1
million price tag was funded by the state of
Illinois’ Abandoned Mined Lands Recla-

Seneca grain elevator. In the foreground is

1&M Canal

THE I&M CANAL

mation Council. Additional funding was
made available by the National Endow-
ment for the Arts. The Effigy Tumuli cost
the state no more than a conventional recla-
mation project.

The Illinois Department of
Conservation recently renovated and
expanded Starved Rock Lodge. The lodge
and conference center, operated by a
concessionaire, anchors the southwestern
end of the Corridor and is surrounded by
miles of recreational trails traversing
geological formations of breathtaking
beauty.

An Investment Recovered

It would take a lifetime to hike all the
trails, paddle all the waterways, and marvel
at all the living creatures that inhabit the
forests, prairies, wetlands and rolling hills
in the Corridor. It would take another
lifetime to attend all the festivals and
special events, to explore the archives and
absorb the lessons of interpretive exhibits
at museums, historical societies and visitor
centers.

In addition to substantial federal
funds, more than $10 million in state, local
and private monies have been spent on
rehabilitation of structures and preserva-
tion of natural areas and land acquisition.
There has been a dizzying mix of support
from the state; the Metropolitan Water
Reclamation District of Greater Chicago;
the Will, Cook and DuPage County Forest
Preserve Districts; and towns and cities
along the Corridor.

The I & M Commission and
Upper Illinois Valley Association have
enjoyed the dedicated support of such
grassroots groups as Friends of the | & M
Canal, local historical societies and
museums, the Audubon Society, the Sierra
Club, the C.C.C. alumni, and volunteers
from every city and town along the
Corridor.

Business and industry have
contributed dollars, land, advice and
counsel. This past year Material Service

Corporation donated the Briscoe Mounds,
an important site of archaeological
significance, to the Illinois State Museum.
This fall an exhibition (with an interpretive
brochure designed by Northwestern
University archaeologist James Brown) is
planned for the IDOC visitor center in the
Gaylord Building at Lockport.

Canal towpath at Gebhard Woods, Morris

The Commission’s current
Chairman, Bruce McMillan, Director of the
Illinois State Museum, is optimistic about
increased economic revitalization for
downtown districts over the next five years
through such projects as the National Trust
Main Street Program, the construction of
Lemont’s $10 million Four Winds Hospi-
tal, and the expansion of Joliet’s Heritage
Park (See Rebuilding an Economy,
page 21).

“It’s a hard concept to get your
arms around,” says Jerry Adelmann. And
perhaps therein lies its value. The Corridor,
with its many faces and personalities, tells
stories of the earth and of nature and of
human habitation. It offers the solitude of
exploring a virgin prairie or the excitement
of a spirited “Old Canal Days” festival

It’s all there - ready for the

modern voyageur to explore. Pal

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

A CANAL THROUGH TIME

In a hand-carved bed of limestone and
clay, the Illinois and Michigan Canal now
sleeps, a trickling reminder of time’s
indifference to human industry. Once it
was a bustling industrial waterway linking
the Great Lakes shipping ports of the
Midwest and New England to the Gulf of
Mexico. But the I & M Canal’s history
begins long before the first shovel turned in
the Canal back in July of 1836. The story
begins millions of years earlier, when
primordial seas swirled across the conti-
nent, and towering sheets of ice scraped
along the Corridor.

Ancient Seas

More than 500 million years ago, ancient
seas inundated the Midwestern landscape.
Thick layers of sand shifted and settled in
these ancient beds, and sediments from
decaying plants and animals (crustaceans)
added further layers of strata to the ocean
floors. These concentrated layers of
sediment became the sandstone and

6

Gaylord Building, circa 1880, Lockport (Courtesy:

by William Furry

orn rrr recrrrrss

Upper Illinois Valley Association)

limestone bluffs that dominate the Corridor
from Utica to Ottawa and Joliet
to Chicago.

Approximately three million years
ago, the first of several periods of glacia-
tion began. Mile-thick sheets of ice crept
southward from Canada and scraped
through the Great Lakes Basins, flattening
anything and everything in their paths. But
even as these glaciers advanced they were
melting, and their frigid meltwaters were
trapped and pooled by ridges of glacial till
and debris, called moraines.

Lake Chicago, a precursor of
Lake Michigan, was one such pool.
Formed more than 13 thousand years ago,
this proglacial lake was impounded by the
Michigan lobe of the Wisconsinan glacier
and the Valparaiso moraine, an earthen
barrier that formed the lake’s extreme
southern and western banks. As the lobe
slowly retreated to the north, its rapidly
rising meltwaters gouged a Y-shaped outlet
in the moraine, releasing a torrent of
floodwaters into the Illinois River Valley.

“Think of an ice cube in a
furnace,” says University of Chicago
Professor Michael Conzen when describing
the torrent that raged through the Corridor.
“The Illinois River Valley was scoured,
violently eroded by the meltwaters of the
glacier."

Conzen, who has studied the
Corridor’s history and geology for more
than a decade, says the amount of meltwa-
ter released into the valley would stagger
the imagination. These torrential meltwa-
ters were capable of carrying small
boulders and stripping layers of sediment
off the valley floor down to bedrock in a
very short time. Scoured bedrock and
boulder rubble in the Kankakee River
Valley offer silent testimony to one such
meltwater flood that geologists have called
the “Kankakee Torrent.”

The Wisconsinan glacier retreated
for the last time about 12 thousand years
ago. As Lake Chicago evaporated into a
swampy bed, Lake Michigan formed. For a
while its waters drained also into the

Illinois River Valley, but as the terrain
sprang back from the weight of the glacier,
the waters found a drainage bed on the
eastern shore of the lake. The Y-shaped
outlet in the Valparaiso Moraine became
beds for two small streams - the Chicago
and the Calumet Rivers. At their juncture,
some twenty miles from the lake’s shore,
the south fork of the Chicago River flowed
but three miles from the Des Plaines River.
It was an easy portage in the driest months,
and in the floods of spring and early
summer, it offered unimpeded access to the
Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes.

The Archaeological Record

At the Isle a la Cache Museum in Romeo-
ville, a buckskin-clad site interpreter kneels
before a group of preschoolers and begins a
lesson on how to build a fire. “No Native
American,” instructs the interpreter, “ever
started a fire by rubbing two sticks
together.” He invites a youngster to prove
his point by rubbing two sticks together.
Then, brandishing a firebow, some tinder,
and a sack of char-cloth, the interpreter sets
to work with his primitive tools, and soon,
to the delight of the children, is sending
thin puffs of smoke into the air.

The Museum celebrates the
history of Native Americans and French
fur traders who once used this island in the
Des Plaines River as a place to store their
furs between trips to the trading posts. It
speaks to the history of the region as a
thriving commercial corridor long before
the first Canal lock opened.

Paleo-Indian migration into the
Canal Corridor coincides with the retreat of
the glaciers. Prehistoric evidence suggests
that a hunter/gatherer culture moved in and
out of the area as early as 12 thousand
years ago. At least three thousand years
ago the first settlements appeared. But they
weren't permanent settlements.

“These primitive communities
settled in the river valley,” says Northwest-
ern University archaeologist Jim Brown,
“and hunted on the upland plains and

THE I&M CANAL

prairies. They hunted marsh-dwelling
animals and plants like the American lotus.
Twice a year - in July and early winter -
they would break camp and travel great
distances in search of bison and elk.” In the
Woodland period (1,000 B.C. to 1,000
A.D.), they cultivated maize and developed
reliable agricultural economies.

Some Indians had ties to the
Hopewellian culture. Chert tools and lead
and copper metal fragments connect these
primitive settlers to tribes as distant as the
Mississippi delta. Archaeological sites
(burial mounds) have been excavated at
Starved Rock, in Ottawa and in nearby
Utica. At the Zimmerman site at Starved
Rock, three distinct settlements of Amerin-
dian culture - Paleo-Indian, Woodland, and
Mississippian - have been unearthed. Other
archaeological sites in the Corridor include
fortifications at Marseilles, Joliet, Palos
Hills, and Starved Rock.

i
oe

Massika (Turtle), Sauk Man (Courtesy:
Josyln Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska)

The Corridor’s influence on
prehistoric cultures, especially as it relates
to ancient trade routes, is speculative. But
by the time the French explorers arrived in
1673, Amerindians were using the Chicago
Portage and the Corridor extensively.
Amerindian population estimates for the
entire Great Lakes region between 1600
and 1760 were as high as 100,000. Excava-

tions in Chicago during the last century un-
earthed no fewer than twenty-one “major”
Amerindian settlements along the principal
waterways.

Nine major tribal groups lived in
or near the region in 1673 when Father
Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet
paddled up the Mississippi and IIlinois
Rivers to the Chicago Portage. The Miami,
Winnebago, Michigami, Fox, Sauk,
Menomini, Potawatomi, Illini and Ojibay
tribes were all noted and recorded by the
early French visitors. By 1833, the last of
these tribes had been displaced from the
Corridor.

A Passage to Paris
Marquette and Jolliet explored the Missis-
sippi River Valley seeking proof that the
Father of Waters flowed unvexed to the
Gulf of Mexico. When they found their
proof, they turned their canoes northward
to explore the Illinois River Valley. What
they didn’t expect to find was a passage
from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi
River leading to the Florida territories
(those territories extending from Florida to
New Orleans). When Jolliet crossed the
Chicago Portage into Lake Michigan, he
saw the Corridor’s potential for opening up
the territory at once. In a letter to a Jesuit
priest in France, Jolliet reported that “we
could go with ease to Florida in a bark and
by very easy navigation. It would be neces-
sary to make a canal, by cutting through
but half a league of prairie, to pass from
the foot of the Illinois (Lake Michigan) to
the river Saint Louis (Des Plaines).”

Most of the French settlers in the
Illinois territory were far more interested in
pelts than in canals. They were interested
in souls as well. A Jesuit mission was built
near the Chicago Portage, but it was later
abandoned in 1697. French voyageurs
(canoe men) and coreur du bois (licensed
fur traders) traveled up and down the
Corridor peddling their furs at French
outposts. The largest French outpost in the
Corridor was at Fort St. Louis, a fortifica

tion built atop Starved Rock. In 1680,
nearly 10 thousand French and Indian
settlers were living in the region.

About this time the irritable
Iroquois Indians moved into the Corridor.
When it became evident the Illini were
incapable of defending themselves against
the highly organized Iroquois war parties,
the French lost interest in protecting the
region, and turned their efforts toward the
large settlement at Fort de Chartres on the
Mississippi. For nearly 100 years the
French maintained control of the territory,
but in 1763 that era ended. In the political
aftermath of the French and Indian War,
the Corridor came under the dominion of
England and King George III.

But only for the next twenty
years. In 1783, the American Revolution
claimed the Corridor from the British, and
the seed for the Illinois and Michigan
Canal was planted at last in friendly soil.

Portage of Promise
The geographical importance of the
Corridor was well-known to the leaders of
the new nation, but because the territory
was largely unpopulated, support for a
canal connecting the Great Lakes to the
Mississippi River was not strong. Most of
the settlers in the Illinois Territory were
entrenched in the prosperous south, where
a brisk river trade on the Ohio River kept
markets alive. In the north, hostile Indians
had also moved into the region again, this
time the Potawatomi and Sauk tribes. Raids
and war parties continued until 1795 when
the Treaty of Greenville (Ohio) was signed.
At Greenville the Indians signed away
control of the mouth of the Chicago River
to the federal government. There in 1803,
an outpost named Fort Dearborn was built
on the future site of a city called Chicago.
There were only a few canals
operating in the United States in 1810, and
none connected major waterways. But the
new nation was keen on internal improve-
ments. In 1810 a New York legislator
named Peter B. Porter proposed a series of

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Wausasse (Fox Indian) (Courtesy: Josyln Art
Museum, Omaha, Nebraska)

federally funded canals to Congress,
including a canal to cut across the Chicago
Portage joining the Great Lakes to the Gulf
of Mexico. Porter’s plan had popular
support for canal construction in the
eastern states, but even then it wasn’t until
July 4, 1817 that construction was started
on the Erie Canal.

Secretary of War John C.
Calhoun realized the nation needed a
northern water route to move military
supplies. In 1818 he advised Congress to
consider a system of roads and canals for
the security of the nation.

Back in the Illinois Territory in
1816, Ninian Edwards was negotiating
with the Potawatomi, the Ottawa, and the
Chippewa tribes to cede their lands along
the proposed Canal Corridor. Edwards
persuaded the Indians that a canal would
ultimately be in their best interests.

In December 1818, on the eve of
Illinois’ admittance to the Union, the
northernmost boundary of the Illinois
territory (as established by the Northwest
Ordinance of 1787) did not include the
Chicago Portage, nor any lake shoreline.
From the foot of Lake Michigan, the
territorial boundary extended in a straight
line across to the Mississippi River.
Without this all-important property, the
state would have no access to the Great
Lakes.

Nathaniel Pope, the Illinois
territorial delegate to Washington, inter-
ceded in Congress on behalf of the Canal
and Illinois, and the Chicago Portage and
the rest of northern Illinois were admitted
into the Illinois state boundaries.

Once Illinois was admitted to the
Union, there was no sudden outpouring of
federal funds to build a shipping canal at
the Chicago Portage. Governor Shadrach
Bond gave his full support to the project,
however, and the Second General Assem-
bly sent a formal request to Washington
asking for money from the sale of public
lands to finance the Canal. The General
Assembly also asked for authority to build
the Canal on public lands and for the
federal government to donate those public
lands. Congress authorized construction of
the Canal, granting a strip of land in the
Corridor for the main channel and a 90-
foot border on either side. ?

The Canal’s first board of
commissioners was formed on February
14, 1823. Their charge was to plot the most
accessible route through the Corridor and
to estimate construction costs. By 1825, the
year the Erie Canal opened, the survey was
complete. The General Assembly, wasting
no time, formed the Illinois and Michigan
Canal Company, provided the new
company with one million dollars in
capital, and targeted the completion of the
Canal for January 1, 1835.

But the chartered stock company
could not sell its stock, and the Canal
Company died. In 1827, the state asked for
and again received a land grant in the
Corridor. A new board of canal commis-
sioners set to work. In 1829, they hired
James Thompson to prepare a map of the
Corridor and lay out the cities of Chicago
and Ottawa.

The Canal that Almost Wasn’t

While land speculation in the Corridor was
slowly heating up, a different kind of fever
was spreading in the legislature - railroad

(continued on p. 32)

THE I&M CANAL

THREADS OF WILDERNESS

by Susan Post

The National Heritage Corridor
of the Illinois and Michigan
Canal extends from Chicago to
LaSalle/Peru, a distance of over
100 miles, and encompasses
some 450 square miles of the
industrial heartland and prime
farmland of Illinois. Quarries,
cornfields, and refineries rest
upon the dolomite and St.
Peter’s sandstone of the Des
Plaines and Illinois River
Valleys. Here, during early
settlement times, the northern
forests ended and the prairie
began. Settlements along the
canal were mere pinpoints
dotting the prairie, forests, and
wetlands.

Today the situation is
reversed, and remnants of
wilderness are pinpoints among
the urban and agricultural
sprawl. Within the National
Heritage Corridor are eight state
parks and at least 39 significant
natural areas. Even after
extensive development, this area
retains one of the richest
concentrations of natural areas
and open lands in the entire state,
providing clues to what once was here.

The Des Plaines River Valley

“From Chicago we made an excursion into
the prairies...As we proceeded, the scenery
became more and more like what all
travelers compare it to - a boundless
English park. The grass was wilder, the
occasional footpath not so trim, and the
single trees less majestic; but no park ever

displayed anything equal to the grouping of

the trees within the windings of the blue,
brimming river Aux Plaines (Des

atte i ft” eo ew
Starved Rock (Photo by the Illinois Department of Commerce and
Community Affairs)

Plaines), recorded Harriet Martineau,
while traveling from Chicago to Joliet in
1834.

The Des Plaines River Valley,
between Willow Springs and Joliet, is a 20-
mile valley segment enclosed by dolomite
bluffs. At the end of the Wisconsinan
glacial period, it was the outlet for glacial
Lake Chicago. The large volume of water
that poured through the wide area eroded
through the glacial deposits to the bedrock,
carved bluffs 50 feet in height, deposited
low gravel ridges, and left an extremely

shallow soil containing elements from the

dolomite bedrock. A variety of
habitat conditions favored the
development of several diverse
communities - wet and mesic
prairies, marshes, and fens.

Today several state and
federal threatened and endan-
gered plant species are found
here, including the leafy prairie
clover, slender sandwort, white
ladies slipper, and grass pink
orchids. Periodic prairie fires
blown from the west prevented
the development of woods on
the west bank of the Des
Plaines. But on the east bank,
insulated by the river from
prairie fires, numerous oak
groves are found.

Deer and furbearers
abound. Even the beaver, which
by the early 1900s was nearly
exterminated from the state, can
be found here. The river valley
flyway supports over 200
species of birds, even a heron
rookery in an old quarry.
Visitors along the Canal often
see an egret or heron flying
overhead or fishing in wet,
marshy places.

The natural beauty of the river
valley is easy to overlook. Often all that is
seen are oil refineries, tank farms, quarries,
barges, and heavy trucks. Ironically, this
same industry was an unwitting steward of
nature throughout the valley. Within their
fences and holdings, the factories protected
much of the land.

Calcareous prairies on shallow
limestone soils have almost completely
disappeared from the Middle West. Even in
presettlement days they were not very

common. Most sites that supported this

type of prairie were either destroyed by
quarrying for flagstone or mining for
gravel.

According to John Taft, research
biologist for the Illinois Natural History
Survey, portions of the glacial meltwater
swept beaches along the Des Plaines River.
Historically these may have contained
naturally occurring dolomite glades or
barrens, but all have been disturbed by

human activity.

Plains pocket gopher, Goose Lake Prairie

Surprisingly, on intermittently wet
rock surfaces that have been shallow-
quarried for flagstone, glade habitats have
been recreated. Such rare plants as slender
sandwort and tufted hair grass have found a
home here.

A few of the many other signifi-
cant natural areas along the Des Plaines
River section of the Heritage Corridor
include Long Run Seep, which has spec-
tacular displays of wildflowers in late
summer and early fall. Black Partridge
Woods, an upland oak forest, supports a
rich spring flora, especially along the
slopes and terraces of the seep spring runs.
Sagawau Canyon, a dolomite canyon and
cliff community, supports many plants

common only much farther north.

Monarch on blazing star

10

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Bluffs, Canyons and Prairies
"At about nine a.m., we reached the small
town...called Morris...I can readily believe
that it abounded in game. Morris is
surrounded by fine prairies... Towards the
afternoon we arrived at Ottawa: the town is
situated in the most beautiful portion of the
valley, which is formed by the high bluffs,
which are here separated from each other
about two miles...From Ottawa to
LaSalle...rocky islands occasionally
present themselves, now surrounded by
fertile prairie and cornfields, which were,
no doubt, formerly encircled by the
stream." So Arthur Cunynghame reported
in 1850, journeying on the Illinois and
Michigan Canal.

The surface of much of northern
Illinois is a nearly level, strikingly uniform,
treeless upland. The upper Illinois River

Valley is a relatively narrow trench; the
valleys of its tributaries are even smaller
notches. Both up and downstream from
Starved Rock State Park the sides of the
valley become steeper and steeper. The
town of Morris lies in a low basin. The
Seneca Valley has well-defined sides. At
Ottawa, bedrock is exposed here and there
and cliffs appear, only to become higher
and higher, until at Starved Rock the sides
of the Illinois River Valley are mostly
cliffs of bare rock.

The topography of the region is
most often associated with outcrops of St.
Peter’s sandstone. The valley floor is a
floodplain with many permanently wet
bottom tracts. Sloughs and seeps are
numerous. Deserted river channels form
long and sinuous depressions filled with
material ranging from fine silt to gravel.

. ’

ty

Purple prairie clover and rattlesnake master at
Goose Lake

The diversified bluffs and
canyons of the Illinois River Valley are but
minor irregularities in the general upland
prairie surface. Originally the prairie
extended to the valley blufftops. Only a
few miles from the river, the prairies were
smooth and even the slight swells and
swales were unnoticeable. The first settlers
found the upland covered with tall grass,
an almost endless sea of green and brown.
Trees and shrubs were confined to the
water courses.

At one time these prairies were
reputed to have an unhealthful character.
The earliest settlement in LaSalle was
broken up by “fever and ague”, and
malarial ills were the bane of the pioneer
prairie farmer. “Poisonous miasmas” were
said to rise from the prairie because much
of the land was poorly drained and
contained foul swamps and stagnant pools.

The settlers persisted and agricul-
ture somehow gained a toehold. When the
prairie vegetation was cut, corn was
usually the first crop planted in the half-
rotted soil, often tilled by gashing it with
an ax. The heavy prairie soil grew corn
with better success than any other crop.
Until the sod decomposed, small grains
were difficult to raise.

Prior to the building of the Canal,
corm was grown only for home consump-

THE I&M CANAL

tion. The bulkiness of corn made it difficult
to transport and thus unprofitable. Wheat
was the chief cash crop of the early
prairies. After the construction of the
Canal, corn acreage increased and the
growing of wheat was almost abandoned.
Cheaper freight costs were an incentive to
cultivate larger areas, and the vast expanses
of prairie soon disappeared.

Goose Lake and Gebhard Woods

The largest prairie remnant in Illinois is
Goose Lake Prairie, near Morris. Goose
Lake is a place of grasses, wildflowers, and
ceaseless prairie winds. Once it was home
to the buffalo, wolf, prairie chicken, and
otter. Huge boulders scattered in the area
are evidence of its geologic history. These
boulders were not formed in Hlinois but
were brought down from the north by
glaciers over 10 thousand years ago.

Goose Lake itself no longer exists
but was drained before the turn of the
century for farming and to mine the
underlying clay. In its day the lake was one
thousand acres in extent, often covered so
thickly with geese and ducks that the water
was not visible. Today what remains of the
lake is a series of ponds and marshes,
outstanding examples of the once common
prairie pothole.

Amid the golden grasses in this
relatively small parcel of prairie, one can
feel the vastness of the prairie and be
touched by the past. Waterfowl still feed
here. Rabbits, muskrats, deer, and small
rodents are everywhere abundant. The
plains pocket gopher moves prodigious
quantities of the better drained soils. Over
200 species of plants grow here.

Although the prairie was the
dominant vegetation, trees grew along
water courses protected from prairie fires.
The old Canal towpath at Gebhard Woods
State Park is lined by impressive trees.
Huge, pallid sycamores mark the water’s
edge. Old oaks, ash, and walnut trees have
a fantastic spring understory of bluebells,

phlox, trout lily and wild ginger. Even

these giant trees pale in comparison to the
state’s largest tree, also found along the
towpath. This eastern cottonwood stands
120 feet tall and has a circumference of

thirty-two feet and three inches.

Starved Rock
To one satiated with the wide horizontal
vistas of the Illinois landscape, the bare
rock cliffs that form the towering walls of
Starved Rock State Park afford relief. The
habitats range from swamps to deserts.
Here a domed or anticlinal structure of
bedrock was brought to the surface.
Streams have cut across the
anticline and sunk their channels to
considerable depth, giving rise to narrow,
blind canyons and cliffs surrounded by a

closed canopy forest. Starved Rock and the

Beaver Activity, Starved Rock

adjacent canyons are eroded from porous
St. Peter’s sandstone. Water falling on the
rock quickly soaks through, and the sandy
surface remains essentially dry. The water
later appears in seeps and sloughs at the

base of the cliffs

Egret along Canal near Willow Springs

At least one third of all Illinois
fern species are part of Starved Rock’s
flora. Liverworts grasp the canyon walls
like moist fingers. Chipmunks cavort
among the crevices and along the trails. An
occasional groundhog appears, bound for
its den with a mouthful of dry leaves.

An unusual aspect of the area is
the presence of survivor species. When the
glaciers receded, they left behind represen-
tives of a colder climate. Such survivors as
harebells, reindeer lichen, yew, and

mountain holly are hidden in the coolness
amidst the craggy surfaces of the canyons.

During the early construction of
the Illinois and Michigan Canal, limestone
was discovered near Utica. Subsurface
mining of this limestone created a huge
cave covering several acres. Today this
area is a state nature preserve and a
federally designated critical habitat.

The old mine serves as a hiber-
naculum for five species of overwintering
bats: little brown, Keen’s, eastern pipis-

trelle, big brown, and the state and feder-

ally endangered Indiana bat. In 1986 and
1987 Gene Gardner, research biologist
with the Illinois Natural History Survey,
and James Garner, with the Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation, along with 40 vol-
unteers, mapped the entire mine area and
plotted the location of the bat colonies.
Biennial surveys continue, and at last
count, the bat population was 20 thousand
individuals. Of those, nearly 400 were the
endangered Indiana bat.

Working for Preservation

One of the chief mandates of the legislation
creating the National Heritage Corridor is
to encourage conservation efforts. The
Corridor Commission has been active in
recognizing and preserving the unique flora
and fauna found along the Canal.

Success stories abound. The
Forest Preserve District of Will County
recently passed a $50 million bond issue,
of which $45 million will be used to
acquire new land. The Lemont Village
Canal Committee is currently developing a
park to be called the General Fry Landing.
Lake Renwick Heron Rookery was ac-
quired and is now a nature preserve due to
the efforts of the Forest Preserve District of
Will County, the Illinois Nature Conser-
vancy, the Illinois Department of Conser-
vation, the Upper Illinois Valley Associa-
tion, the Audubon Society of Illinois, and
the Chicago and Will County Audubon
Societies.

Perhaps the greatest success of all
is the progress that has been made in the
public’s awareness of the value of natural
lands. With the cooperation of many, the
threads of wilderness that exist like
capillaries along the vein of development
that is the Illinois and Michigan Canal
will continue to exist far into the future.

Susan Post is an Assistant Research
Biologist at the Center for Biodiversity in
the Illinois Natural History Survey.

THE I&M CANAL

A GUIDE To THE ILLINOIS AND
MICHIGAN CANAL

MUSEUMS AND VISITORS
CENTERS

Blue Island Historical Society
2433 York Street

Blue Island, IL

708/388-1078

Community Center
Foundation

Children’s Farm and Nature
Center, 12700 Southwest
Highway

Palos Park, IL 60464
708/361-3650

Little Red Schoolhouse Nature
Center

Cook County Forest Preserve
P.O. Box 92, 104th Avenue
between 95th and 107th Streets
Willow Springs, IL 60480
708/839-6897

Lemont Area Historical
Society Museum

303 Lemont Street, P.O. Box 126
Lemont, IL 60439

Isle a la Cache Museum
501 Romeo Road
Romeoville, IL 60441
815/886-1467

Will County Historical Society
Museum

803 South State Street
Lockport, IL 60441
815/838-5080

1&M Canal Visitor Center
The Gaylord Building

200 West Eighth Street
Lockport, IL 60441
815/838-4830

<4

Enjoying the Canal

Will-Joliet Bicentennial Park
201 West Jefferson at

Bluff Street

Joliet, IL 60435

815/740-2216

Joliet Area Historical Society
Museum

17 East Van Buren

Joliet, IL 60431

815/722-7003

Pilcher Park Nature Center
Off East Cass Street
(U.S.Route 30)

Joliet, IL 60435
815/741-7277

I&M Canal State Trail-
Gebhard Woods Access
Post Office Box 272,
Ottawa Street

Morris, IL 60450
815/942-0796

Goose Lake Prairie State
Natural Area

5010 N. Jugtown

Morris, IL 60450
815/942-2899

Grundy County Historical
Society Artifact Displays
Grundy County Courthouse,
Washington & Liberty
Morris, IL 60450

Illinois Waterway Visitor
Center

Route 1, Dee Bennett Road
Ottawa, IL 61350
815/667-4054

LaSalle County Historical
Society Museum

Route 178 & I&M Canal
Utica, IL 61373
815/667-4861

Starved Rock State Park
P.O. Box 116,

Utica, IL 61373
815/667-4906

CULTURAL TREASURES

Visitors can discover a kaleido-
scopic mingling of French
trappers’ sites, early Canal
towns, and 19th century Ameri-
can cultures throughout the
Corridor. Numerous museums,
festivals, and historic sites bring
this rich heritage to life.

St. James of the Sag Church
and Graveyard

A parish since 1833, this native
limestone church in Lemont
dates from the 1850s. Canal
workers’ graves here date

to 1846.

708/257-7000

Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne is one of the nation’s
leading scientific research
facilities.

9700 S. Cass Avenue

Argonne, IL 60439
708/972-5575

Mother Theresa Home

Shrine to Mother Theresa is
housed in the Walker limestone
mansion. 1270 Main Street
Lemont, IL 60439
708/257-5801

Illinois State Museum-
Lockport Gallery

The Gaylord Building
200 West Eighth Street
Lockport, IL 60441
815/838-7400

Illinois & Michigan Canal
Recreational Historical

Trail System

Two-mile trail with markers
interpreting various historic sites
in this 1837 Canal town,
including I&M Canal Lock No.1
and the Norton and Gaylord
Buildings.

Rialto Square Theatre

A 1926 Rapp & Rapp vaudeville
movie palace, the Rialto was
restored in 1981 and presents
many major national and
international performances.

102 N.Chicago Street,

P.O.Box 792

Joliet, IL 60434

815/726-6600

Chief Shabbona’s Grave

The grave of this Potawatomi
chief can be seen in Morris. His
friendship with the settlers was
of immense importance during
the Black Hawk War. His
warnings about impending
attacks saved lives and property.

Reddick Mansion

An 1856 Italianate mansion,
Reddick Mansion overlooks the
site of the first Lincoln-Douglas
debate and has been restored as a
period museum and office.

100 W. Lafayette

Ottawa, IL 61350

815/433-0084

Washington Park

Where Lincoln and Douglas held
their first debate.

Rte. 6

Ottawa, IL 61350

815/433-0084

Overlook Park

Small park and shelter overlook
breathtaking view of Ottawa
Silica’s Company silica sand
mining operation.

Boyce Memorial Drive

Ottawa, IL 61350
815/434-0190

Lock No. 14, Illinois and
Michigan Canal

This lock was restored in 1983 to
its 1848 working condition. It is
representative of mid-nineteenth
century canal locks.

Canal Street and Route 351
LaSalle, IL 61301

DEDICATED NATURE
PRESERVES

The Illinois and Michigan Canal
National Heritage Corridor
contains some 39 rare natural
areas, remnants of the ancient
Illinois landscape. Several of
these are dedicated Illinois

14

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Nature Preserves, of which the
following have public access.
These are fragile areas not
intended for recreational use, so
please exercise care and caution.

Cranberry Slough

96th Avenue,

Palos Division, Cook County
Forest Preserve
708/839-5617

Paw Paw Woods

Archer Avenue,

Palos Division, Cook County
Forest Preserve
708/839-5617

Sagawau Canyon

Route 83,

Palos Division, Cook County
Forest Preserve
708/839-5617 By appt. only

Black Partridge Woods Nature
Preserve

Bluff Road, Lemont

Cook County Forest Preserve
708/839-5617

O’Hara Woods
Beverly Griffin Drive
Romeoville
815/886-7237

Lockport Prairie

Route 53 and Division Street
Lockport, Will County
Forest Preserve
815/727-8700

Grant Creek Prairie

Des Plaines Conservation Area,
Will County

815/423-5326

Goose Lake Prairie
Goose Lake Prairie State
Natural Area

Morris

815/942-2899

Starved Rock Nature Preserve
Starved Rock State Park

Utica

815/667-4726

ILLINOIS WATERWAY LOCKS
AND DAMS

Visitors can watch modern
shipping at work as barges are
locked in and out at these Illinois
Waterway locks and dams.

Thomas J. O’Brien Lock

and Dam

134th Street and Calumet River
Chicago, IL 60633

Lockport Lock and Dam
Lockport, IL 60441

Brandon Road Lock and Dam
Rockdale, IL 60421

Dresden Island Lock and Dam
Morris, IL 60450

Marseilles Lock and Dam
Marseilles, IL 61341

Illinois Waterway Visitor
Center

Starved Rock Lock and Dam
Dee Bennett Road at Route 178

RECREATION: Parks and Trails
in the [&M Canal Corridor

Parks and trails are organized
into three categories: State and
Local Parks and Conservation
Areas, Forest Preserve Holdings,
and Canoe Trails. For more
specific information on facilities,
please call ahead.

State & Local Parks, Fish &
Wildlife, Conservation Areas

Des Plaines Conservation Area
R.R. 3, Box 167

Wilmington, IL 60481
815/423-5326

Dellwood Park
Route 171
Lockport
815/838-1183

Illinois & Michigan Canal
State Trail

The I&M Canal State Trail is a
linear park comprising the canal
prism and 60 miles of trail used
for hiking and biking. Access
points are at Channahon,

b 5 Soh
Lock No.6 and lockkeepers house
near Channahon

Gebhard Woods, William G.
Stratton and Buffalo Rock State —
Parks and the I&M Canal in
Utica and at Lock No. 14

at LaSalle.

815/942-0796

Channahon Access (I&M
Canal State Trail)

Canal Street

Channahon 60410
815/462-4271

Goose Lake State Natural Area
5010 N. Jugtown

Morris 60450

815/942-2899

Heidecke State Fish &
Wildlife Area

(Collins Lake) 5010 N. Jugtown
Morris 60450

815/942-6352

William G. Stratton State Park
Box 272

Morris 60450

815/942-0796

Gebhard Woods Access (I & M
Canal State Trail)

Box 272

Morris 60450

815/942-0796

Illini State Park
R.R. 1, Box 4
Marseilles 61341
815/795-2448

Buffalo Rock State Park
Box 39

Ottawa 61350
815/433-2224

Matthiessen State Park
Box 381

Utica 61373
815/667-4868

Starved Rock State Park
Box 116

Utica 61373
815/667-4726

Forest Preserve Holdings

Cook County Forest Preserve
District

536 N. Harlem

River Forest 60305
708/366-9420

Chicago Portage Woods
Harlem Avenue near I-55
708/366-9420

Arie Crown Forest
17th & Salt Creek
North Riverside
708/447-0090

Palos Forest Preserve

104th Avenue between 95th &
107th Streets

708/839-5617

Black Partridge Woods
McCarthy Road east of
Will-Cook Road
Lemont

708/448-8532

DuPage County Forest
Preserve District

P.O. Box 2339

Glen Ellyn 60138
708/790-4900

THE I&M CANAL

Waterfall Glen
Bluff Road
Lemont 60439
708/790-4900

Will County Forest Preserve
District

Rt. 52 & Cherry Hill Road
Joliet 60433

815/727-8700

Veterans Woods

Keepataw Woods

Runyon Preserve

Lockport Prairie

Lambs Woods

Lake Renwick Heron Rookery
815/727-8700

Isle a la Cache

501 East Romeo Rd.
Romeoville 60441
815/886-1467

McKinley Woods
815/727-8700

Canoe Trails

Chicago Portage Canoe Trail
A 14.4-mile canoe trail begin-
ning in Cook County at Stony
Ford and ending in Lemont.
708/366-9420 or 708/261-8400

I&M Canal NHC Canoe Trail
Under development.
815/727-8700

DuPage River Canoe Trail
Access at Hammel Woods and
McKinley Woods.

Will County Forest Preserve.
815/727-8700

Norton Warehouse, Lockport

Old I&M Canal Canoe Trail
A 15.15 mile canoe trail from
Channahon to Morris; access at
McKinley Woods and also
Aux Sable

815/942-0796

Old I&M Canal Canoe Trail

A 4.6 mile canoe trail from Utica
to Lock # 14

LaSalle

815/942-0796

PLACES TO DISCOVER

Each of the communities in the
Corridor has a special identity
and a story unique to its past and
present. For further information
about the towns and about
special events, festivals and other
local celebrations, telephone or
visit one of the Corridor Visitor
Centers.

Blue Island

Founded 13 years before the
Canal opened, Blue Island
became home to British, Ger-
man, Italian, Scandinavian,
Hispanic, and Slavic immigrants.
The town’s historical society
maintains a display in the public
library.

Bridgeport

On July 4, 1836, Bridgeport was
the scene of great excitement as a
ground-breaking officially
marked the beginning of
construction on the Illinois and
Michigan Canal.

Lyons

In September, 1673, French
explorers Marquette and Jolliet
arrived at a small stream known
as Portage Creek. At this point
they carried - portaged - their
canoes across open prairies to the
south bank of the Chicago River.
For centuries this site was an
intersecting point for land and
water routes. It was a crossroads
of travel for Native Americans,
French fur traders, and ultimately
for American pioneers. Today
this area is known as the Chicago
Portage National Historic Site. A
300-acre park, part of the Cook
County Forest Preserve District,
preserves this site and adjacent
lands.

Summit

This is the site that intrigued
Jolliet more than 300 years ago.
On one side of the dividing
point, water flows toward the
Atlantic Ocean; on the other side
water flows toward the Missis-
sippi River and the Gulf of
Mexico. Near Summit was an
ancient mud lake that filled wth
water and overflowed seasonally.
Indians and traders tried to time
their travels to take advantage of
these overflows in order to
journey in their canoes to or from
Lake Michigan.

Lemont

On the outskirts of this small
Canal town is St. James of the
Sag, a church built in the mid-
nineteenth century with lime-
stone found in the Corridor. Irish
immigrants who worked on the
Canal were buried in the
church’s cemetery. The Lemont
Area Historical Society Museum
is housed in the Old Stone
Church. A highway bridge
pedestrian walkway provides a
spectacular view of the Des

Plaines River, the Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Canal, the
Illinois and Michigan Canal, and
a major railroad line.

Argonne National Labora-
tory, one of the nation’s leading
research facilities, is located just
outside Lemont.

Romeoville

This Canal town offers visitors
opportunities to review and
experience typical activities of
French traders and trappers
during the fur trade era. Visit the
Isle a la Cache Museum to see
special exhibits about the region.
Interpretive tours help to recreate
the adventures of these pioneers
as they traveled the wilderness of
Illinois more than a century ago.

Lockport

This Canal town is considered
one of the best preserved Canal
towns in existence today. Its
historic district, bounded by the
Canal, 7th Street, Washington
Street, and 11th Street, offers no
less than 37 historic sites and
structures.

Historical sites in Lockport
that deserve special attention:
Lock No. 1, the first lock built on
the I&M Canal. The 1&M Canal
Office, the original headquarters
for the Canal Commissioners,
now the Will County Historical

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

the entire region, includes prairie
grass, wildflowers, and wildlife
side by side with modern
industrial facilities.

Joliet

This Canal town is the site of the
Rialto Square Theatre, restored
to the opulent grandeur of the
twenties. It houses hundreds of
original sculptures and the
largest handcut crystal chandelier
in the United States. In addition
to the Rialto Theatre, Joliet’s
other places of historical interest
include Joliet Central High
School, the Old Illinois State
Penitentiary, and Brandon Road
Lock. The city is the site of the
Will-Joliet Bicentennial Park, a
performing arts center, Pilcher
Park Nature Center, and the
Joliet Historical Society
Museum.

Channahon

At Channahon Access, visitors
can walk a trail following the
Canal towpath, sensing the time
more than a century ago when
the path yielded under the hooves
of countless mules towing heavy
barges and canal boats. The Park
is the locale of the DuPage River
Dam, Locks 6 and 7, and a
restored locktender’s house. The
building is used today as a home
for the Park Ranger.

ments, the Aux Sable aqueduct.
This structure was built to carry
the Canal over a stream and keep
the level of Canal water constant.
A visit to this bridge of water is
enhanced by the way it sits
almost in isolation, back from
the road and surrounded by trees,
an oasis of tranquility.

Gebhard Woods Access is
the headquarters for the Depart-
ment of Conservation’s Illinois
and Michigan Canal State Trail.
Also located in the Park is a
Corridor Information Center and
Nettle Creek Aqueduct. The
biggest tree in Illinois, an Eastern
cottonwood, still grows in this
Park. The William G. Stratton
State Park, a popular boat
launching facility on the Illinois
River, is located in Morris. These
parks offer visitors both scenic
and active recreation.

Seneca and Marseilles

These are typical of smaller
Canal towns. The Illini State
Park lies near Marseilles and
offers a beautiful view overlook-
ing the Illinois River.The scene
also provides an interesting
historical sidelight as one
compares the large twentieth
century boats passing through
the Illinois River Marseilles
Lock to an imaginary Canal boat
passing through the small I&M

began the debates that helped
decide the 1858 senatorial
campaign and provided Lincoln
with national prominence. A
memorial commemorating the
first debate is the centerpiece of
Washington Park. Other historic
landmarks are Reddick Mansion,
across from the Park, and a
memorial to W.D. Boyce, the
founder of the Boy Scouts of
America. Boyce was a resident
of the city and is buried in
Ottawa Avenue Cemetery.

The Effigy Tumuli in Buffalo
State Park are a remarkable
example of monumental art. Five
earth effigies (or tumuli) - a
snake, turtle, catfish, frog, and
water strider - were built on a
sandstone bluff overlooking the
Illinois River Valley.

Utica
The LaSalle County Historical
Society is located in one of the
Canal-front warehouses once
intended to serve the people op-
erating and traveling on the
Canal. Its exhibits include
artifacts and displays interpreting
the history of the Canal. Halfway
House, a historic landmark, is on”
the outskirts of Utica, near
Ottawa.

Starved Rock, with many
hiking trails, and Matthiessen

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Society Canal Museum. The
Gaylord Building. Lockport
Historic Trail, a walk along the
Canal towpath to Lock No. | and
Dellwood Park. The trail’s signs
interpret key aspects of Canal
activities. Lockport Prairie, part
of a prairie which once covered

16

Morris

At Lock No. 8, east of this Canal
town, the Canal’s waters flow
quietly past the Aux Sable
locktender’s house as they once
flowed under the Canal’s boats.
Here is also located one of the
Canal’s engineering accomplish-

Canal locks. Seneca also features
an 1861 grain elevator.

Ottawa

History buffs will love Ottawa as
a watershed site of Americana,
for here is where Abraham
Lincoln and Stephen Douglas

State Park located just south of
Utica offer visitors opportunities
to see a wide variety of plant life
and wildlife. The Illinois
Waterway Visitor Center houses
a major exhibit on the I&M
Canal and the 20th Century
Waterway system.

LaSalle

Lock No. 14 in this Canal town
is a prime example of what all of

the Canal’s locks looked like

when the Canal was at its peak

operation. Huge wooden gates
opened to let in or discharge

water to raise or lower boats to

the required level.

Peru
Here the waters of the I&M
Canal leave their manmade

detour. At Peru, the waters of the

Canal merge with the Illinois
River, are carried
down to the
Mississippi, and
flow eventually
into the Gulf

of Mexico.

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POINTS OF INTEREST

Chicago

* Field Museum of
Natural History

« Art Institute

« Museum of Science
and Industry

* Shedd Aquarium

* Sears Tower

Blue Island
* Blue Island Public Library
and Historical Society Museum

"i 3C Interstate, State, Local Roads

Cities, Towns, Villages

Parks/Conservation Areas

Lyons
* Stony Ford
* Chicago Portage

North Riverside
« Arie Crown Forest

Palos Park

« Columbia Woods

¢ Children’s Farm and
Nature Center

Willow Springs
« Little Red Schoolhouse
Nature Center

Lemont

¢ St. James of the Sag Church
and Cemetery

+ Argonne National Laboratory

* Lemont Area Historical
Society Museum

* Waterfall Glen

LEGEND

«eee Illinois and Michigan Canal

National Heritage Corridor Boundary &

Ranger Station/Visitor Center

Picnic Areas
Camping
@ Toilets

O01 5 Kilometers North
—--——__—

1 5 Miles

* Black Partridge Woods
¢ Lemont Landing

Romeoville

«Isle a la Cache Museum

« Veterans Woods

* Romeoville Prairie
Nature Preserve

Lockport

+ Fitzpatrick House

« I&M Canal Visitor Center

« Norton’s Mill

* Illinois State Museum-
Lockport Gallery

« Will County Historical Society
Museum and Pioneer
Settlement

* Gaylord Building

* Lock No. |

* Lockport Historical Trail

* Lockport Lock and Dam

¢ Dellwood Park

17

ILLINOIS
INDIANA

————————rwree—e ae

¢ Messenger Woods

¢ Runyon Preserve

¢ Lockport Prairie Nature Center
¢ Lambs Woods

Joliet
¢ Rialto Square Theatre
¢ Will-Joliet Bicentennial Park
¢ Joliet Central High School
* Old Illinois State Penitentiary
¢ Pilcher Park Nature Center
¢ Brandon Road Lock and Dam
¢ Joliet Area Historical

Society Museum

Channahon

¢ I&M Canal State Trail -
Channahon Access

¢ McKinley Woods

¢ Des Plaines Conservation Area

Morris

¢ I&M Canal State Trail -
Gebhard Woods Access
(Trail Headquarters)

¢ W.G. Stratton State Park

« Nettle Creek Aqueduct

¢ Biggest Tree in Illinois

¢ Goose Lake Prairie State
Natural Area

¢ Heidecke State Fish and
Wildlife Area

¢ Aux Sable Locktender’s House

¢ Aux Sable Aqueduct

¢ Lock No. 8

¢ Grundy County Historical
Society Artifacts Display

¢ Chief Shabbona’s Grave

Seneca
* Old Grain Elevator

Marseilles
¢ Marseilles Lock and Dam
¢ Illini State Park

Ottawa

¢ Washington Park (site of
Lincoln-Douglas debate)

¢ Reddick Mansion

¢ Fox River Aqueduct

* I&M Canal State Trail -
Buffalo Rock Access

* Effigy Tumuli - Buffalo
Rock Access

Utica

¢ Illinois Waterway
Visitor Center

¢ Starved Rock State Park

¢ Matthiessen State Park

¢ LaSalle County Historical

18

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Society Museum
¢ Halfway House

LaSalle
¢ Lock No. 14
¢ Little Vermilion Aqueduct

ANNUAL HERITAGE FESTIVALS

October

Annual Pioneer Crafts Festival

815/838-5080

Lockport, Pioneer Settlement
Early American crafts, exhibits
and demonstrations.

Burgoo Festival

Second weekend
815/667-4861

Utica, citywide. Enjoy settler’s
“burgoo” (stew), historic
displays, rides, games.

November

Christmas Housewalk
Ottawa, Pitstick Pavillion

Christmas Crossroad
815/838-3357

Lockport, Lockport East
High School.

One of the largest regional
annual crafts fairs.

January

Winter Wilderness Weekend
815/667-4906

Utica, Starved Rock

Visitor Center.

Guided hikes, cross-

country skiing.

March

Spring Craft Show
815/223-7600

Downtown Peru

A variety of native and ethnic
crafts & holiday decorations.

Eastern Cottonwood, largest tree in Illinois (Credit: Susan Post)

April

Will County Folk Art Festival
815/838-5080

Lockport, Pioneer Settlement
Heritage arts & crafts, music,
folk dancing, exhibits.

May

Annual Wildflower Pilgrimage
815/667-4906

Utica, Starved Rock State Park
Guided hikes around park to
view wildflowers.

A Taste of Joliet

late May/June
815/741-7275

Joliet, Memorial Stadium
Four days of food,
carnivals, music.

June

Island Rendezvous at Isle

a la Cache

815/886-1467

Romeoville, Will County Forest
Preserve District, first Saturday
Annual gathering at Isle a la
Cache of costumed enthusiasts
recreating the annual meeting of
the French and Indians for trade.

Summer Performing Arts
Concerts

815/838-1183

Lockport, Dellwood Park Sun.
eves. June, July & August Free
outdoor concerts.

Concerts on the Hill
815/740-2216

Joliet, Bicentennial Park
Thursdays June, July & August
Free concerts at

outdoor bandshell.

Annual Taste of the

Illinois Valley

815/223-7904

Peru, Centennial Park

Ethnic food, rides, games, crafts,
auctions, entertainment.

Montreal Canoe Weekends
815/667-4906

Utica, Starved Rock State Park
Voyageur canoe replica rides.

Old Canal Days

Third weekend

815/838-4744

Lockport, [&M Canal, Historic
District, Central Square
Parade, arts & crafts, music,
heritage shows, beer garden,
games, food, historic tours,
prairie tours, demonstrations of
early American crafts, petting
zoo, horse carriage rides,
carnival, museum.

July

Dulcimer Festival

Second weekend

815/942-0796

Morris, Gebhard Woods Access
Features both hammered and
mountain dulcimers, other
stringed instruments.

Waterway Daze

Third weekend

815/740-2921

Joliet, Bicentennial Park, Bluff at
Jefferson. Watercraft parade,
food, live entertainment.

Friendly City River Fest
July-August

815/433-0084

Downtown Ottawa

Food, beer, ethnic music &
dance, games, 10K run, parade
and special events.

NOTE: Most Corridor com-
munities have traditional
American heritage celebrations
on July 4, Independence Day.

August

Annual Channahon Three
Rivers Fest

815/467-5361

Channahon, Sage & Bluff Sts.

THE I&M CANAL

Parade, carnival rides, games,
beer garden, dancing.

Annual Keepetaw Days
708/257-6787

Lemont, 1200 Warner,

Lemont Plaza

Carnival with live entertainment,
rides, beer garden, food and
Labor Day Parade.

LaSalle County Annual Folk
Festival

815/434-5328

Ottawa, 4-H Club Fairgrounds
Family-oriented festival depict-
ing farm and home life in the
1800s. Music, food,
entertainment.

Founder’s Day

815/886-6222

Romeoville, Romeoville Recrea-
tion Department

Parade, food, special events and
fireworks.

September

Summit Ethnic Festival
708/563-4800

Summit, Summit Park (58th &
Archer) Ethnic foods, beer
garden, entertainment, children’s
games.

Turn of the Century
Celebration

815/667-4906

Utica, Starved Rock State Park
German and Dixieland bands,
horseshoes, high wheel bikes,
hot air balloons, vaudeville
show, paddlewheel steamboat
rides in Illinois River, children’s
games.

Buffalo Rock Bluegrass
Festival

815/942-0796

Ottawa, Buffalo Rock State Park
Second weekend

Features bluegrass and
folk musicians.

I1&M Canal Rendezvous
Mid-September
708/496-1890

Willow Springs, Columbia
Woods, Cook County
Forest Preserve

Festival brings together crafts-
men and others recreating the fur
trade era of American history.

Grundy County Corn Festival
815/942-2676

Morris. Last weekend

Displays of agricultural products
and machinery, petting zoo,

arts and crafts,

photography, fireworks.

READ MORE ABOUT IT

There are several excellent
books, guides and brochures for
both researchers and laypersons
interested in the Corridor and its
history. These include:

The Illinois and Michigan
Canal National Heritage Corri-
dor: A Guide to Its History and
Sources, edited by Dr. Michael
Conzen and Kay Carr, Northern
Illinois University Press, 1988.
This invaluable volume gives an
annotated description of source
documents and repositories of
archival material. Call NIU Press
at 815/753-1826.

I&M Canal, A Corridor in
Time, by John Lamb, Lewis
University, 1987. A summary of
the historical events and person-
alities that led to the digging of
the Canal and its operations. Call
Dr. John Lamb at Lewis
University at 815/838-0500,
ext.322.

The Corridor Journal is
published by the Corridor Com-
mission on a semi-annual basis.
It includes a Calendar of Events
as well as articles written by park
staffs. Call the Corridor Com-
mission at 815/740-2047.

Lincoln's Connections with
the Illinois and Michigan Canal,
by Dr. Wayne Temple, publisher
Illinois Bell, 1986. This book
details Lincoln’s efforts as a state
legislator to get the Canal built,

as well as his travels on the
Canal. Call the Corridor Com-
mission at 815/740-2047.

An Inventory and Evalu-
ation of Known Archaeological
Resources in the Illinois and
Michigan Canal National
Heritage Corridor, Illinois,
American Resources Group,
Ltd., 1985. Call the Corridor
Commission at 815/740-2047.

Ice Age Geology: Illinois
and Michigan Canal National
Heritage Corridor, Mllinois State
Geological Survey, 1989. Call
the Corridor Commission at 815/
740-2047.

The Corridor Commission
has many more booklets, tour
guides and other informational
materials on the I&M Canal
Corridor. Call them at 815/740-
2047 for additional assistance.

A CORRIDOR’S PROGRESS: AN
1&M CANAL CHRONOLOGY

1673

French explorer Jolliet recom-
mends building a canal through a
low divide separating the
Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers.

1835

The second Illinois Canal
Commission is created by the
State of Illinois and successfully
raises money.

1836

Construction begins on the Canal
on July 4.

1848

The I&M Canal officially opens
its locks. The Midwest's hub
moves to Chicago

from St. Louis.

1854-1900

Advent of the railroad and
decline of Canal traffic.

1982

Upper Illinois Valley Associa-
tion and Friends of I & M Canal
are formed to promote the
Corridor concept.

1984

The President signs the bill
recognizing the I&M Canal as
the first National Heritage
Corridor on August 24.

Groundbreaking for two-
and-one-half mile recreational
and interpretive I&M Canal Trail
in Lockport. Interns from the
University of Chicago scour the
120-mile Corridor system
preparing the first bibliography
of the Corridor’s historical
materials.

Michael Heizer begins work
on his Effigy Tumuli, huge
animal earth sculptures on land
acquired by the Ottawa Silica
Company.

The State of Illinois
announces new funds for the
Corridor, including the I&M
Canal State Trail and Starved
Rock State Park.

1985
Blue Island Historical Society
opens Local History Room at
Public Library.

Effigy Tumuli earth sculp-
tures formally dedicated.

1986

Executive Director Lee Hanson
hired to staff Corridor Commis-
sion. National Park Service
details first Interpretive Special-
ist for the Corridor.

Illinois resurfaces three
miles of towpath and dredges
portions of Canal near Utica and
Seneca.

Corridor Commission and
Illinois Department of Conserva-
tion (IDOC) enter into agreement
to rehabilitate structures on the
Canal. Lock No. 1 rehabilitated
at Lockport and archaeological
work done there.

Training completed for 27
volunteer interpreters at 11 sites.
The Gaylord Building
restoration to 1860s appearance
completed and opened to public

20

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Double-crested cormorant at
Lake Renwick

with state visitors center, Illinois
State Museum Gallery and
private restaurant.

4.1 million visitors come to
the Corridor’s major attractions.

1987

Illinois Department of Conserva-
tion restores Aux Sables
Aqueduct and Lock No. 14,
surfaces hiking/biking trail
through Ottawa. Pumpway and
spillway in Utica-Marseilles area
installed to relieve stagnation

in Canal.

Brochures for Corridor and
A Corridor in Time published.
Signage put up on major
interstates.

300th anniversary of death
of Robert Cavalier de LaSalle
celebrated at Starved Rock.

Several Corridor towns, laid
out and established by the Canal
Commission in 1837, celebrate
their sesquicentennials.

Seven visitor centers
established by Corridor at
existing facilities.

Corridor is designated
Economic Corridor of Opportu-
nity by State of Illinois, making
it eligible for tourism and
marketing funds.

Ribbon-cutting at Gaylord
Building by Governor
Thompson.

Economic Development
Agency of U.S. Department of
Commerce gives $419,000 grant

to Commisssion for Revolving
Loan Fund to encourage
economic revitalization.

Corridor visitation increases
to 4.4 million during 1987.

1988
Friends of the I&M Canal
sponsor major cleanup of Canal.

First National Conference
on Historic Canals co-sponsored
by Friends of the I&M Canal
and IDOC.

Starved Rock State Park
Lodge refurbishing completed.

Metropolitan Water Recla-
mation District of Greater
Chicago establishes 26-mile trail
between Chicago Portage site in
Chicago and Lockport. New
trails added and others upgraded.

Farm east of Lockport
recognized as oldest farm in
Corridor; oldest industry in
Corridor is Joliet Steel Mill.

Corridor communities hold
ethnic festivals.

Five boat tours of northeast
portion of Corridor waterways
are conducted by Upper Illinois
Valley Association.

Ice Age Geology of I&M
Canal Corridor published by
Illinois State Geological Survey.

Illinois legislature appropri-
ates funds for restoration of
Reddick Mansion.

Gaylord Donnelley, guiding
force behind restoration of
Gaylord Building, one of ten
individuals honored nationwide
by President Reagan for privately
funded historic restoration.

Photo exhibit Lemont and
Its People opens, and videotape
on local quarrying industry
prepared.

Revolving Loan Funds used
to renovate old terminal property
on Des Plaines River; barge
unloading to begin there. New
motel opens.

UPS announces plans for
reuse of former General Motors
plant in Willow Springs. Oscar
Mayer Company builds distribu-
tion center in Joliet.

I&M Canal bibliography
published by NIU press.

1989

Attendance in Corridor up 2.6%,
with 4.5 million visitors at

25 sites.

Isle a la Cache Museum in
Romeoville rehabilitated.

Illinois State Water Survey
completes hydrology study on
additional water needs of Canal
for aesthetic and recreational
purposes.

Corridor Commission
adopts Preservation Treatment
Policy for use of Commission
funds.

Department of Conservation
completes following rehabilita-
tion projects: Aux Sable
Aqueduct, Little Vermilion
Aqueduct, resurfacing of 30
miles of I&M Canal towpath.

Land and Water Conserva-
tion Fund authorizes $561,000
for land purchases in Corridor.
Three land parcels acquired.

Work begins on-Fitzpatrick
House, donated by Material
Service, slated to be
Commission’s offices.

Historic Cemetery Preserva-
tion Conference held.

Filming begins on Canal
Corridor, to be released in spring
of 1990.

Chicago Maritime Society
opens new museum in Chicago,
including information about
importance of Canal to
Chicago’s growth.

Rehabilitation of Gebhard
Woods Interpretation Center
begun by IDOC.

Acquisition of Lake
Renwick Heronry near Plain-
field.

Passage of $50 million bond
issue by Will County Forest
Preserve District provides
monies for rehabilitation of
historic industrial properties and
open lands preservation. a

Portions of this Guide excerpted

from materials provided by the

Illinois and Michigan Canal
National Heritage Corridor
Commission and the National
Park Service.

THE I&M CANAL

REBUILDING AN ECONOMY

Along the winding Illinois and Michigan
Canal Corridor in northern Illinois,
economic development is taking place at a
steady pace. Buildings have been restored
and rehabilitated, new businesses brought
into the area, and legislation passed to help
fund new projects.

“T don’t know that economic
development (of the Canal Corridor) is
booming,” says Sue Bobinsky, head of the
Heritage Corridor Convention and Visitors
Bureau. “Economic develop-
ment takes a longer time.”

But there has been
progress in the six years since
the Illinois and Michigan
Canal National Heritage
Corridor, as it is officially
known, was established in
recognition of the area’s past
and potential contributions to
the nation’s development.

A Transportation Corridor
The first order of business
was keeping those businesses
that were already in place.
“Retention of businesses is a
big portion of economic de-
velopment,” says Bobinsky.
And it’s not always been easy
or successful. Ten years ago,
the electronics arm of General Electric
employed 17 thousand in the Canal Corri-
dor. As competition increased worldwide,
the plant cut back and seriously considered
moving facilities to Canada, says
Bobinsky. “It’s down to four thousand
workers now, but we were able to help
convince them to stay in the area.”

Several regions within the 120-
mile-long Canal Corridor have been desig-
nated Illinois Enterprise Zones, qualifying
them for incentives from the state.

by Charlyn Fargo

In Joliet, one of the oldest steel
mills in the nation was abandoned, along
with a host of other manufacturing facili-
ties, bumping unemployment numbers to
over 26 percent in the early 1980s.

But in the last three-and-a-half
years, 10 thousand new jobs have been
added, reports Ruth Calvert Fitzgerald,
President and CEO of the Joliet/Will

County Center for Economic Development.

“Being in the Corridor is one of our selling

The Gaylord Building, Lockport (Credit: Hedrick Blessing)

points,” says Fitzgerald. “It’s one of the
amenities we can offer in terms of quality
of life.”

In the 1800s the Canal allowed
cargo to travel from New Orleans to
Buffalo, New York. And, following the
lessons of the past, in early July of 1990
Joliet unveiled a downtown masterplan for
the waterfront area, where barges still
pass through.

Barge transportation lost out to
railroads and eventually highways in the

old days, but the Canal Corridor’s impor-
tance as a transportation link is still
evident.

United Parcel Service recently
took over a General Motors plant in
Willow Springs that had been shut down. It
will be a $150 million project for a national
distribution center. “This is still a transpor-
tation corridor,” emphasizes Bobinsky.

Officials believe that development
of recreational and educational facilities is
key to future economic de-
velopment. “Tourism is the
number one growth industry”
states Bobinsky. “We can’t
keep looking for revenues
from manufacturing. We’re
now looking at tourism.”

A Major Attraction

Jack Wayland, chairman of
the Lock 14 Illinois and
Michigan Canal Committee,
is working on a project that
will dovetail tourism and
business. Recently the
Illinois legislature approved
a bill that authorizes $2.5
million for dredging one-
and-one-half miles of the
Canal near Lock 14 at
LaSalle/Peru and $250,000
for an engineering study. The legislation,
to be carried out by the Illinois Department
of Transportation’s Water Resources Divi-
sion, awaits the signature of Governor
James Thompson. No money was appropri-
ated by the legislature to fund the project,
but the Water Resources Division has the
option to fund it from other sources.

If approved, Wayland believes the
dredging will pave the way for new
marinas near the Canal, bringing five
million to seven million dollars in revenue

each year. The site, near Huse Lake, spans

~

100 acres. At a minimum, he expects a
600-slip marina to be constructed. The
Chicago area currently has fewer than
8,000 slips for boats, while a city such as
Detroit has more than 20,000.

“There’s a real strong need,” says
Wayland. “All the marinas are filled to
capacity. This is the largest stretch of
waterway between Chicago and East
Peoria. If you go north, every six or seven
miles, you hit a lock, but there’s not a lock
south of this for 70 miles. People are using
the waterways to recreate, but they won’t
do it unless they have a slip to tie their
boat up.”

The committee hired Economic
Research Association of Chicago to do an
economic study of the idea. “They think
we'll catch local enthusiasts as well as
people from Chicago,” said Wayland.
“With the high demand for slips, accessi-
bility from two major interstates and the
land available, I don’t see how it can miss.
Our interest in this project is to help local
tourism and the region’s economic viability
- to improve the LaSalle/Peru
waterstreet area.”

He foresees future hotels, festival
grounds, maybe even a civic center as a
result of the rejuvenated Canal area.

A Solid Foundation
One of the first projects in the Corridor
was a two million dollar restoration of the
Gaylord Building in downtown Lockport.
It is the oldest industrial structure along the
I & M Canal, dating from 1838. The final
price tag on renovation surprised owner
Gaylord Donnelley. “It cost a lot more than
I thought it would going in,” says Don-
nelley. “From an economic point of view,
you can’t say it was profitable. But I’ve
been told it's been a positive catalyst in
revitalizing the Corridor. That’s
worthwhile.”

Originally used as a warehouse,
the structure was eventually purchased in
the 1870s by George Gaylord, Donnelley’s

i)
NR

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Joliet Steel Works (Courtesy: Upper Illinois Valley Association)

grandfather. Donnelley formed the Gaylord
Lockport Company with members of his
family to finance the restoration and re-use
of the building. It now houses a restaurant,
museum and an interpretive center.

“T hope downtown Lockport will
be more developed,” says Donnelley.
“Shopping is the number one recreational
pursuit. We need a few more shops to pep
up the town. It was a sleepy village, but
now it’s stirring itself. In fact, the whole
area is stirring itself.”

Lee Hanson agrees. “I’m pleased
about the progress we’ ve made in eco-
nomic development,” says Hanson. “I’ve
been around long enough that I don’t hold
any illusions that things happen overnight.
Id rather lay a solid foundation than try to
make a quick buck.”

It was Hanson who made Darryl
Anderson, one of the owners of a Super 8
Motel that has located in Ottawa, aware of
a revolving loan program that the Corridor
Commission offered to spur economic
development. “I originally saw an ad ina
hotel/motel magazine saying Mendota,
Illinois was looking for a motel to be
located there,” said Anderson. “But by the
time I talked to them, they already had one.
They told me about Ottawa and to talk to
Lee (Hanson). We looked at the area and
were impressed with the growth, the
proximity to Interstate 80 and the tourism.

But we’re here because of the Corridor
funds. We probably wouldn’t have come
without that.”

The revolving loan program offers
lower interest rates and money to busi-
nesses that will come into the €orridor. In
addition to the motel, another loan of
$100,000 was made to Spivey Marine
Terminal to purchase an old terminal
property on the Des Plaines River, near
Joliet. The terminal was renovated and
barge operations begun. A third loan was
made to a surveying firm in Lockport,
which restored an 1860s railroad depot.

Other Success Stories

Larry Bianchi, Executive Director of the
Ottawa Area Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, has lived in Ottawa most of his
life. He has seen the region’s economic
upturns and downturns firsthand.

“This area suffered from the same
economic problems in the late 1970s and
early 1980s as most of the rest of the
country. It just didn’t bounce back as fast.
However, the last two to three years have
seen LaSalle County’s unemployment rate
go down to seven percent. In raw numbers,
there are more people working in LaSalle
County than ever before. The problem is
they may be underemployed.”

According to Bianchi, Ottawa and
environs experienced a significant loss of

manufacturing jobs in the past 10 years -
approximately two thousand.

The first order of business was
helping existing industry to retool and
compete in a new, technologically complex
world. The Ottawa Chamber of Commerce
and Industry worked hard with the city of
Ottawa to get the area designated a State
Enterprize Zone.

G.E. Plastics is one of the success
stories. It has been in the area since the late
1960s, and it is now spending $15 million
in a retooling process. With 450 employees
and the possibility of additional employees,
it is an example of upgrading the economy
and providing greater job security. Another
existing business, Borg Warner Auto
Division (BWD), has been able to add 75
to 100 employees to its already substantial
work force of 235.

“There has also been quite an
effort in both Ottawa and throughout the
Illinois Valley to create jobs,” says
Bianchi. “Ottawa is willing to work with
any industry. What we have attracted in
new companies are foreign firms, mainly
Japanese.”

Three Japanese firms have come
to LaSalle County. Mitsuboshi Belting
Company (MBO), which makes industrial
and auto belts, arrived on the scene three
years ago and employs 250 people. Nak-
agima is a typewriter manufacturer and
assembly plant now located in Ottawa,
with 75 employees. Ottawa Steel & Wire, a
wire production company owned by O & K
American (a subsidiary of the Japanese
firm O & K), has 15 employees. Bianchi’s
group is working with the company on its
Phase II expansion.

Bianchi stresses retail sales as a
good measure of a successful local
economy. Since 1984 retail sales have met
or beaten inflation every year. Retail sales
have risen 6.5 percent in 1986, 8.2 percent
in 1988, and 8.0 percent for the first four
months of 1990 on an annualized basis.

“Tourism has had a lot to do with

our success, as well as people coming to

THE I&M CANAL

Ottawa as the county seat,” says Bianchi.
“The city of Ottawa, the Ottawa Chamber
and the Heritage Corridor Visitors Bureau
have jointly funded an effort to boost
tourism. We’re also opening a satellite
tourism office of the Corridor here. While
we don’t want to overcommercialize,
Ottawa does offer beautiful historical,
recreational and scenic attractions that
make people want to come here. Starved
Rock State Park is just one of the sites
people come to see.”

Targeting Tourism

Lee Hanson says economic development
isn’t his strong suit compared to historic
preservation and interpretation. However,
developing and refurbishing the state
parks, forest preserves, local parks and
archaeological and historic sites have
already begun to pay off. “One of the main
focuses in economic development has been
tourism,” says Hanson. “And we’ve seen
the number of visitors increase 12 percent
in the last four years. This year, it looks
like it’s going to be up again.”

At the same time, five new motels
located in the Corridor in 1989 and
occupancy rates are up at all motels, adds
Hanson.

Hike or Bike the 1&M Canal State Trail

A new “Fam” tour, to familiarize
bus operators with the area, has helped fill
motels and restaurants. During the last one,
four future tours were booked by bus
companies before the tour was over.
Operators are taken throughout the
Corridor for two-and-a-half days, staying
at motels, seeing all the major attractions
and eating at local restaurants.

Victor Anderes has owned and
operated the Red Door Restaurant in Peru
and the Rockwell Inn in Morris for the past
20 years. “I’m sure the establishment of the
Corridor has helped my business,” says
Anderes. “We get people who come here
just to visit the Canal. It’s hard to say how
many, but the Canal adds a lot to the area.
What they’re talking about now is getting
boats like the ones they had in the 1800s to
go up and down the Canal near Peru. That
would be an attraction.”

Anderes lives on top of the Red
Door Restaurant, within viewing distance
of the river traffic. “We've been part of the
waterstreet for 25 years. We even have
customers who park their boats, then call
us for a ride to the restaurant.”

The Corridor's biggest asset is its
proximity to Chicago, says Hanson. “For
companies, we're promoting the fact that
we have a fairly reasonable labor market,
an incredible transportation network and
great recreation.”

Hanson is convinced that having
top notch attractions, such as the renovated
Starved Rock Lodge and IIlinois Water-
ways Visitor Center, can do as much to
help local businesses as bringing in a new
business. “The problem is people don’t
know about the Corridor.” says Hanson.

Downtown...and Argonne

One of the Commmission’s main goals in
the next few months is to work with the
Upper Illinois Valley Association to
establish a Corridor-wide Main Street
program. Up to four communities will be
selected to revitalize and market their

historic downtown areas. “We haven't

picked the cities yet,” says Hanson. “But
we've got four to six communities that
have expressed interest. We’re going to
make those downtowns work again.”

Jerry Adelmann, President of the
Upper Illinois Valley Association, says by
sometime this fall, applications will be
accepted. “There has been a lot of focus on
historical architecture, waterfront areas, on
a project-by-project basis. The feeling now
is that we need a comprehensive approach.
And we’re seeing a new momentum to
do that.”

24

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Adelmann believes the heart and
soul of any community is its downtown.
“People want to go to a place of interest,
but beyond that they need to shop and eat
and stay overnight,” he says. “And for
businesses, the image of community is its
downtown. A thriving downtown symbol-
izes local pride and quality of life.”

The Canal itself has lost its draw
as an economic tool, adds Hanson.“Much
of the Canal is dry. In some places, such as
Chicago, it's even been paved over with
roads. Its value is aesthetic, says Hanson.

Barge locking through at Starved Rock Lock and Dam

“Tt can't be used for shipping anymore.
We've got to turn to its historic and
aesthetic value.”

The Commission has plans for a
movie about the Corridor that will be
shown at visitor centers, the placement of
wayside exhibit panels at attractions so
guides aren’t needed, and a brochure to
highlight the area’s economic development
opportunities. The Commission also hopes
to have a tour guide book of the region
published, including driving and
walking tours.

It also wants more groups to take
advantage of the area’s diverse offerings.
Recently a biking group from Chicago
used the Corridor’s 50 miles of bike paths
to host its bike-a-thon. “We had 1,500
bikers,” says Greg Kile, Site Superinten-
dent of the I & M Canal State Trail.

Perhaps the brightest star for
future economic development lies with
Argonne National Laboratory, predicts
Hanson. “The laboratory has the potential
to attract other spin-off industries to the
area.” says Hanson. “There is a movement
afoot to make sure those industries locate
in the Corridor.”

Bob Stewart, a Corridor Commis-
sioner and Executive Director of the Three
Rivers Manufacturers’ Association,
believes the next five years will result in
more progress than the first five years.
“We've started to create a sense of
belonging together,” he says. “All along
the Canal, you’re seeing a sense of
cooperation that wasn’t there five years
ago. It’s remarkable.”

Janet Muchnik, immediate past
Chairman of the Commission, puts the
Corridor into perspective: “The vision that
led to the I&M Canal helped shape the
physical features, the economy and the
political history of Illinois and of this
region. The formation of modern Corri-
dors can create a similarly dramatic impact
on the future economy of this and
other regions." a

THE I&M CANAL

SURVEYING THE I & M

The soil of Illinois, the wealth of minerals
that lie beneath it, its plants and animals,
and the water and climate that sustain its
life are irreplaceable resources. Since the
mid-1800s the three Illinois Scientific
Surveys - Natural History, Water and
Geological - have conducted research to
promote the preservation and wise use of
these natural resources.

The expertise embodied in the
Surveys has proved invaluable in the work
of preserving, researching and renewing
the Canal Corridor.

Reach Out and Teach Someone

At early briefing sessions in 1980, when
Open Lands unveiled its dream of a new
kind of historical park, the Illinois Geologi-
cal Survey (IGS) was there with informa-
tion no one else had, according to Tribune
outdoor writer John Husar.

From its archives, maps and
publications, and from the mouths of its
geologists poured stories of the forces that
shaped the land that shaped the economy
that shaped the settlements from prehistory
to present day.

“The I & M Canal played a
unique role in the economic development
of the region and the nation. An apprecia-
tion of its geological setting adds to its
continuing historic, natural, recreational
and educational value,” sums up Dr.
Morris Leighton, Chief of the Illinois
Geological Survey.

The gathering and sharing of
information did not stop with federal
designation in 1984.

Lisa Smith, an IGS geologist,
undertook a mile-by-mile odyssey to
inspect and inventory the geological and
natural features of the | & M Canal
Corridor under a grant from the Commis-
sion and the Department of the Interior. /ce
Age Geology, a fold-out Park Service

“ ca

View of Illinois River from Starved Rock

brochure, written by Lisa and Ardith
Hansel of the IGS, is an inspired short
course in geology.

It interprets the beauty and variety
of the landscape along the Canal; explains
the birth of distinctively shaped hills and
ridges, bedrock gorges, marshes and lakes;
and describes the evolution of glaciers and
glacial meltwaters.

Smith’s research provided, in
addition to /ce Age Geology, the basis for a
number of IGS publications. Among them
is a field trip guide for the Canal Corridor
Joliet area, authored with staff geologist
David Reinertsen. Reinertsen has led four
field trips a year for the past ten years
through the Survey’s Educational Exten-
sion Unit. These day-long trips acquaint
the public with the state’s landscape, rock
and mineral resources, and the geological
processes that shaped them.

Built on Rock

Lime and building stone were major
construction materials in the Canal
Corridor from the days of pioneer settle-

ment. Beginning in 1848, mules and horses

drew limestone laden barges to building
sites up and down the Corridor. Segments
of original limestone sidewalks can still be
seen today in Lemont and Lockport. This
distinctive building material was used
throughout the Corridor region.

The turn of the century brought
changes in economic conditions and
construction materials that caused the
collapse of the building stone business.
However, early in this century crushed
stone for aggregate became the primary
product of the local stone industry and now
accounts for $100 million annually in the
Chicago area alone.

Sand, gravel and stone are used
today mainly for making concrete, macad-
amizing roads and for railroad ballast.
Ironically, the enormous growth of
metropolitan areas that creates the demand
for crushed stone eliminates local sources
by choking off expansion where near-
surface reserves are known.

Illinois Geological Survey

researchers are working on locating

alternate sources and developing new
methods of mining - research that is of the
utmost importance to the health of the
construction industry. Using historical
literature (such as unpublished census data
and old newspaper accounts), field
reconnaissance, and sophisticated com-
puter imaging, geologists are able to make
recommendations for economically viable

quarry operations.

4

Lock No.1, Lockport

Trouble-shooting the Canal

“The Water Survey’s work on the I & M
Canal is illustrative of our mission in
relation to Illinois’ water resources. Our
role is one of investigation - to assess the
problems, and then to use our scientific and
engineering skills to suggest solutions to
those problems,” explains Richard
Semonin, Chief of the Illinois Water
Survey(IWS). “It is often up to other state
agencies or those in the private sector to
actively implement those solutions.”

In 1980 and again in 1981 heavy
rainstorms flooded farmlands adjacent to
the I & M Canal between Morris and
Seneca, damaging corn and soybean crops
in the area. At the request of the Illinois
Department of Conservation (IDOC),
which manages the Canal, Water Survey
scientists and engineers assessed what the
flooding situation would have been if the
Canal had not been built. Extensive

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

hydraulic and hydrologic investigation and
soil studies indicated that the Canal was
not responsible for the flooding.

On the contrary, “...if the Canal
did not exist, it is likely that flooding of the
area under investigation would be greater
than it is now,” reported Mike Demissie,
the Water Survey’s principal investigator
in the case.

Exonerating the Canal, however,

is not the primary goal of IWS research
projects. A preliminary evaluation was
recently completed under a $10 thousand
grant from IDOC to determine the feasibil-
ity of rehabilitating the I & M Canal in the
Lockport area. The resulting report
indicates that rehabilitation and mainte-
nance would require significant effort and
a significant infusion of funds. For this
reason, the study recommends that reha-
bilitation efforts be pursued in stages.

The report specifically cited three
main tasks that could be accomplished
without further studies: (1) rehabilitating
Lock No.1 and installing a tiltable weir
(small dam); (2) clearing and cleaning the
Canal within the targeted segment; and (3)
making arrangements with a nearby
Texaco plant to modify its water control
structures so that adequate water is
available in the I & M Canal.

The report also indentified
problems in need of additional and detailed
investigations and outlined the estimated
scope and cost of such studies.

According to Nani Bhowmik, the
Survey’s hydrology and river mechanics
specialist, maintenance of a minimum
water level, at least from spring through
fall, would allow the recreational use of the
Canal in the Lockport area by providing
sufficient water for canoeing. He added,
optimistically, “With proper reconstruc-
tion, parts of the Canal could become an
important recreational waterway in the
nation comparable to many canals
in Europe.”

That, most likely, will be the
subject of future studies.

Watching the Birds

Unless you’re a serious “birder” youve
probably never spotted (in trayels around
Illinois) the black crowned night heron, the
double-crested cormorant or the great
egret. These three birds, on the state's
endangered list, breed on two small islands
in Lake Renwick, a former quarry, just one
mile southwest of Plainfield. They are
joined, at one time or another, by nearly 70
other bird species, including six additional
state endangered species.

Redwing blackbird in marsh created by
quarrying

Rookery at Lake Renwick

Lake Renwick, a secluded 316-
acre spring-fed gravel pit, is included in the
Illinois Natural Areas Inventory because it
supports the state’s largest and most
diverse heron rookery. The first heron
sighting in the area was reported by the
Illinois Natural History Survey (NHS)
in 1942.

The good news - bird populations
have increased dramatically over the years;
the bad news - there is fierce competition
among the birds for nesting space. Unfortu-
nately, the constant encroachment of
civilization means there are very few
places in the area for these birds to move.
The necessities of bird life (food, perching
and nesting) are in jeopardy.

The dominant trees on the island,
box elders and Siberian elms, are becoming
more and more distressed. As the trees age,
there is increasing damage from wind,
from continual scavenging for nesting
twigs, from an excess of acidic bird
excrement, and from the stress of increas-
ing numbers of large birds taking off and
landing. There is real cause for concern
that the biosystem that functioned so well
over the years might collapse. (It has been
protected from human interference by
Chicago Gravel Company fences.)

The area has long been a focus of
serious birdwatchers and conservationists,
but in 1987 it was the Illinois Department
of Transportation (IDOT) that focused on

THE I&M CANAL

Lake Renwick. The department was
working on a proposal to widen Route 30,
which skirts Lake Renwick’s southern
shore, and it contracted with the Natural
History Survey to assess the effects of a

major road project on the avian inhabitants.

A two-person NHS team, armed
with binoculars and a 60X spotting scope,
monitored bird arrivals, foraging habits,
and mating and nesting activities from
April through December, 1987.

Field observations were weighed
in light of earlier NHS research, and expert
testimony was solicited from naturalists
and scientists familiar with the area.

The resulting study addressed the
proposed highway project as well as the
major conservation goals of the | & M
Canal Commission, Upper Illinois Valley
Association, the Will County and Illinois
Audubon Societies, the Forest Preserve
District of Will County and the Illinois
Department of Conservation.

Recommendations were made for
strategies during construction that would
result in the least amount of disturbance to
bird populations, especially the breeders.
The study proposed additional manage-
ment strategies, including the building of

Glacial boulder, Goose Lake Prairie

artifical nesting structures (successfully
used at Baker’s Lake in Barrington),
upgrading the lake’s third island to make it
more desirable for nesting, and adding a
buffer zone to shield birds from traffic
noise and trespassing fishermen.

For the time being, however, the
road project was put on hold. This past
January the Lake Renwick property was
purchased from its private owners by the
Forest Preserve District of Will County
and IDOC.

Lake Renwick will be closed to
the public for about a year and then
provisions will be made for carefully
monitored interpretive field trips.

Joe Milosevich, Audubon member
and official census taker at the heron
rookery, who first dreamed of protected
status for Lake Renwick more than seven
years ago, said it well: “*...wishful thinking
provides a practical starting point.”

In their work in the Canal Corri-
dor, Illinois’ Surveys have added the appli-
cation of sound scientific research to
wishful thinking. Their efforts ensure that
the nature of the Canal will always be
remembered, protected and
managed wisely. a

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE PEOPLE OF THE CANAL

By Tara McClellan

As the Illinois and Michigan Canal
channeled its way through history, it
intercepted the lives of thousands of
people. These are the people of the Canal.
Their commonality is a vision, a passion,
something which tugged at, and in some
cases, defined their hopes and dreams. To
the Indians the area was their existence; to
the explorers the Canal was a link between
two worlds; to the immigrant workers it
was a future and a fortune; to the politi-
cians who struggled to finance it, it was a
passageway to a prosperous new era; to the
railroads which eventually defeated it, it
was a competitor.

To Canal town inhabitants it was
and is a way of life. And to the people who
now reclaim it, it is the perfect marriage of
the past and the future. It is hope, promise
and passion for what has been and what
can be.

Genesis

The first people of the Canal area were
Native Americans. As early as 6000 B.C.,
they used this as a major transportation
artery through the valleys and prairies
where they farmed and hunted plentiful
game. Tribes later traded furs with French
voyageurs, who depended upon the area’s
waters for their living.

The Frenchman’s tie to the area
began in the 17th-century when two ex-
plorers were paid to determine if the Mis-
sissippi River flowed south. If so, France
would be able to increase its trade business
and gain Catholic converts in the Great
Lakes region. In 1673 map-maker Louis
Jolliet and Jesuit missionary Father Jacques
Marquette, with an Indian guide, deter-
mined that the Mississippi did flow to the
Gulf of Mexico, with the Illinois and Des
Plaines Rivers as northern tributaries.

According to John Lamb, Director
of the Lewis University Canal and Re-

28

William Gooding designed the Canal and made
certain it featured hydraulic power. He was
involved with the Canal until his death.
(Courtesy: Illinois State Historical Library)

gional History Special Collection, when
Jolliet returned to Montreal he urged the
French government to dig a river between
the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers. This
would open a transportation corridor from
the Niagara River to the Gulf of Mexico
and help establish colonies.

However, a few years later
explorer Robert Cavalier de La Salle
traveled the area and discounted
Jolliet’s idea.

Interest in the region declined
until 1780, when Americans saw it as a
way to move west via the Great Lakes and
Mississippi River.

Only after the territory became a
state, and state government took charge of
the project, did the Canal became a reality.
During this time the legislature suggested
building a railroad instead of a canal.

Jerry Adelmann, President of the
Upper Illinois Valley Association, says
Abraham Lincoln, a legislator at the time,
“argued persuasively that the Canal was
much more democratic (than a railroad).

He contended that anyone could put his
boat on it, if it were not controlled by this
monopoly, the industrialist.” Lincoln
helped create legislation which started the
Canal’s development.

Finally, in 1836, the state began
construction. The Canal Commission
appointed William Gooding to be the
Canal Engineer. Gooding, who was Chief
Engineer of the Canal from 1836 to its
completion in 1848 when he became
Secretary of the Canal Board of Trustees,
planned a new route. He designed the
Canal so it could be used not only for
transportation but also for hydraulic power
to draw industry. Gooding, who Lamb
describes as “very much a Yankee,” waded
into political conflicts with cities along the
Canal who were afraid one city would
receive more hydraulic power than the
other. He won, and hydraulic power
remained part of the project.

The Immigrants
Thousands gave their lives to build this
new passageway to prosperity. When
construction began, there weren’t enough
residents for a workforce. Irish workers
who had helped build the Erie Canal about
a decade earlier were transported in, but
more were needed. Canal supervisors
shipped in additional workers from Ireland
(and other countries) on a promise of
money and a dream of liberty. Most were
illiterate men and boys who left their
families to come to this land
of opportunity.

“They didn’t promise them much
other than a job, a gill (one-fourth of a
pint) of rum and ninety cents a day for a
full day’s labor - maybe 16 hours,” Lee
Hanson says. But Ireland was experiencing
a famine, so any job at any rate sounded
good. “The labor was pick and shovel
work, wheelbarrow work, literally carving

out the Canal. And when they hit rock it
became tougher...it took a long time.”

The money, or scrip, they were
promised was virtually useless. “It turned
out to be paper which was only good for
buying Canal land,” Hanson says. “So
what they ended up with, some of them,
was a lot of land.” They scratched out a
living, though many died from malnutri-
tion, cholera and other diseases resulting
from unsanitary living conditions. Acci-
dents and assaults maimed and killed
others. Escape back to Ireland was an idle
dream. They had no money.

“Let’s face it, the foremen and the
contractors that brought these people out
here did cheat them. They did take some of
their salary for lousy food. The workers
were living in tent camps, terrible living
conditions...But these guys had very little
recourse. The local sheriffs would support
the contractors more than the Irish, so there
wasn’t anybody to turn to,” Hanson says.

There were worker riots, although
Hanson adds that there was also infighting
among Irish clans who carried their feuds
over from Ireland. Area settlers, who
harbored no fondness for the immigrants,
responded by organizing posses to keep the
peace. They attacked the rioters,
killing many.

Some of the Irish workers became
wealthy. They used their scrip to accumu-
late land and become successful farmers, as
did some German Canal workers. Later,
Polish, Slovenian, Lithuanian, Italian, and
other immigrants came to work in the
quarries, coal mines, steel mills, and other
industries that germinated from the Canal.
Descendants of the immigrants still
populate the towns that sprang up around
the Canal - Lockport, Marseilles, Lemont,
Seneca, Utica, Joliet, Willow Springs,
Morris, Ottawa, and, of course, Chicago.

Lockport was the site of the
original headquarters of the Canal Com-
missioners and the first lock. Flour mills,
grain warehouses, boatyards, docks, and
Canal offices dotted the town.

THE I&M CANAL

Like Lockport, Marseilles had
waterfalls and rapids which allowed for the
development of waterpower on the Canal.
Flour mills and tanneries arose there.
Seneca and Utica were primarily grain
ports. Joliet had a variety of Canal links: a
lock, a lot of trade goods, and railroad
connections. And Willow Springs offered
the Canal diggers camping and a clean
supply of water from its spring (which
Indian tribes had once used as a medicinal
spring for wounded braves).

About six years after the Canal
was completed, the railroads built beside it
and became formidable competitors. Thus
began the Canal’s slow downward spiral.

Reclaiming Their Heritage
It is almost impossible to discuss current
reclamation efforts without hearing the
name of Jerry Adelmann. Adelmann was a
key figure behind the federal National
Heritage Corridor designation.
Adelmann’s professional ties to
the Canal are an extension of his personal
ties. He grew up in Lockport as a sixth
generation resident. “My great-great-great
grandfather was the first settler of Homer
township...east of Lockport. My grandfa-

John Husar, Judith Stockdale and Jerry
Adelmann (I. to r.) all played significant roles in

the development of the Canal Corridor

ther would tell me stories...that were told to
him by his grandmother.”

Adelmann developed an interest
in historic preservation and received a
master’s degree in it. His dissertation topic
led him back to his hometown for research.
He became involved with reclamation
efforts in Lockport which led to his work
with the Canal and the Corridor
designation.

“In the late 1970s...I got to
thinking...there’s a whole network along
the Canal of interesting towns and land-
scape features. The whole river valley, in
many ways, tells us a story that is quite
remarkable, from early geological history
through the period of French exploration,
fur trade, settlement, and ethnic and
labor history."

He was led to the Open Lands
Project, which had been working to save
the Canal since the 1960s.

“Out of the blue, I got a call from
someone named Jerry Adelmann,” says
Judith Stockdale, then Executive Director
of Open Lands and current Executive
Director of the Great Lakes Protection
Fund and a Federal Corridor Commis-
sioner. She and Adelmann started brain-
storming about ways to use all of the
Canal’s resources and finding funding to
do so. They worked together to lobby
locally and federally for the unique
National Heritage Corridor designation.

“We battled the attitude that
there’s nothing here worth saving,” she
says. “But this is a landscape with beauty
and it has an incredible history that’s been
passed over.”

Local village leaders, like then-
Willow Springs Village Trustee Suzanne
E. Bobinsky, have fought the same battle.
“To make the public within the Corridor
aware of what they have is a very difficult
challenge,” says Bobinsky, who has
worked for the past four years educating
citizens about the Canal’s history and
significance. Bobinsky was General
Manager of the I & M Canal Civic Center

Authority, an agency that works on various
Corridor reclamation efforts. She is
currently Executive Director of the
Heritage Corridor Visitors Bureau in Joliet.
The awareness and support of
business was, and is, key to the success of
the Corridor. People like Thomas Flavin
helped get business support. Flavin,
General Manager of Business Planning for
Inland Steel, has deep roots in the Canal
region. Most of his direct ancestors worked

Man opening wicket gate on I&M Canal (Courtesy:

on or around the Canal. He had been a
member of Open Lands Project for several
years and was a founding member of the
Upper Illinois Valley Association. Flavin is
currently Chairman of the Association and
works with the Federal Commission, other
groups, and businesses on Corridor
projects.

One of the government agencies
that saw the light was the Metropolitan
Water Reclamation District of Greater
Chicago. Nicholas J. Melas, President of
the District’s Board of Commissioners,
said Open Lands Project and others
approached the District in the 1970s about
establishing a national linear park along the
Canal. The District leased about 400 acres

30

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

along the Canal to establish the Centennial
Trail (with more acreage to come), so that
people could hike from the southwest
suburbs of Chicago to Lockport. The
District is also working with the Civic
Center Authority to build a museum about
the I & M Canal and the settling of Illinois.
Private support was also crucial to
the Canal’s reclamation. Key individuals,
like Edmund B. Thornton, took the Canal
projects to heart. Thornton grew up fishing

Illinois State Historical Library)

in the Canal and walking and horseback
riding along its towpaths. In the 1960s he
helped save an abandoned stone warehouse
in Utica that was going to become a
parking lot. Now it is the La Salle County
Historical Society Museum.

“My early days of youth were
being transformed into preserving and
promoting certain features on the Canal,”
he explains. Thornton felt a federal
commission should be created to handle the
Canal and he became its first Chairman.

Another individual who developed
a key Canal project is Gaylord Donnelley,
Honorary Chairman of R.R. Donnelley and
Sons Company, and a board member of the
Upper Illinois Valley Association.

Donnelley’s ancestors were Lockportians.
His grandfather, George Gaylord, had
bought an old Canal warehouse for a —
shipping and grain business and a store. In
the early 1980s, Donnelley, family
members, and others formed a corporation
to buy and restore the warehouse. The
building received one of the first Presiden-
tial Historic Preservation Awards.

The Past, The Present, and a Passion
But why have these people donated so
much of themselves to the Canal?

“The whole thing, all of the work,
is generated by those who have a passion,”
Bobinsky explains. “It’s exciting. I’ve been
involved in many things all of my life, but
this is one project that seems terribly
worthwhile because of the...vision, sense of
history, and commitment.”

“There are a lot of people out
there who care...and it’s that personal
conviction, that personal passion I think
that drives them,” Adelmann says. “I think
for many people, until recently, the Canal
was seen as a dirty ditch... That has
changed, and it is now becoming a symbol -
of the greatness of the area, a symbol of
achievement, of hope for the future.”

“It has to do with history and
conservation,’ Donnelley says about his
involvement. “I think it has a lot of
potential to become a very attractive place
to visit...It represents another era, and it
helped to develop that whole Illinois River
corridor...it wouldn't have developed
without the Canal.”

“It goes back to the spirit of man,”
echoes Flavin. “Heritage is a great
motivation...you realize how much has
been given to you and you don’t want it
destroyed. You want to pass it on to your
children. These efforts are a hope for the
future.” He believes the Canal gives people
a personal tie to history so “they can be
part of it, and it helps give them a sense of
responsibility about developing
their communities.” a

When the Irish immigrants traveled
here to build the Canal, they had no
place to worship. After six back-
breaking days of work, the Irish
spent Sunday, their only day of rest,
cutting rock and constructing St.
James of the Sag, a Catholic church
overlooking the Canal. Today the
churchyard is filled with the graves
of these workers, many of whom
died while building the I & M.

On a hill behind the chapel, in the Parish of
St. James

Are weather-worn and tangled graves with
mostly Irish names.

These faded flagstone monuments bear
witness to a dream

That a hundred fifty years ago no one
could have foreseen.

In a young town of Chicago on the Plains
of Illinois

The I&M Commission brought in
desperate men and boys

To have them build a great canal and
change the river’s flow

And wed the Great Lakes’ waters with the
Gulf of Mexico.

They came from ports in Galway, from
Cork and Baltimore

On a promise of more money than they’d
ever known before.

To carve a new beginning in a land of
liberty

They said goodbye and sailed across
the sea.

So bid farewell to famine, it’s off
to Americay

To work as a navigator for ninety cents
a day.

And hope to dig a fortune by the time they
reach LaSalle

On the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Tombstone at St. James on the Sag cemetery

The Illinois & Michigan Canal

Ten thousand Irish navvys reached out
across the land

And picked their way through the mud and
clay and moved it all by hand.

While the tyrant canal foremen worked
poor “Paddy” without pay

As he dreamed about his family in a
country far away.

For empty-handed promises were all they
came to know

With food and tools in short supply and
money running low.

Though many tried, thousands died,
longing to be free

Where the wild Blue Stem grasses grow as
far as you could see.

Then the coming of the railway made their
efforts obsolete

For it ran along her banks before the
digging was complete.

The locks were finally opened and they
tallied up the cost

With no mention of how many lives

were lost.

Now gone are the locks and boatyards, the
barges and the scows

And the clapboard shacks of “Corktown”
where the navvys used to house.

From Bridgeport to LaSalle and every
town along the way

Only remnants of this great canal
can still be seen today.

One Irish folksinger was so moved
by the saga of the immigrants, their
struggles, and the stories told by
their weathered gravestones that he
researched their history for six
months and wrote this song. By
Kevin O’Donnell of the Irish
folksinging group Arranmore, it tells
the story of the Irish immigrant
workers in a manner they would
have appreciated.

Neglected through the ages, her water
will not flow.
And where mule teams pulled the
river boats, now wild poplar grow.
Where canaling was a way of life that
I might have tried myself
It’s now buried in the pages of some

book upon a shelf.

And in the corer of that graveyard in the
Parish of St. James

Lies a noble Irish navvy who helped
pioneer these plains.

Who fled the great oppression just to build

himself a home

Now it’s the only piece of sod he’ ll

ever own.

So bid farewell to famine, it’s off to
Americay

To work as a navigator for ninety cents
a day.

And hope to dig a fortune by the time they
reach LaSalle

On the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

K. O’Donnell
copyright 1987

(continued from p. 8)

fever. Railroad enthusiasts were bringing
the good news of rail transportation to
Illinois, and, on paper at least, their
arguments were not helping the Canal’s
cause. A heated debate between Canal
proponents and pro-rail forces kept the
dialogue alive in the General Assembly.
However, rail transportation had

hidden costs.

“Shipping by canal was, in round
figures, about one-tenth the cost of
shipping by rail,” says University of
Chicago geographer Michael Conzen.
“Canals provided very cheap transpor-
tation for non-time-sensitive freight.
One could move tons of cargo at a
very low cost, provided that
time was not a consideration.”

The rail/canal debate
continued in Illinois until
federal funds were finally
approved for the construction
of a harbor in Chicago in
1834. With the opening of a
Great Lakes harbor at Chicago,
the issue died for a while. Finally,
the canal seedling germinated and
sprang through the soil into the bright
Illinois sunlight.

William Gooding, a canal
engineer who had worked on the Erie
Canal, was hired by the Commission in
February of 1836 to bring the I & M Canal
to fruition. He wanted to build a canal large
enough to accommodate the future of the
shipping industry, and advised that a “deep
cut” canal be built. The Canal was to be 60
feet wide at the water level, 36 feet wide at
the bottom, and not less than six feet deep.
The first shovel turned at Canalport (now
Bridgeport) on July 4, 1836.

Meanwhile, independent town
promoters had established communities in
the Corridor. The town of Peru was platted
in 1834, and about the same time Joliet and
Marseilles were established on land
purchased from the federal government.
Acting to thwart private development of

32

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

the 96-mile Canal Corridor, canal commis-
sioners set up canal towns opposite Peru
(LaSalle) and north of Joliet (Lockport).
“Lockport was originally settled
northeast of here,” says Rose Bucciferro,
President of the Will County Historical
Society in Lockport. “It was called Runyon
Town. With the construction of the canal
commissioners’ building, the town just
moved to where it is today.” Lockport is
also the site of Lock No.1 on the I & M

APRIL 9-1865

The I&M Canal terminus at LaSalle
(Courtesy: Illinois State Historical Library)

Canal. “There were two auxilliary locks to
the north,” continues Bucciferro, “but your
lock system starts here because you have
your first fall. And there are four more
locks between here and Joliet. This was the
business and administrative hub for

the canal.”

Other towns in the Corridor came
later: Morris, Channahon, and Lemont in
the mid-forties, Seneca in 1849, and lastly
Utica in 1867.

From 1837 to 1839, using mostly
Irish immigrant labor, the Canal project
moved forward. By the end of 1839, it
again faced abandonment for lack of funds.
In 1841 construction came to a standstill

for nearly four years. When the Illinois
State Bank failed in 1842, the prospects for
the Canal’s completion were non-existent.
To save money, Gooding’s deep water
canal system was abandoned in favor of a
shallow cut canal.

To complete the Canal, the state
had to borrow money from foreign
investors.

Racing with the Railroad

On April 20, 1848, the Canal opened for

navigation, eleven years, nine months, and
sixteen days after work on it had begun.

The Erie Canal, 267 miles longer

than the I & M, was completed in

only eight years.

For the next six
years, the Canal grew in

reputation and prospered.

But in 1854, the railroads -

true to their promise -

brought competition and

faster service to the
Corridor.

The Canal was
never a wildly successful
business venture, according to Rose
Bucciferro of the Will County Historical
Society. “It was put out of business by the
railroads in the late 19th century. They
kept their rates and fares low until the
demise of the Canal, and then they hiked
them right back up again.”

A quarter-mile west of the Canal
at Lockport, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship
Canal, a deep cut channel completed in
1900, is home to the barges that still haul
tons of goods from New Orleans to the
Great Lakes and beyond. Outside the
Illinois and Michigan Canal Museum, a
bed of steel rails separates the old canal
commissioners’ house from the shallow
ditch where the I & M Canal flows.

Every so often, a train whistle
blows boisterously through the Corridor, as
the now quiet waters lick old limestone
wounds, and remember a proud,
noble heritage. a

The Nature of Illinois Foundation

Board of Directors
Gaylord Donnelley

Chairman, Nature of Illinois

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Nature of Illinois
Ottawa Silica Company
Foundation, Ottawa

Michael O. Gibson

Treasurer, Nature of Illinois
Marine Bank of Springfield,
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.

Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

David E. Connor

David E. Connor & Associates,
Peoria

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie,
Bloomington

Janice D. Florin

Amoco Chemical Company,
Chicago

Kenneth W. Gorden
Kenway Farm, Inc. Blue Mound
Walter E. Hanson

Founder Hanson Engineers,Inc.,
Springfield

Richard C. Hartnack

The First National Bank of
Chicago, Chicago

Richard A. Lumpkin
Illinois Consolidated Telephone
Company, Mattoon

Charles Marshall
AT&T, Chicago

Stephen Mitchell
Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Chicago

James D. Nowlan
Knox College, Galesburg

George J. Oberlick
Turris Coal Company, Elkhart

Albert Pyott

Director, Illinois Nature
Conservancy, Winnetka
William L. Rutherford

Forest Park Foundation, Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
McDermott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

JR. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Dr. Roy Taylor
Chicago Botanic Gardens, Glencoe

Donald A. Wallgren
Waste Management of North
America, Inc., Oak Brook

Charles W. Wells

Illinois Power Company, Decatur

Michael Witte

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff
John D. Schmitt

Executive Director
Jean Gray

Associate Director

Estie Karpman
Assistant Director

Illinois Scientific Surveys
Morris Leighton, Chief

Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief

Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

David Thomas, Director
Illinois Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center

Supporters*
Corporate and Foundation:

Amax Coal Foundation; Amoco
Foundation; Arthur Andersen &
Company; James and Marjorie
Anderson Foundation; Archer
Daniels Midland; Atlas Refuse
Disposal; Baxter Woodman, Inc.;
Francis Beidler Charitable Trust;
Bell & Howell Foundation; Benton
& Associates, Inc.; Bi-Petro; Booth
& Hansen; Borg-Warner
Foundation, Inc.; Boulevard
Bancorp, Inc.; Carlson Knight
Kudrna, Inc.; Caterpillar
Foundation; Elizabeth F. Cheney
Foundation; Chicago Community
Trust; Chicago Title & Trust;

Coffield, Ungaretti, Harris &
Slavin; Commonwealth Edison;
David E. Connor & Associates;
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly; Arie &
Ida Crown Memorial; Deere &
Company; Deluxe Corporation
Foundation; Gaylord Donnelley
Trust; Gaylord & Dorothy
Donnelley Foundation; R.R.
Donnelley & Sons; Draper &
Kramer Foundation; Du Quoin
State Bank; Farnsworth & Wylie;
Field Foundation of Illinois; Jamee
& Marshall Field Foundation; First
National Bank of Chicago; Forest
Fund; Freeman United Coal
Mining Company; William B.
Graham Foundation; Greeley and
Hansen; Hamilton Consulting
Engineers; Hanson Engineers;
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Pu

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

Winter 1991 - A Delicate Balance

From the Foundation

All of the articles in this issue point to the delicate balance that
exists between economic growth, the esthetic quality of life, and
human health. “Chicago River Renaissance,” is the account of
ariver’s close link with the health, prosperity, and quality of life
of the people in a great city.

“The Pearl Rush” follows the rise and fall—and rise
again—of the mussel-fishing industry in Illinois. Another
waterborne article deals with the genesis of our own State Water
Survey, founded on the need to protect the quality of our state
water supply through scientific investigation and research.

“Mapping Illinois” is a striking example of technology
and sound scientific research working toward solutions for
landfill dilemmas and groundwater protection problems. On a
more intimate scale, you might get a chuckle and some good
suggestions from “Uninvited Houseguests”—yet another
example of environmental management.

A lively variety of topics to read about—with this
underlying message—it is vital that we, as stewards of our
environment, make today’s critical decisions on the basis of
sound scientific research.

The three Illinois Scientific Surveys—Natural History,
Water, and Geological—and the Hazardous Waste Research and
Information Center are powerful allies as we balance what we
want and need with what the earth requires of us.

I hope you will join me in becoming a member of The
Nature of Illinois Foundation and that you will enjoy learning
more about the subjects covered in this issue of The Nature
of Illinois.

Warmest regards,

Por bt Mwy

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Table of Contents

Chicago River Renaissance 5
It's varied, multifaceted; and, if you’ ve seen one section

of the River, you haven’t seen them all!

Mapping Illinois 5
The State Geological Survey looks deep into Champaign
County and creates maps that tell the inside story.

Surveying Illinois 9
Biorhythms Currents Geograms
Centering on Waste The Foundation

Wholesome Water in Abundant Supply 13

A floating biological field station on the Illinois River
marked the beginnings of the scientific study of water —
almost 100 years ago.

Uninvited Houseguests 17
Loathsome to people of European descent, cockroaches
are considered a sign of good fortune by Asians.

The Illinois Pearl Rush 20
Forty years after the great California gold rush, Illineis

had a rush of its own. The quarry was not gold,

but pearls.

About the Cover

Winter recreation on the North Branch of the Chicago River
(Courtesy Ralph C. Frese, Chicagoland Canoe Base, Inc.)

Published by The Nature of Illinois Foundation
Volume V, Number II

Editorial Staff

Jean Gray Editor

Estie Karpman Assistant Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation, Chicago

Stay In Touch

Name, address, delivery changes, and membership information should be sent to
The Nature of Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle, Suite 1666, Chicago, IL 60604,
312/201-0650. Master Card and Visa accepted.

Copyright 1991 by The Nature of Illinois Foundation. All rights reserved.

—~

~ THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

HICAGO RIVER RENAISSANCE teat

by Mike Isaacs and David Foster

Pe

td td Aid aed Cred DG hae

ime

The Chicago River, downtown: the city's other skyline

f the Chicago River had been born with
both a heart and a soul, it would likely

have developed an inferiority complex.
Like a neglected child who has stood in the
shadow of a favored sibling, the river was
eclipsed by Lake Michigan and left with a
questionable legacy.

Lake Michigan inherited sailboats
gliding along a blue horizon; power boats
pulling waterskiers in their foaming wakes;

netloads of wriggling silver smelt; sandy

beaches, alternately lapped and pounded by

waves; the excitement of air and water
shows; and the colorful explosions of 4th
of July fireworks.

Lake Michigan got the glory. The
Chicago River got the garbage.

Not Such a Bad Beginning
As early as 10,000 B.C., after the last

glacier retreated northward, Native Ameri-

cans paddled canoes along serene water-
ways, presaging today’s growing band of
waterway enthusiasts. Evolving Indian
cultures, immortalized today in scattered
archaeological sites along the Chicago
River, spanned the years before the French
arrived on the scene.

The recorded history of the river
begins in 1673, when Marquette and Joliet
made a momentous portage from the Des
Plaines into the West Fork of the South
Branch and recognized the river’s impor-
tance. This small, sluggish stream suddenly
became a strategic objective in the Euro-
pean quest for empire. French explorers
had heard from Indians of a great river that
opened into a great sea, and they spent
decades looking for what they hoped was a
direct route to China. What they found
instead was an easy portage between the

Great Lakes and Mississippi watersheds

Fur trappers and traders followed
the explorers, but the French established no
permanent settlement along the river,
which for the time being remained in
possession of the Indians. The area passed
to the British in 1763 after the French and
Indian War and in 1783 to the United
States. Recognizing the importance of the
Chicago River, the United States in 1795
negotiated with the Indians for the mouth
of the Chicago River—and in 1816, for the
entire river corridor down to the headwa
ters of the Illinois River. Not only was this
an important transportation corridor for
men and supplies, it was vital for the
protection of the western border of th
fledgling country

Westward expansion cont
but the first real growth spurt for
promising portage occurred

the Illinois and Michigan ¢ (

sion, created by the Illinois State legisla-
ture, laid out towns at each end of the
proposed canal—Ottawa on the west,
Chicago on the east. Chicago’s first real
estate boom followed and early fortunes
were made. Incorporated as a city in 1837,
Chicago grew into a major depot for the
trading of raw materials and manufactured
products.

Consequences of Prosperity

From its earliest days, Chicago dumped
garbage in the river. That was state-of-the-
art sewage treatment technology in those
days. We may look back in dismay, but
the truth is: they did what they knew how
to do. And, in a sense they were not wrong.
Moving water is a powerful cleansing
agent; if a river moves far enough and fast
enough, garbage thrown into it will

break down.

These disposal techniques did not
pose a problem at first. After a short river
run, everything flushed efficiently into
Lake Michigan. But Chicago’s population
grew and so did its industry. By the latter
part of the 19th century the river could not
carry the load that was required of it, nor
could the lake dissipate it quickly enough.

Reversing the River
The first (and not widely known) reversal
of the river occurred in 1865 when the state
authorized the lowering of the I&M Canal
in an attempt to make the river flow away
from Lake Michigan and toward the Mis-
sissippi River. In 1885, the sewers and the
river were not up to the task of holding all
the water and, after a particularly severe
rainfall, raw sewage backed up into the
lake again. More than 90,000 people died
from cholera and typhoid.The tragedy led
to the creation of the Sanitary District of
Chicago—now called the Metropolitan
Water Reclamation District of Greater
Chicago (MWRD).

Entry onto Chicago’s scene of
such major polluters as the stockyards and
packing houses had compounded the city’s

i)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

problems, and, in the last decade of the
1800s, the new Sanitary District built the
newer, wider, deeper Sanitary and Ship
Canal to carry the city’s waste away. It was

gi

“The water quality
of the Chicago River system
has improved significantly
over the past 20 years...”

Thomas Butts,
Illinois State Water Survey

ofe

hoped that this engineering feat would
permanently reverse the flow of the
Chicago River and that polluted river water
would never again enter the lake. This
artificial waterway opened in 1900 and
cost $24 million.

Hardly two decades had passed,
however, before it became clear that addi-
tional sewage treatment was needed. Every
time it rained heavily, the swollen river
returned to its natural course. The Calumet
Water Reclamation Plant, still in operation

Sluice gates at Wilmette

today, opened in 1922 and was followed by
additional plants.

The most recent weapon in the
arsenal of the water treatment war is
MWRD’s Tunnel and Reservoir Plan
(TARP), called Deep Tunnel by most
Chicagoans. First proposed in the late
1960s, it was designed as a backup system
to prevent the overflow of raw sewage into
the river during and after heavy rainstorms.
The massive underground tunnel system
receives the excess flow from 5,000 miles
of existing stormwater sewers; and there
the water remains until the storm subsides
and MWRD plants can pump it up and
clean it. The system is still incomplete,
slowed by political controversy and a lack
of funds. Still, the river is cleaner; the
tunnels have reduced the number of
sewage overflows.

One factor, not to be overlooked
in a finer future for the river, is'that some
of the early polluters, such as meat packers
and the stockyards, began to leave Chicago
soon after World War II. The combination
of the loss of polluting industry and
improvements in sewage treatment was a
great boon for the river. By the late 1970s
the river only occasionally had raw sewage
floating in it.

or

es
JOCKING Fe

sai ESTE

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

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batt ek

Wendella, in operation since 1935, offers sightseeing tours and commuter service from the
Northwestern Station to the Michigan Avenue Bridge in spring and summer.

Chicagoans began to think of the
river as an asset. For the first time, they
could actually see it. (Before the end of
World War II, the river was flanked with
business and industry, so you couldn’t get
close to it. And probably you wouldn’t
have wanted to, because it was a sewer!)

An early visionary, architect
Bertram Goldberg, saw the possibilities of
using the river as an integral part of his
buildings and in 1959 he completed the
Marina City Complex. The twin towers
included a built-in marina and a restaurant
overlooking the river. Prior to this,
Chicago buildings literally turned their
backs to the river.

Mayor Richard J. Daley had
dreams of better days for the river
future in which you could actually “fish in
the river.” But such dreams take time
and effort.

a

Some Friends for the River

“No major transformation . . . can be
expected until the river is cleaned up,”
wrote Robert Cassidy in an article about
the Chicago River in Chicago magazine in
1979. The article led to the founding of

Friends of the Chicago River (FOCR), a
not-for-profit advocacy group organized
“to promote the Chicago River and its
adjacent lands as an historic, visual,
recreational, commercial, and hydrological
resource.” After becoming part of the
Open Lands Project in 1980, one of the
Friends’ first accomplishments was to
provide the impetus for amending the
Planned Development Ordinance (1983).
This amendment, strongly recommending
public access to the river as a necessary
component of any riverfront development,
was the first legislation adopted by the
Chicago City Council to guide and encour-
age development along the Chicago River.
Friends of the Chicago River was
reorganized in 1988 as an independent
entity and has been a powerful ally of the
Chicago River ever since. FOCR was a
major participant in a study that led to the
announcement by Mayor Richard M. Daley
on March 12, 1990, of the Chicago River
Urban Design Guidelines: Downtown
Section. Co-authored by FOCR and the
Chicago Planning Department, these
guidelines were adopted by the Chicago

Plan Commission and offer developers

clear and detailed suggestions on location
of buildings, provision of walkways,
landscaping, and seawall treatment. “It is
time,” said the mayor, “to be as proud of
our river as we are of the lakefront.”

FOCR has sponsored symposia
and national conferences on water-related
issues and has initiated clean-up days, boat
tours, and jazz cruises. With the Mayor’s
Office of Special Events and the City of
Chicago, FOCR cosponsors the annual
Chicago River Serenade—one of
Chicago’s many summer festivals. Center-
ing around the river, the Serenade has
included such events as a small ships
parade, a symphony orchestra on a floating
stage, a street cafe, raft races, and a
Venetian Night Masked Ball.

The Friends field a number of
diverse committees, according to Beth
White, FOCR executive director. “This

Walkway under the Michigan Avenue Bridge,

one of 52 movable bridges owned by the city

of Chicago

way, we have a satisfying task for every-
one who loves the river, no matter what his
or her strength, talent, or interest may be.

FOCR mapmakers have produced
four maps, each one covering a different
walking or driving tour along the river
Historical, architectural, and natural
features of the river are explained, de
Accord
ing to Alison Zehr, FOCR’s program

scribed, and located on the maps

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Summer's end on the North Branch—a natural water trail (Courtesy Ralph C. Frese,
Chicagoland Canoe Base, Inc.)

A Wilderness Surrounded

“You don’t hear nearly enough about
what’s happening on the North Branch
of the river,” protests Ralph Frese,
president of the Chicagoland Canoe
Base and a river advocate since the 40s.
“T see all those bumper stickers that say,
“Escape to Wisconsin.’ Parents teach
their children to be experts on Wiscon-
sin, but they have no idea what’s in their
own backyards.”

Frese is a blacksmith, a builder
of canoes, and proprietor of a boating
equipment store. He builds birch bark
and dugout canoes and hopes to
establish a museum with his collection
of 70 native and antique canoes. “This
country was discovered and settled by
birchbark canoes not covered wagons,”
he insists.

He enjoys floating down the
North Fork when water levels are high
in spring or after a heavy rain. “This is
the last refuge for a variety of wild
creatures in search of a secluded
habitat,” he says.

In the woods, from his canoe,
he has seen deer, raccoons, and a wide
variety of water fowl. There are rumors
of bobcats (a threatened species in

Illinois), but he doesn’t claim to have
seen one himself. “Every month of the
year, the river puts on a different dress,’
he continues. “Last New Year’s Eve,
we went out on the river and it was like
floating through a living Christmas
card. Half a foot of snow on the ground,
the water black as ink—out of the wind,
and not a sound. I saw probably 40
raccoons playing along the banks.”

The first sign of spring along
the North Branch is skunk cabbage,
poking green leaves up through the
snow. April and May bring crowds of
wildflowers and, says Frese, “about a
million shades of green.” In the fall and
spring, the river is a peaceful place to
watch the migration of birds. “The
herons are there then. During the
summer months they go farther north,”
he explains.

“The maples and oaks hang
over the banks of the river,” continues
Frese, “‘and with the sun streaming
through their leaves, they look like
stained glass windows."

’

It’s a natural 20 mile-canoe
trail—a wilderness in the middle of
seven million people.

director, there are seven separate walking
tours based on mapped segments of the
Chicago River Trail.

Rubber Ducks and Iron Oars

The river has become a focal point for
more and more activities. This past August,
thousands of spectators lined the banks of
the river to witness a major event in the
annals of water sports. At the sound of an
air horn, nearly 30,000 rubber ducks raced
against each other in a rare “rubber ducky”
competition. Participants in the derby
donated $5 to adopt a duck, which

bobbed and floated downriver across the
finish line.

Oxford and Cambridge brought
their 160-year-old rowing rivalry to the
waters of the Chicago River. It was one of
Oxford and Cambridge’s rare foreign
exhibitions, and the first such exhibition in
the United States. “This was arf ideal place
to duplicate our London race,” said one of
the coaches. “This water is eccentric and
full of challenges.”

Iron Oars, cosponsored by FOCR
and the Chicago River Aquatic Center, is
the longest smooth-water sculling race in
the world, covering a distance of fifteen
miles. The rigorous event draws contest-
ants from all over the United States who,
no doubt, think their oars are made of iron
by the end of the long race.

“Friend” David Jones of the
Department of Energy and Natural
Resources points to the tradition of dyeing
the river green every St. Patrick’s Day ina
well known salute to the city’s strong Irish
roots. A less well known and more solemn
event is the annual tossing of sins (written
on small pieces of paper) into the river as a
small enclave of Jews on the North Branch
atones each Yom Kippur.

Where Does the River Run?

The Chicago River is often described as
about one mile long, extending from the
Apparel Mart at Wolf Point to Lake

(continued on p. 24)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

MAPPING ILLINOIS

o the casual observer driving from

Chicago to St. Louis on I-55,

Illinois is a flat expanse of shape-
less prairie. To geologists who study the
Illinois landscape, however, those flat,
fertile prairie fields represent the tip of a
vast geologic iceberg. Buried beneath the
rich Illinois soil is a mountain of strata.
Herein the history of the state—from its
volcanic beginnings more than four billion
years ago to the last retreat of the glaciers
some 10,000 years ago—is chronicled in
layers of sediment. Under frozen fields of
winter wheat are prehistoric coral reefs.
Here the fossilized remains of crinoids or
ancient sea lilies, the harvest of eons past,
lie in beds of solidified mud. Here, too, are
primordial swamps and river beds—valleys
where waters of antiquity gouged channels
through solid limestone millions of years
before the first mammals appeared on
the continent.

But what does all this substrata
have to do with those of us who make our
home on the topsoil? Illinois geologists
have long known that strata formations
beneath the prairie soil have a direct
bearing on what happens at the surface. All
too often, however, the geology of a region
is overlooked when developers and
planners decide to break ground for a waste
disposal site. The results have occasionally
been costly for the state. Of the thirty-four
Illinois toxic hazard sites on the Superfund
national priority cleanup list, seven are
municipal landfills. Placed in geologically
unsuitable areas, where the risk of ground-
water pollution was high, these facilities
poisoned both land and water resources.

Geologists at the Illinois State
Geological Survey are finding new ways to
assess geologic conditions beneath the
state’s surface to forestall environmental
hazards on future projects. Using a
combination of traditional field study and

by William Furry

modern computer technology, they are
providing the essential topographical data
to help communities deal with the prob-
lems of the present while protecting the
state’s natural resources for generations
to come.

Armchair Geology

The Natural Resources Building on the
Campus of the University of Illinois is a
handsome, Georgian-style structure built
back in the thirties by the Works Progress
Administration (WPA). The long, four-
story facility takes up a city block and
houses the Illinois State Geological Survey
(ISGS) and the Illinois Natural History
Survey. Late on Friday afternoons during
the fall season, Survey employees listen to
strains of the rehearsing Illini Marching
Band as it makes its way across the
parking lot.

The ISGS takes up most of the
east portion of the Natural Resources
Building. Visitors to the first floor are
greeted by some of the terrestrial wonders
of geology. Displayed here are glass cases
filled with a plethora of coal samples,
stunning fluorspar crystals, and magnifi-
cently preserved fossils. On the second
floor, outside the ISGS Computer Research
and Services Section, the walls are lined
with geologic maps and colorful printed
diagrams.

Robert J. Krumm is an associate
geologist in the Computer Research and
Services Section of the Survey, who has
worked with the Illinois Geographic
Information System (IGIS), a relational
data-base system, for the last six years.
From his chair on the second floor, Krumm
commands an unusual perspective of
Champaign County. With the aid of the
Survey's state-of-the-art graphic computer,
he observes the county from the bottom up,
starting with bedrock. For the last several

Champaign County map shows materials at a
depth of about 5 feet. Fine-grained glacial tills
(green and blue) are favored for landfills, while
coarse sand and gravel deposits (red) are to

be avoided.

months, Krumm and other geologists have
been using the $135,000 computer to
prepare three-dimensional maps of
Champaign County—maps that will help
county officials site a new landfill.
“Geological mapping is concerned
with describing and representing subsur-
face materials that cannot be readily
observed, “ says Krumm. With the aid of
this new computer technology, geologists
can simulate the removal of succeeding
layers of strata from the surface of the
county all the way to its bedrock floor. For
Krumm and the other geologists who
worked on the mapping project, what's
below the surface of the county is far more
interesting than what lies af the surface
Unlike southern and northwestern
Illinois, where much of the bedrock
topography is exposed at the surface,

Champaign County has no exposed
bedrock. Before the last million years of
geologic history in the state, most of
Illinois’ surface topography resembled that
of Jo Daviess County and southern Illinois
south of Carbondale. Large river systems
and various erosional processes incised the
limestone valley floors, gouging canyons
and valleys in the bedrock in a process
that took millions of years. When the
glaciers came down from the north, they
filled up bedrock valleys with glacial
debris—sand and gravel, a fine-grained
clay material geologists call “till,” and
loess, a fine-grained wind-blown dust at
or near the surface.

Until recently, mapping the
bedrock surface of the state has been the
task of traditional geologists who painstak-
ingly analyzed individual core samples
from drill sites and prepared maps based on
the data collected. “Basically, what you are
looking for in preparing a bedrock map is
the first description of rock in a bore hole,”
explains Krumm. “From that point you
determine the elevation, plot those points
on a map, and then draw your contours
accordingly.”

For the Champaign County
project, all known geologic descriptions of
the county were entered into the
computer’s data banks. This information
came from 3,000 well logs, which are
records of water well drillers’ descriptions
of bore samples. Although some of the logs
were over half a century old, the records
are still considered reliable. More than
50,000 separate bits of information were
fed into the computer, including the
locations of all known water wells in the
county. More than 1,000 square miles were
included in the study.

(opposite) Maps from 14 separate layers were
combined to show the thickest sand and gravel
(violet) in the northwest part of the county, the
thinnest (black) in the southeast. Aquifers
(violet and dark blue), water-bearing pools
located in sand and gravel substrata, are
eliminated as possible landfill sites.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

The computer software used in
creating the ISGS’s three-dimensional
topographical studies is little more than a
year old. It was created by a company
called Dynamics Graphics. To most
geologists it’s all pretty new, although the
U.S. Bureau of Mines and many oil compa-
nies have found the technology useful in
locating new seams of ore and pockets of
natural gas and oil. The system requires
two computers to run the software, pro-
grams called Interactive Surface Modeling
(ISM) and Interactive Volume Modeling
(IVM), which, when programmed simulta-
neously, produce the distinctive three-
dimensional image. The system requires
sixteen megabytes of memory and handles
more than one million instructions per
second. Geologist Krumm emphasizes that,
“It’s not how much memory a system has,
it’s how fast it can do the job.” Paul
DuMontelle, branch chief for the ISGS’s
Environmental Geology and Geochemistry
Branch, says the new computer systems
have changed the way geologists will study
the earth. “Had this technology existed five

Areas of widespread thick aquifers (dark blue)
were excluded from consideration as landfills,
as were l00-year floodplains, wetlands, urban
areas, airports, and state-owned lands (white).
Areas for further investigation have been
identified (light blue) in southeastern
Champaign County.

years ago, it would have cost the state
millions to install. Because of cheap
memory and very, very well-thought-out
computer programming, it has opened up a
whole new world at a fraction of the cost.”

Present Needs

The most pressing need for studies like the
Champaign County project is in the area of
landfill siting. Illinois has mandated all
counties with a population of over 100,000
to come up with plans for the disposal of
solid waste by 1995. Geologists at the
ISGS are working with Lake County
officials to help them locate a site for a
new landfill. Several other counties are in
various planning stages. The Survey also
prepared a similar computer map for the
state Department of Nuclear Safety of the
proposed Martinsville low level nuclear
waste storage facility in Clark County.

“There’s a tremendous need for
mapping,” says Richard Berg, head of the
Groundwater Protection Section of the
Survey. “The problem in Illinois is that
there are very good maps providing
regional information, but no detailed maps
for specific areas. Regional maps help us
prioritize what areas of the state are in
greatest need of mapping—but to actually
identify and solve problems, more detailed,
site-specific maps are necessary.”

One of the most important areas
of research at the Illinois State Geological
Survey is the need for delineating aqui-
fers—water-bearing pools located in the
sand and gravel substrata.

According to Paul DuMontelle,
scientists in the Groundwater Protection
Section of the Survey are closely monitor-
ing groundwater contaminants caused by
landfill leachates, a pollution problem that
has plagued the northern Illinois counties
of Boone and Winnebago. “Protecting
groundwater resources is a long-term
project for Illinois,” says DuMontelle.
“The new computer facilities provide us
with very rapid ways of responding to
questions about bedrock surface, about

IVM software creates a 3-D model. Darker green and blue indicate fine deposits.

drift thickness, and about the availability of
water for a specific community. The
Geographic Information System not only
graphically illustrates that information, it
does so in a spatial manner.” The new
computer system also allows operators to
update the data banks as new information is
generated so that maps can be revised
instantaneously.

Computer mapping in Illinois is
still in its infancy; it will need to be verified
through practical applications. In areas of
the state where water-well logs are sparse
or unavailable, data are often unreliable and
will remain so until sufficient core samples
are taken. In southern and northwestern
Illinois, where bedrock is exposed at the
ground surface, more traditional methods
of mapping permit collection of informa-
tion on bedrock without drilling.

But as the state struggles to come
to terms with the problems of waste
disposal, mapping—both computer and
traditional methods—will play a major role

in determining where and how Illinois will

deal with the problem. “Maybe. geologists
are biased, but the geologic information
and setting is crucial in locating either a
landfill or a hazardous waste site,” insists
geologist Krumm. “If the natural environ-
ment isn’t there to support it, the only
alternative is to design a solution. Unfortu-
nately, there are a lot of facility siting
decisions made without taking into account
the geology of the area.”

How Much and How Soon?

According to James Eidel, Principal
Geologist and Branch Chief for the
Mineral Resources and Engineering
Branch of the Survey, a cost-benefit study
of geologic mapping in the state will form
the integral part of an ISGS report to be
presented to the Illinois Senate in early
1991. This report will outline funding
requirements for a detailed mapping
program for the state. “It would cost the
state on the order of $50 million to remap
the state,” says Eidel. “The American

Association of State Geologists drafted a

federal bill to introduce mapping legislation
to the Congress,” Eidel says. “The legisla-
tion will request up to $35 million per year
for mapping of the United States. We are
hoping that Illinois will provide up to $1
million per year and that the state dollars
will be matched with federal dollars. If we
had that money now, we could completely
remap the state at the detailed scale of
1:24,000 (one inch equals 2,000 feet)-in
about twenty-five years. That’s the kind of
effort we are talking about.”

The next time you drive that
stretch of I-55 from Chicago to St. Louis
and find yourself staring at the vast expanse
of shapeless prairie, you might want to
keep this in mind: To really get to know
Illinois, you've got to start at bedrock and
work your way up. @

William Furry is a regular contributor to
The Nature of Illinois and a staff writer for

the Illinois Times in Springfield.

All maps courtesy ISGS

Every
living
creature
has a part
to play
in the

Nature of Illinois

Join
THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS
FOUNDATION (NIF)

today!

fembership benefits include:

our award-winning magazine;
access to our speaker’s bureau,
special seminars, and field trips;
information on scientific publications
to keep you “science literate.”

IF is a not-for-profit corporation formed in
983 to foster an understanding of and
ppreciation for the natural resources of
inois and to promote the activities and
esearch of The Illinois Scientific Surveys
Jatural History, Water, and Geological) and
te Hazardous Waste Research and
‘formation Center. These four agencies,
ader the Department of Energy and Natural
esources, have earned the respect of
sientists and government officials well
2yond the borders of Illinois.

.. the public and private sectors working
»gether to enhance the quality of life and
asure a healthy economic future for the
'tizens of Illinois.

embership application follows page 16.

awing of Red Fox €
sampaign, Illinois

Courtesy Beverley Sanderson

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

URVEYING ILLINOIS

1S)

ter-intakes of power plants
1 water-treatment facilities.
ey pose a threat because they
: prodigious multipliers and
‘y compete for food with
ne fish and with native mid-
stern mollusks.

INHS will convert a
ction of the Lake Michigan
logical Station to analyze
lections of zebra mussels
1 will pursue outside funding
establish a research and
ication program.

Used with
permission,
Detroit Edison

cently, Survey researchers

ve linked these declines to a
luced food supply (primarily
gernail clams, snails, and
\yflies). To date, an unknown
‘in associated with sediments
3 been implicated in these
clines. A project currently
derway seeks to identify the
\prit and its source. Toxicity
the sediments increases
stream into the Chicago
‘tropolitan area and may

int to a common aquatic
‘icant, ammonia.

Raptor-ous Call Stirs Birds
The call of the great horned owl
is being broadcast by INHS
researchers to help them take a
woodland census. Several
species of woodland raptors
(birds of prey) are currently
listed as endangered in Illinois,
but little is known about the
abundance and distribution of
these and other woodland
hawks and owls. The ow! call
causes defensive behavior in
nesting raptors—it stirs them up
and they fly from their nests to
look for the “owl”—making

Fore! Grub Control Studied
Annual white grubs, the main
pest of turfgrass in Illinois, are
currently controlled with
chemical insecticides. There
may be a better way. Some
species of nematodes (parasitic
worms) can penetrate insects
that live in soil and other moist
areas and release a lethal

The Illinois River (INHS photo)

them easier to count. Results
from twelve study areas
throughout Illinois will be used
by the Endangered Species
Protection Board to determine
which species should be added
to, removed from, or retained
on the state’s list of threatened
and endangered species.

bacteria. The effectiveness of
these nematodes in controlling
annual white grubs is being
tested in the laboratory and on a
golf course. Results will help
determine whether these
biological control agents offer a
practical alternative to chemical
insecticides.

ee ee
| Can this area be saved?

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

peeee CURRENTS
POSSE illinois State Water Survey (ISWS)

—=

And will the airport get off the ground?

The heavy hitters of science and the environment
(HWRIC, ISWS, and The Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant
Program) sponsored a conference last May to further
scientific exchange and public awareness. The topic:
“The Lake Calumet Area: Environmental Concerns.”
Intense scrutiny of the region is due, in part, to
discussion (and controversy) over a proposed third

ence to hear area policymakers, government representa-
tives, and environmental specialists and scientists.

Well into the late nineteenth century, shallow lakes,
sandy ridges, and marshes supported rich populations of

waterfowl and other wildlife in this area to the southeast
of Chicago. Over 100 years of manufacturing, industrial

waste disposal, dredging and landfilling, however, have

10

airport for Chicago. More than 100 attended the confer-
]
resulted in an accumulation of hazardous substances, de-
struction of animal habitats, and a drastic reduction of
wetlands. A not-so-pretty picture emerged at the confer-
ence: groundwater contamination from open wells, aban-
doned but not properly sealed; surface water with con-
centrations of toxic metals well above established water
quality standards; and toxic air with elevated levels of
chromium (a known carcinogen) and manganese.
The two-day conference provided scientists, govern-
ment officials, business, and environmental activists a
rare forum for sharing ideas. A reprint of
reports presented at the meeting is available
a from HWRIC, One East Hazelwood Drive,
a Champaign, IL 61820; (217) 333-8940.

Water Supplies in Jeopardy
As many as ten public water
systems in Illinois may be
unable to meet average daily
needs if faced by a 20-year
drought (a drought of a severity
expected an average of only
once every 20 years). Ten
additional systems are at risk if

a 50-year drought should occur.

The primary reasons for

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
“Like the Sorcerer’s Appren-
tice, we have manipulated
nature to serve our needs and
desires without fully anticipat-
ing the ramifications and
without knowledge of how to
reverse the process,” warned
Leo R. Beard, at the inaugural
address of the William C.
Ackermann Distinguished
Lecture Series in Water
Resource Issues.
Mr. Beard is senior consultant
with the Austin, Texas,
engineering firm of Espey,
Huston & Associates; emeritus
professor of civil engineering
from the University of Texas at
Austin; and retired director of
the University’s Center for
Research in Water Resources.
He pointed to the folly of
meeting every emergency with
new controls and discussed a
framework for resource
management. “We know we
can never have complete
freedom, especially freedom
that impacts adversely on
others...there are good ways
and bad ways to constrain
freedom, and these could be

impending shortages are
reduced capacity of reservoirs
and population growth and in-
dustrial expansion.

Dr. Krishan P. Singh
(Principal Scientist) and Sally
M. Broeren, P.E. (Associate
Professional Scientist), with the
ISWS office of Surface Water
Resources and Systems

Mr. Beard with Mrs. Ackermann at
the inaugural address of the
William C. Ackermann
Distinguished Lecture Series
(ISWS photo)

called persuasion and force.
Civilization has been defined as
the triumph of persuasion over
force.” Mr. Beard concluded:
“Let us keep it that way.”

The Ackermann Distin-
guished Lecture Series is co-
sponsored by the Water Survey
and The Nature of Illinois
Foundation and supported by
the William C. Ackermann
Memorial Endowment Fund.
Ackermann was Chief of the
Illinois State Water Survey
from 1956 to 1979. For reprints
of the Beard lecture, informa-
tion on future lectures, or to
make donations to the Endow-
ment Fund, contact The Nature
of Illinois Foundation, 208
South LaSalle, Suite 1666,
Chicago, IL 60604.

Analysis, conducted the study
and are now developing
recommendations for the most
economical ways to head off
future water shortages. They
are looking into strategies such
as drilling groundwater wells;
raising dam levels; and dredg-
ing, venting, or flushing
sediments from reservoirs.

3 GEOGRAMS

Scientific Rock ‘n Roll
The greatest seismic risk to
residents of Illinois is from an
earthquake in the New Madrid
Seismic Zone outside the state’s
boundaries, according to a new
report prepared by
geophysicists at
the ISGS.
Environ-
mental Geology
Note 133, “Seis-
micity of Illinois,”
written by Drs.
Paul C. Heigold
and Timothy H.
Larson, reviews
the effects of the
180 known
earthquakes that have occurred
within the state during the last
193 years. It also compares the
size of the earthquakes within
Illinois to those that have
occurred just south of the state
within the structure known as
the Reelfoot Rift and considers

Spring Field Trips Offered
Take a geological field trip and
learn why the state’s landforms
and scenery vary greatly from
north to south. Two trips will
be offered this spring—the
Fairfield area will be examined
on April 20, and the Kewanee
area, May 18.

Fairfield, in southeastern
Illinois Wayne County, is an
area of low surface relief where
the Pennsylvanian-age bedrock
surface is mantled by a thin
drape of glacial drift deposited
250,000 years ago. This is an
active oil producing area.

§ Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS)

the likelihood of a large
earthquake occurring within
the state.

According to the report, the
total amount of energy released
by all known
earthquakes in
Illinois is five
orders of magnitude
less than the energy
released by the
smallest of the three
New Madrid earth-
quakes that shook
the midcontinent
region in the fall
and winter of
1811-1812.

Copies of this publication
are available at $1.95 each, in-
cluding shipping and handling
fourth class mail, from the
ISGS, Order Department, 615 E.
Peabody Dr., Champaign, IL.
61820-6917 or by calling 217/
333-4747.

A salvage operator holds the rim of the largest stump discovered so far in
the remnant forest found in about 84 feet of water, 15 miles from Chicago
Harbor in Lake Michigan. (Courtesy Keith Pearson, salvage diver)

Water-logged History
Submerged tree stumps were
not the treasure salvage divers
had in mind, but they are a
“find” for geologists studying
the history of Lake Michigan.
Ancient stumps, carbon-dated to
8,300 years ago, provide the
first benchmark of where the
lake was at that time and offer
clues about its fluctuations ever
since, according to Dr. Michael
J. Chrzastowski, ISGS coastal
geologist.

“It was about 8,300 years
ago,” said Dr. Chrzastowski,
“that ancestral Lake Michigan
rose high enough to drown these
trees. Their location approxi-
mates the shoreline at that time,

The Kewanee trip will
introduce you to Henry County
in the northern part of western
Illinois. This area lies between
a fairly level upland plain and a
large, wide, poorly-drained low
sandy plain through which the
ancient Mississippi River
flowed eastward.

To obtain a brochure about
these free trips, contact ISGS,
615 E. Peabody Dr., Cham-
paign, IL. 61820-6917, or call
217/333-4747.

pee = ta

Geological field-trippers (ISGS phot

and the excellent preservation of
the stumps suggests a history of
continuous submergence.”

Lake levels have fluctuated
widely since the last ice age.
About 10,000 years ago,
southern Lake Michigan was
200 to possibly slightly more
than 300 feet below its present
level. About 4,500 years ago, the
lake was as much as 26 feet
higher than it is today. Finds
such as this lake-bottom forest
add valuable pieces to the puzzle
as geologists attempt to com-
plete the picture of the history of
Lake Michigan’s shoreline.
They pose interesting questions

about its future as well.

SS

a

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

CENTERING ON WASTE

Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (HWRIC)

Waste Management in the Laboratory

A new kind of laboratory
glassware from Corning
Incorporated is being tested at
the Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center
(HWRIC) to ensure that
research is part of the waste
management solution and not
part of the problem.

Sample analysis often
involves using toxic solvents
that are vacuumed up labora-
tory fume hoods during the
testing process only to escape
into the atmosphere—very
much like pollutants emitted
from industrial stacks. Waste
from thousands of laboratory
fume hoods across the country
can be a significant source of

THE FOUNDATION
A Time of Tributes
Dorothy and Gaylord
Donnelley were honored at a
dinner at the Hotel Nikko in
Chicago, November 8,
1990, for their lifetime
commitment to the
environment. The
tribute, initiated by
Open Lands and the
Upper Illinois Valley
Association, was
coordinated with the
unveiling of the new
“21st Century Open
Space Plan’ —a 1,000-
mile network of green-
ways that will connect
the entire nine-county
Chicago region and
add roughly 23,000

12

methylene chloride and hexane
pollution.

The new Corning glass-
ware is designed with a series
of valves that reduces the
amount of toxic chemicals that
ultimately reach the environ-
ment. Equally important, up to
95 percent of the solvent can be
reclaimed for reuse—or
disposed of in an environmen-
tally sound manner.

“There are efforts now in
California,” said Dr. Marvin
Piwoni, HWRIC Laboratory
Services Program Manager, “to
clamp down on toxic emissions
from labs. This is an idea
whose time is now. Laborato-
ries nationwide will soon
be affected.”

acres of green open spaces to
existing holdings in northeast-
ern Illinois.

Dorothy and Gaylord Donnelley

HWRIC is active in testing
and demonstrating other
innovative products and
techniques that
limit gen-
eration of
laboratory
wastes.

Results are
made available
to the scientific
and academic
communities
through its clear-
inghouse and
through technical
assistance.

Used with permission,
Corning Inc.

Since 1963, Open Lands
has forged partnerships with
neighborhoods and legislators,
developers and
ecologists, to preserve
public open spaces.
Conservation and
environmental groups,
concerned citizens, and
business leaders
participated in the
evening's tribute.
Gerald Adelmann,
Open Lands executive
director reported that
$430,000 was raised to
help launch the “21st
Century Plan.”

hi ee

——

—

Foundation Honored

The Nature of Illinois
Foundation was one of nine
organizations to receive the Soil
and Water Conservation 1990
Merit Award for “activities that
advance the science and art of
good land and water use.”

The citation commended the
Foundation’s magazine

The Nature of Illinois and its
educational projects for

school children.

HISTORY OF THE SURVEYS

WHOLESOME WATER
IN ABUNDANT SUPPLY

The Early State Water Survey's

urn-of-the-century fishermen on

the Illinois River near Havana

grew accustomed to a curious
houseboat, towed by a 25-foot steam
launch named /Ilini. In all likelihood, what
went on aboard the vessel remained a
mystery to most of them. And even if they
had known, they could not have been
expected to appreciate fully the importance
of what was taking place.

This lumbering craft was no
ordinary pleasure boat. It was a carefully
designed scientific laboratory, complete
with scientists’ office, a library, kitchen,
and laboratory space. The investigations
carried out from this floating biological
field station marked the beginning of the
scientific study of water pollution in
Illinois—almost 100 years ago.

Scientists and students aboard the
houseboat during the summer of 1894
collected water samples regularly at six
points on the Illinois River and three points
on connected lakes. They studied their
samples methodically, carefully identifying
and recording minute specimens of plant
and animal life. Then they sent the samples
to the University of Illinois for analysis in
the laboratory of Professor Arthur Palmer.
Professor Palmer was confident that
contaminated water was a major factor in
the typhoid epidemics that had devastated
the nation in 1893. He was especially eager
to gain more extensive information on the
quality of drinking water in his home state.
Water samples from the Illinois would
allow him to commence his urgent quest.

Urgent Quest

by Robert G. Hays

Pioneering a New Science

Arthur Palmer was a chemist—for a time
the entire chemistry faculty of the univer-
sity. He was well ahead of many of the
scientists of his day in his understanding of
the importance of clean water. Even so, he
faced a formidable challenge. Because
modern methods of bacteriological investi-
gation had not yet been developed, Palmer
could not identify conclusively the origin
of outbreaks of typhoid and other danger-
ous diseases. At the same time, Illinois had
few large population centers and had
scarcely begun to notice serious sanitation
problems. Health hazards that today seem
obvious went unrecognized; there was no
great public outcry from citizens worried
about polluted waters.

But Professor Palmer enjoyed two
advantages that significantly influenced his
perspective. First, he had done graduate
study in Europe, where the sanitary
movement had gained a great deal more
momentum than it had in the United States.
And second, Palmer was a protégé of

Stephen A. Forbes, whose understanding of

aquatic biology and the complex relation-
ships of natural environments probably was
unparalleled in late nineteenth-century
America.

Forbes was both State Entomolo-
gist and director of the State Laboratory of
Natural History. But more important, so far
as Professor Palmer was concerned, Forbes
also was dean of the University of Illinois
College of Science and, therefore, Palmer’s

boss. That relationship would propel

Professor Arthur Palmer became the Water

Survey’ s first director in 1895. A chemist, he
was well ahead of the scientists of his day in his
understanding of the importance of clean water
(Courtesy ISWS)

Arthur Palmer into the mainstream of
scientific activity.

Dean Stephen Forbes was
nationally known and respected as a
scientist. In Illinois, he was remarkably
influential. It was Forbes who founded the
Havana field laboratory, a joint undertak-

ee Ad

Water Survey engineers and local representatives check the flow of a new well in West Frankfort in

the early 1900s. (Courtesy ISWS)

ing of the university and the State Labora-
tory of Natural History, and it was Forbes
who initiated Palmer’s work testing Illinois
River water.

In 1895, Forbes succeeded in
gaining a special $5,000 appropriation
from the state legislature to support
intensified chemical analyses of the state’s
water supplies. Professor Palmer undertook
the study in September. He and an assis-
tant, toiling in the university’s cramped
chemistry laboratory, analyzed nearly
1,800 water samples from 68 Illinois
counties over the next 15 months.

Galesburg’s city health commis-
sioner sent samples from a number of
shallow wells in that western Illinois
community. Professor Palmer’s analyses
showed that the water was contaminated.
Subsequent study revealed that most of the

14

HISTORY OF THE SURVEYS

wells received drainage from animal
refuse. From Jacksonville, where typhoid
had been prevalent, samples showed that
very few wells provided water the scien-
tists could consider safe. Similar situations
were found in Joliet, Rock Falls, and other
communities around the state.

Funding a New Agency

At the end of December 1896, Professor
Palmer recommended not only that the
water study be continued, but also that it be
expanded in scope. He knew he was doing
important work. The legislators in Spring-
field responded favorably.

This time, however, the funds
appropriated by the legislature were
separate from those committed to the
general budget of the university. The
appropriation bill called for a systematic
chemical and biological survey of the
waters of Illinois “to the end that the
potable waters of the State may be better
known, and that the welfare of the people
of the various communities may thereby be
conserved.” A State Water Survey now
existed as an institution created by the
Illinois General Assembly.

The early work of Professor
Arthur Palmer and his assistants was in
many respects pioneering. Theirs was an
exciting, if somewhat uncertain, scientific
period. Most of the water samples analyzed
during 1896 were from home water
supplies in communities where typhoid and
diphtheria had been all too common. The
chemical tests performed in Professor
Palmer’s laboratory were extensive but, he
readily admitted, still speculative to some
degree. “The precise relationship between
the content of nitrates and the dissemina-
tion of disease by use of the water in which
they are contained, is not definitely
known,” Palmer explained in his first
published Bulletin. But he said that
scientists in many instances “have found
great quantities of nitrates in waters used
by families in which several deaths from
typhoid have occurred...” He knew his
scientific detective work held *
immense promise.

As knowledge of the new State
Water Survey’s work spread, demand for
its services increased. More than 6,500
water samples had been analyzed by the
end of 1899, a third of them sent to the

Dr. Edward Bartow (Survey Director and Chief,
1905-1920) was concerned not only about the
quality of the water available, but also the
quantity. (Courtesy ISWS)

A young citizen inspects an analytical field kit used by State Water Survey chemists in about 1910. (Courtesy ISWS)

laboratory by individual citizens who
wondered about the safety of the wells and
cisterns from which they and their
families drank.

Professor Palmer still was
interested in surface water, too, and
undertook limited studies of the Missis-
sippi, Des Plaines, Kankakee, Peoria, and
Spoon rivers and the Illinois and Michigan
Canal. And he had not forgotten the
Illinois River. For nearly four decades,
sewage from Chicago had been carried by
the Illinois and Michigan Canal into the
Des Plaines River and then to the Illinois.
Nor was Chicago the only recognized
source of Illinois River pollution. At the
turn of the century, Palmer reported,
sewage from some 25,000 people in
Peoria, 10,000 in Pekin, and 8,000 in
various smaller communities was flowing
directly into the Illinois.

Added to the human waste was
the refuse from Peoria and Pekin feedlots
where 40,000 to 50,000 cattle had been fed
on distillery slops. At the same time,
glucose and strawboard factories in these
same cities dumped more than 200 tons of
organic waste into the river every day. For
one as knowledgeable of the dangers of
polluted water as Arthur Palmer, these
must have been distressing realities.

It is easy to speculate that Arthur
Palmer might have become an eminent
figure in American science if fate had
granted him that opportunity. But Professor
Palmer died in early 1904 of “a physical
weakness” said to have been brought on by
overwork. He left his successors a clear
mandate, however, and it was an appropri-
ate legacy. He had grown adamant in his
determination that the citizens of Illinois
should enjoy “an abundant supply of
wholesome drinking water” and he had
gathered indisputable evidence that most of
the state’s surface water supplies, like its
wells, were polluted. And polluted water,
Professor Palmer wrote in that first
Bulletin, offered ““a most potent means of
developing and spreading disease.”

Samuel Parr, a fellow member of
the university’s chemistry faculty, suc-
ceeded Palmer as Water Survey director.
He served as something of a caretaker
administrator of the growing agency during
the next 18 months. (Parr gained recogni-
tion later for his studies in the use of
Illinois coal, an area of applied chemistry
in which he came to specialize.) Then
Edward Bartow assumed the directorship.
Bartow would guide the Water Survey for
the next 15 years, with time out for a stint
of active military duty during World War I.

He picked up immediately where Arthur
Palmer had left off.

Expanding the Mandate

Under Bartow’s leadership, the Survey saw
rapid expansion of its bacteriological
studies. The new director was particularly
concerned about small communities that he
knew did not have the technical capabili-
ties of the cities when it came to water
system management. He moved to make
Survey scientists readily available to help.
But Director Bartow also believed that the
Water Survey should be doing more than
simple testing. He felt strongly that water
treatment and conservation as well as
pollution control ought to be included
within the range of the agency’s activities.

After a period of lean budget
years, Bartow was able to obtain increased
funding in 1911 to provide for field
engineers to make on-site inspections of
municipal water supplies. Their early
reports mark the beginning of a water
supply data base that continues today as
one of the state’s valued assets.

Public water supplies in Illinois
still were in comparatively primitive
condition if gauged by modern standards.
Effective methods of chemical purification

had been developed in Europe, but these

still were rare in the American Midwest.
Municipal water systems that pumped raw,
untreated water into the homes of citizens
were common in Illinois. Clearly, keeping
the water clean in the first place would be
an important accomplishment, but the
Water Survey had no real authority to
correct even the most blatant cases of
pollution. Pointing out the sources of
contamination often proved to be of little
consequence. Residents, who were quick to
raise their voices in alarm when Survey
scientists and engineers pointed out flaws
in their communities’ water-supply
systems, commonly showed little concern
about the dangers their own untreated
sewage and industrial wastes posed for
neighbors downstream.

The need for an intensified attack
on pollution was critical. Many of the
state’s surface water supplies had grown
seriously contaminated. Along the shore of
Lake Michigan north of Chicago, there
were more than 20 sewer outlets along a
stretch of shoreline where there also was a
score of waterworks intakes. “The frequent
outbreaks of typhoid fever along the north
shore have made very apparent the
dangerous character of this pollution,”
Bartow reported in a 1913 Water Survey
Bulletin. The majority of communities
drawing their water from reservoirs were
making little or no effort to protect them,
the report noted, citing the example of one
instance where “several private sewers
were until recently permitted an outlet in
the city reservoir.” With very few excep-
tions, it said, “there are no sources of
surface water supply in Illinois that are
entirely free from possible contamination
of a dangerous character.”

Industrial wastes also continued to
be a serious and growing menace to the
state’s waters. Water Survey engineers
were dismayed by the condition of the
Sangamon River below Decatur, where the
stream was heavily contaminated not only
by sewage but also by wastes from a corn

HISTORY OF THE SURVEYS

a ao
Water from wells was pumped into the concrete
covered collecting reservoir and then filtered
and treated at the Dwight Water Plant, c.1914.
(Courtesy ISWS)

products factory. Factory waste, said to be
six to eight times as strong as normal
domestic sewage, was flowing into the
Sangamon at the rate of a million gallons a
day. In low-water periods especially,
pollution from Decatur left the river in a
condition of obvious filth for miles
downstream.

Early Pollution Control Efforts

Director Bartow had lost patience with the
legal limitations on the Water Survey’s
authority to go to war with polluters. He
finally discovered an effective solution.
The recently-created Rivers and Lakes
Commission had ample power, through
hearings and abatement orders, to take
action in cases of pollution. But the
commission, for a variety of reasons
including the lack of funds to hire investi-
gators, had rarely exercised its authority.

Bartow jumped at this obvious opportunity.

The Rivers and Lakes Commission readily
accepted a proposal under which the Water
Survey could investigate cases of pollution
and report its findings to the commisssion
for legal action. Polluters no longer would
be allowed to thumb their noses at his

agency. The struggle to clean up Illinois
water, though barely beginning, at least
was under way.

Near the end of his tenure,
Edward Bartow defined a two-pronged
attack on water problems that he foresaw
as the future challenge of the State Water
Survey. He told a gathering of the Ameri-
can Public Health Association in Florida
that agencies such as his should be
concerned not only about the quality of
water available, but also the quantity. The
latter element of that dual charge would
become critically important for the State
Water Survey in years to come.

Professor Palmer, Edward
Bartow, and all those who were to follow
in molding the Water Survey into the
agency it is today, merely extended the
original guiding philosophy of Dean
Stephen Forbes. On the opening of the
Havana biological field station in 1894,
Forbes told the University of Illinois Board
of Trustees that the university had a special
obligation to “stand in the closest possible
relation to the general public welfare.”

The field station was to carry out
a mission of “pure science,” Dean Forbes
said. But he recognized a broader mission,
as well—one best illustrated by the role
he assigned Arthur Palmer. In order
to serve the public welfare, the institution
would have to “work out in every
direction the application of the results
of its investigations.”

That application, ably begun by
Professor Arthur Palmer before the turn of
the century, continues in the State Water
Survey today. @

Robert G. Hays teaches communications at
the University of Illinois. His book, State
Science in Illinois (Southern Illinois
University Press, 1980), traces the history
of the Illinois scientific surveys and their

forerunners from 1850 to 1978. This is the

second in a series of articles on the history

of the surveys.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

UNINVITED HOUSEGUESTS

n certain Asian countries, having

roaches in the house is considered a

sign of good fortune; only the rich,
after all, have so much food that they can
feed their families and cockroaches, too.
The number of cockroaches that people of
European descent are willing to tolerate,
however, usually ranges from zero to none.
A standard British text on the subject, for
example, resorts to such unscientific terms
as “loathsome” and “abhorrent” to describe
the so-called “domiciliary” roaches.

There are many more species of
cockroach in the world than most people
think are absolutely necessary—3,000 or
so. No one knows for certain, and, sadly,
we may never know; the vast majority of
species dwell, endangered but as yet un-
identified, in tropical rain forests. They
have been successfully exploiting that
environment for eons. Ironstone nodules
found near Illinois’ Mazon Creek that date
from the Carboniferous period (roughly
250 million years ago) bear fossil remains
of cockroaches that differ in only insignifi-
cant ways from the modern-day creatures.

ef

Myth: For every roach
you see, there are
a thousand more lurking
unseen.

ots

As is the case with most large

families, only a few species of the suborder
Blattaria (which includes all cockroaches)
have habits that make them pests. “There
were native cockroaches here when the
Indians arrived—woodland species like the
wood roach (genus Parcoblatta),” explains
Dr. Philip Nixon, an entomologist for the

by James Krohe Jr.

Illinois Natural History Survey
and the University of Illinois Ex-
tension Service. These roaches are
adapted to Illinois’ temperate climate
and typically are found outdoors

on the floors of our decidu-
ous forests, sometimes in
wood piles. Except when
winters are very cold, wood-
land roaches almost never invade
houses, whose tropical climate
they seem to find too warm and
too dry.

That’s just as well. The
wood roach is a largish insect—
about one inch long. It is at-
tracted to lights, so when the
males try their wings during spring
breeding season, flights of 100 feet or
more can take them near, even into,
houses. Says Nixon, “You know it when
one comes buzzing through the
living room.”

Making Themselves at Home

However, the cockroaches commonly
reviled as house pests are not native to IIli-
nois. Their common names—the German
cockroach, the Oriental cockroach, the
American cockroach—suggest creatures of
cosmopolitan origins. In fact, all the
common pest species are creatures of the
Mediterranean rim, specifically Northern
Africa; as civilization spread, so did
roaches.

Like humans,
cockroaches have
settled virtually
every continent
without ever
straying very
far from the
tropical envi-

ronment of their
ancestors. Because

American cockroach

it loves kitchens, for ex-
ample, the prolific
German cockroach
Blatella germanica has
embarrassed more house-
keepers than bad
cooking. “If you
have roaches
in only one
room of your house, it
will be in the kitchen.”
Why? They find food
there, of course, but also
moisture (condensate from
cold water pipes inside the
walls is a typical source)
along with steady warmth and lots of
crannies and crevices in which to hide—as
close to a tropical forest floor as any envi-
ronment (that doesn’t charge a health club
membership) can get. “They say that a
happy roach won’t move more than ten
feet in a lifetime,” says Nixon.

The different non-native species
common in Illinois are somewhat less
tolerant of variations in temperature and
moisture, and thus are as picky in their
choice of habitat as a new home buyer
shopping for the perfect suburb. The
Oriental cockroach would rather spend
time in a catchbasin than in a king’s palace.
The brown-banded roach is often found in
offices. “We're not sure why,” admits

Nixon. “It has possibly the lowest need
for water among the non-natives. And
it likes to hide in stacks of paper” —
a trait the insect may have picked
up from human bureaucrats.
While cockroaches dwell
in groups, they do not nest per se
nor are they “social” insects like

their relatives, the termites. They do

“clump” together in

groups, however. A

crack that has been

visited by one cockroach

will be visited by more,

who will be attracted to it

by the smell of its fellows.

They so enjoy company that a live
roach prefers to sit next to a dead one
rather than sit alone. Nixon says that sticky
traps such as roach “motels” work best
when there is an already dead roach in it.

Debunking Conventional Wisdom

Because they are so easy to raise, cock-
roaches have been extensively studied by
scientists. The general public, alas, remains
uninformed. For example, the presence of
roaches is widely believed to be proof of
slovenly housekeeping, but like most
cockroach conventional wisdom, this is
only partly true. Sanitation is important in
cockroach control but, while it may
impress your mother, it won’t impress a
cockroach. As Nixon explains, “It is
essentially impossible for a human being to
starve a roach.” The insect is the very
definition of “omnivorous.” It eats every-
thing human teenagers eat plus animal
feces, wood, wallpaper, book bindings,

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

paper paste, and glues.
Some species even
devour the corpses of
their own kind. (They are
the ultimate recyclers.)
Effective anti-roach hygiene
thus requires that every crumb be
wiped up, garbage put into sealed contain-
ers, and supper dishes washed before the
leftovers get cold. Leaving pizza on the
counter overnight is like going on vacation
and leaving your front door unlocked.
Many a nightmare has been
triggered by another cockroach myth,
usually expressed in the form of a maxim:
“For every one you see, there are a
thousand more you can’t see.” It is quite
true that you will not see more than a
fraction of the roaches that may be sharing
your dwelling. They are nocturnal, for one
thing; for another, they are stay-at-
homes—the original crevice-potatoes.
Roaches typically feed only once every 24
hours. “They spend the other 21 hours a
day sitting,” says Nixon. “Even during the
night, maybe two-thirds of them aren’t
active,” he adds, and many of those that are
active will be foraging unseen inside walls,
beneath cabinets, etc. But Nixon estimates
that for every one cockroach you sight

during the daylight hours there may be
only fifty to a hundred others lurking
unseen, not a thousand.

Cockroaches are often advertised
as carriers of dozens of diseases. There is
no evidence that they directly transmit
diseases dangerous to humans. And while
they have very bad manners for house
guests—they stain everything with their
excrement—they are as fastidious in their
grooming habits as cats.

2

Because the German
cockroach loves kitchens,
it has embarrassed
more housekeepers than
bad cooking.

ee

Cockroaches are dirty. More
accurately, they get dirty, but that’s
because they share our human habitat. The
fact that they frequent sewers, drains, and
food-handling areas, means that roaches
collect and carry disease organisms that
can then be transmitted by physical contact
with humans or their food. Most such
diseases, like typhus, are a problem only
where sanitation is woefully inadequate; in
fact, most of the diseases that roaches can
carry are no longer encountered in the
United States. As Phil Nixon puts it, “If
you live in a place where typhus is com-
mon, cockroaches will be the least of your
health worries.”

Battling Roach Encroachment

The chemical warfare waged against the
cockroach costs millions, but even profes-
sional applications of licensed insecticides
on a regular basis will not by themselves
rid a building of a roach infestation. Less

Woodroach

potent chemicals can work just as well.
Boric acid (the crystalline powder used in
dilute form as an antiseptic) is a wonderful
roach killer—relatively cheap, safe to
handle, and lethal for a year or more when
spread in roach habitats as a dry powder.
Boric acid is picked up on the insects’
bodies, then ingested as they lick it off.

It is not known exactly how boric
acid kills a cockroach; it may paralyze its
gut, or eat away the gut lining, possibly
even burn wounds into the creature’s
cuticle, its hard outer “skin”. Boric acid,
alas, only works when dry, and when it is
dry it cannot stick to any but flat surfaces.
It can also spread into food. Some people
reason that if a little boric acid is good a lot
of it will be great. To an animal the size of
a cockroach, these piles of white powder
are aS imposing as
the Indiana
Dunes; rather than
walk through them,
they sensibly
and safely walk
around them.

Brown-banded
cockroach

“The proper control of
cockroaches requires an integrated
pest management (IPM) scheme,” insists
Elliott Zimmermann of the Illinois Depart-
ment of Energy and Natural Resources
(DENR), which is working with Nixon and
others to devise cost-effective and safe
roach control techniques. The IPM
approach seeks to use no more insecticide
than is absolutely necessary, starting with
the least toxic control method available,
monitoring the results, and if (and only if)
roach populations aren’t reduced, applying
the next most toxic control until an accept-
able level of control is reached.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

In the case of cockroaches, an
IPM approach starts with sanitation and ex-
clusion—sealing baseboard cracks and
pipe openings that provide access to a
dwelling. The next step is selected use of
chemical insecticides in spots where moni-
toring confirms the presence of the insect.
General spraying is expensive and proba-
bly unnecessary in all but the worst cases
of infestation. DENR is coordinating tests
of IPM methods at selected downstate
restaurants; at one such location, Zimmer-
mann reports, the roach population shows
no signs of rebounding a full year after all
spraying has ceased.

New and exotic roach repellents
and roach viruses are being tested in labo-
ratories around the country. And because

, most pest roach species are

sensitive to temperature
changes, both cold and heat
can be effective non-toxic
weapons in the war against
roaches. Egg development
slows and life expectancy
shortens as temperatures
drop; and a building can be
fumigated solely with
heat by raising the
interior temperature in
a closed building to
100 degrees F. for a few
hours, using portable heaters. The in-
sects can’t stand the heat, and so get
out of the kitchen—permanently.
Humans are not the only
predator species that threatens
cockroaches. The larvae of
the ensign wasp (family Eva-
niidae), for instance, parasit-
ize the eggs of certain species, especially
American and Oriental cockroaches. Wolf
spiders eat them, as do tropical lizards such
as the gecko. House mice also like them.
(Most of the cockroach parts found in Illi-
nois fossils are wings, probably because
predators typically discard those chitinous
body parts as inedible; what survived was

the equivalent of fossilized fast-food litter.)
Alas, if you have enough mice or wasps or
lizards in the house to really make a dent in
your roach population, they will them-
selves become pests.

ole

Both heat and cold
can be effective weapons
in the war
against roaches.

aie

It is often said, begrudgingly, that
if Homo sapiens ever destroys himself
through environmental or nuclear catastro-
phe, it will be the cockroaches that will
take over the earth. You may not be able to
prevent that, but Phil Nixon says you may
be able to prevent them from taking over
your home sweet home. By assiduously
caulking and sanitizing and spraying, a
diligent housekeeper can rid a house of
roaches completely in 6 months. De-roach-
ing an apartment will probably take longer.
“If you live in a very large building,” he
says, “you might as well make friends with
them. You'll be moving out long before
they will.” =

James Krohe Jr. is a regular contributor to
The Nature of Illinois and an associate
editor at the Illinois Times in Springfield.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE ILLINOIS PEARL RUSH

by Ruth Sparks

Freshwater mussels are edible. An excavation in Fulton County, Illinois, unearthed the remains of a
1200 A.D. Paleo-Indian “clambake.” Mississippian Indians scooped out a hole in the ground and
filled it with layers of hot coals and mussels. (Illinois State Museum diorama, photo by Marlin Roos)

“...a mussel can take one hundred grains of
worthless carbonate of lime from the water
and build it into thin concentric layers,
interstratified with animal membrane, until
it perfects a lustrous spherical pearl worth
many thousands of dollars. At this time when
we hear so much about planned economy, it
is proper to salute the one real thrifty and
wealth producing creature in nature,
the mollusk.”

From a 1937 newspaper article by H.H.
Vertrees, author of Pearls and Pearling

orty years after the great California

gold rush, Illinois had a rush of its

own. The quarry in Illinois was not
gold, however, but pearls. Like the forty-
niners, pearl seekers headed for streams and
rivers to search the sand bars and gravel
banks. Unlike them, they could not see their
nuggets glittering in the clear water, because
the pearls were hidden within the shells of
freshwater mussels.

20

An Industry Uncovered

In 1888, J.F. Boepple, a German immigrant,
cut his foot on a mussel shell while
swimming in the Sangamon River. He was
skilled at producing buttons from bone and
horn, and this chance accident set him
thinking about ways to make pearl buttons
from shells.

After some experimentation he
succeeded in modifying his equipment to cut
out button blanks which could then be
polished and pierced. Needing a steady
supply of suitable shells, he investigated
various locations and finally found a large
bed of thick, strong mussels with lustrous
interiors in the Mississippi River near Rock
Island. He crossed the river and in 1891
opened the first domestic button cutting and
finishing factory in Muscatine, Iowa.

The timing was right for his
venture. Imported pearl buttons were then
so heavily taxed that they were barely
affordable to the average person, and church
collection plates often included a button

among the coins. In addition, large numbers
of recently arrived immigrants provided the
labor as well as the market for his product.
The pearl button industry boomed. By 1899
there were 11 factories in Illinois and 49 in
neighboring states that produced finished
buttons. In addition, hundreds of small
enterprises sprung up in sheds and garages.
These family-run businesses produced
blanks which were sold by the bucket-full
and shipped to finishing factories by the tens
of thousands.

Demand Threatens the Supply

The pressure on the mussel beds was
enormous. Especially sought after were the
larger, heavier-shelled species with such
fanciful names as ebony shell, mucket,
butterfly, and pocketbook. They were
collected in great quantities. One
productive bed in the Mississippi River near
New Boston (Mercer Co.), Illinois, meas-
ured one and one half miles long and a
thousand feet wide. It yielded 10,000 tons or
approximately 100 million individuals in
three years.

It is impossible to know how many
of the fragile-shelled species were destroyed
as people shuffled through shallow waters
feeling for large specimens with their feet or
as they dredged up load after load from
deeper waters.

Occasionally, a Pearl

An added incentive for the mussel diggers
was the occasional gem-quality pearl found
among the discarded meats. Gem buyers
often stayed in riverside towns for the

(opposite) Craftsmen have traditionally created
works of art-such as these lovely Victorian Era
pieces—from the nacre of mussel shell. The craft
is being revived today; especially prized for
inlay work are species that produce various
colors of mother-of-pearl. (Courtesy Marlin
Roos, Illinois State Museum)

duration of the mussel season, and some
were said to have sent out scouts (or spies,
depending on the storyteller) to alert them to
that rarest of finds—a perfect round pearl!

A superior gem might net the lucky
finder several hundred dollars, but even the
irregularly-shaped ones, called baroques,
were a welcome find for they could make
the difference between a good season and a
great one for a mussel digger and his family.

The mussels could not withstand
this hunting pressure for very long. Beds
were often depleted within one or two years
and collectors went farther and farther up-
and downstream from Rock Island. Large
factories began importing shells from as far
away as Minnesota and Tennessee.

Trying to Make Amends

So rapid was the depletion that the federal
government directed the U.S. Bureau of
Fisheries to conduct research aimed toward
restoring the resource. Some significant
discoveries were made.

It was learned which specific fish
hosts were required by the commercially
harvested mussels, as well as a way to
nurture glochidia (mussel larvae) artifically.
In 1923 a half million small mussels were
released into the wild, but it was a drop in
the bucket compared to the hundreds of tons
of large mussels being removed. Almost as a

Button blanks before finishing

_ —

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

last resort, conservation measures were es-
tablished. Alternate sections of the Missis-
sippi River were closed for periods of
several years and when they were reopened,
previously worked areas were closed.

Plastic to the Rescue

In the end it was economics and new
technology, not conservation or artificial
propagation, that saved the remaining
mussel populations. The death of an industry
proved to be the savior of the mussel beds.
Overzealous factories had produced so many
button blanks that the market was glutted.
The price paid for shells fell so low that it
was no longer worth a man’s time to collect
them. But the final blow was the advent of
the highly uniform, unbreakable, and very
cheaply produced plastic button. A few die-
hards continued finishing the huge backlog
of blanks through the 30s and 40s, but early
in 1950 the last button factory closed

its doors.

A Threat and a Promise from the East
With a few years’ respite, some species of
mussels made a comeback in formerly
depleted areas. But another use for their
shells was discovered and, once again,
mussels were targeted for harvesting.

The Japanese knew that if a small
bead is surgically implanted into an oyster
and left for a year or more, the oyster will
coat the nucleus with a layer of lustrous
nacre until a gem-quality pearl is produced.
The Japanese had the oysters and the
method but no source of nuclei. The shells
of certain mid-western mussels turned out to
be that source, and a new pearl rush began.

This time the hunt was for mussels
with thick white shells—mussels like the
threeridge and the washboard. Since the size
of the pearl depends on the size of the bead
inserted, the largest shells are the most
desirable. A ton of raw shells, which are cut
into cubes and then rounded off, will yield
about fifty pounds of finished beads ready to
be inserted into the oyster.

Fragile papershell (yellow) and Hickorynut
(brown) mussels (Courtesy Kevin Cummings,

INHS)

The oysters are grown in protected
bays in the south of Japan. When they reach a
suitable size, they are sold to pearl farms.
There delicate surgery is performed. Care-
fully, the oyster is coaxed open and a tiny
piece of tissue from a sacrificial oyster is
inserted into the host oyster’s soft flesh along
with a mussel shell bead.

If all goes well, the speck of tissue
will grow around the bead forming a pearl
sack, and the oyster will begin secreting the
crystalline nacre which will transform the
plain white bead into a shining pearl. The
process takes several years during which time
the oysters are laboriously tended and
cleaned by hand. The final yield will be
about ten percent perfect round gems. In
addition there will be some usable, but
irregularly shaped ones, and some rejects. A
few oysters will reject the nuclei and produce
no pearl at all. Thus, cultured pearls are
natural in the sense that they are composed of
all natural ingredients; they are artificial in
the sense that humans are responsible for
initiating and guiding the process.

Research and Regulation

The future of freshwater mussels in Illinois is
uncertain. They continue to be harvested by
the thousands of tons per year for export to
Japan. That may be good for the balance of
trade but it does not bode well for the mussel
population.

Research in the 1980s _ at the
Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)
indicated that large boat-mounted dredges
damaged or dislocated 35 mussels for every
one harvested. As a result, this destructive
method was outlawed. When economic
conditions are poor, large numbers of
unemployed workers turn to mussel
harvesting to make a living. Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation (IDOC) regulations
have controlled this threat to mussel beds in
recent years by shortening the mussel
harvest season to allow more recovery time.

Sedimentation and water pollution
also pose a continuing threat to mussel
resources. Researchers at INHS, under
grants from IDOC, continue to wrestle with
sorting out the effects of river sedimentation
and toxic chemicals on reproduction,
growth, and survival of mussels and other
bottom-dwelling organisms.

In 1982 the dead soft tissue of
thousands of mussels were found floating
downstream in the Mississippi River along a
150- to 200-mile stretch from the Wisconsin
border to an area south of Hamilton, Illinois.
INHS biologists investigated to try to
determine the cause of this die-off. Although
several factors were ruled out, the cause was
never pin-pointed and in 1986 the problem
disappeared just as mysteriously as it
had arrived.

INHS malacologist Dr. Richard
Sparks worries that this die-off may be
linked to a larger problem. “During the
same period, die-offs occurred in several
other rivers in the United States. I wonder if
a new contaminant has entered the environ-
ment, or a new disease, possibly transmitted
by the introduced Asiatic clam.” Research
continues so that, if a similar event occurs in
the future, enough might be known to
suggest aremedy. @

Ruth Sparks, a trained biologist and former
science teacher, often works on the river and
in the laboratory with her husband,

Dr. Richard Sparks, INHS malacologist.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Clam or Mussel?

A Lesson in Nomenclature

(noemensclasture: the act or process of naming)

The mollusks that are collected for commercial purposes in midwestern rivers are not
true clams, and are only distantly related to the blue mussels found clinging to rocks
along our Atlantic and Pacific coasts. At first glance, the bivalve (two-shelled)
mollusks look so similar it is almost natural to assume that the animals are pretty
much the same. It is their soft parts and reproductive habits that cause malacologists
(scientists who study mollusks) to divide them into separate orders.

The true mussels belong to the Order Mytiloida. All of the members of this
Order live in salt water and are found in Illinois only when the more delectable
members, such as the common blue mussel, find their way onto our dinner plates.

The true clams—34 different families of them—belong to the Order
Veneroida. These include saltwater clams such as quahogs and littlkenecks—from
which clam chowder is made—as well as
the tiny freshwater fingernail clam.

Little known, the fingernail clam is one
of the more important native animals in
Illinois because it serves as a food source
for bottom-feeding fish and diving ducks
that travel along the Mississippi flyway
during spring and fall migration.

Though never growing any
larger than your thumbnail, fingernail
clams are prolific. Because of their
efficient method of reproduction, they
have been known to reach densities of
100,000 individuals per square meter.
Adults produce both eggs and sperm and
after fertilization takes place the eggs
develop within the protective shell of the parent. Soon hundreds of mini-adults are
expelled to live nearby. They mature rapidly and may produce several generations
each summer.

The mollusks that fueled the button and cultured pearl industries belong to a
third group—the Order Unionoida. All of the unionids (you-knee-ON-ids) live in
fresh water, and more species occur in Eastern North America than anywhere else on
earth. Their method of reproduction is more perilous than that of the fingernail clam.
Some, but not all species, have separate sexes, and mature individuals produce either
eggs or sperm. The sperm are shed into the water and drawn into the shells of gravid
(pregnant) females where tiny larvae (known as glochidia) are produced. While the

A yellow sandshell gets ready to release
packets of glochidia (larvae). (Courtesy
Richard E, Sparks, INHS)

larvae of saltwater mussels are free-swimming, the larvae of our native freshwater
mussels must find a suitable host, usually a fish, and attach themselves to the gills or
fins where they live as parasites for several weeks. During this stage they slowly
turn into recognizable juvenile mussels. (Not only must the glochidia find a host but,
in many cases, it must be a particular species. For example, the valuable ebony shell
cannot reproduce without the skipjack herring).

After they drop off their fish hosts, the young mussels burrow into the mud
where (depending on the species) they take from one to 12 years to mature

(continued from p. 4)

Michigan. Joining that segment, however,
are the north and south branches. The
North Branch originates north of Chicago
near Route 120, midway between Wau-
kegan and Gurnee. Created by glacial
activity, the first few miles of the North
Branch are not much more than a ditch—
sometimes totally dry. It flows southward,
making its first turn to the east just north of
Foster Avenue, and from there it winds
through diverse neighborhoods on its

way downtown.

The best known section of the
Chicago River is the downtown section.
You can see the outlines of Fort Dearborn
studded in brass on the sidewalk at the
intersection of Michigan Avenue and
Wacker Drive. The contemporary Hotel
Nikko, located between Dearborn and
Clark Streets, is a prime example of the
current attitude toward the river. Archi-
tects and developers of this luxury hotel
encourage pedestrian traffic on their
property with a two-level walkway and
outdoor cafe on the north shore of the river,
and they have shared the cost of a gem of a
park on the opposite river bank with the
City of Chicago.

The downtown branch of the river
is home to Wolf Point where north and
south branches converged to form the main
channel. There, one can watch ducks,
pleasure boats, sightseeing cruisers,
working barges, and lift bridges, and view
some of the city’s most impressive
buildings.

The river boasts 52 Chicago-
owned movable bridges—not including
railroad bridges, or those outside the city
limits. Chicago has been a leader in
movable bridge design and engineering
since the first “gallows” drawbridge was
built at Dearborn Avenue in 1834.

Bubbly Creek, on the South
Branch of the river, received the carcasses
and manure from the old Union Stock
Yards and packing houses—the cause of

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Mallard ducks on the North Shore channel

the odor and bubbling gas that suggested
its name. Author Upton Sinclair described
Bubbly Creek in his classic novel, The
Jungle, as “‘a great open sewer a hundred or
two feet wide.” Even at this most notori-
ously polluted section of the Chicago
River, there are now sightings of fish and
birds— never before seen in that location.

The South Branch is also home to
many neighborhoods likely to see signifi-
cant development in the near future. These
include Pilsen—once heavily industrialized
and now occupied by Chicago’s Mexican
community and many of the city’s artists—
as well as Bridgeport, home of three
Chicago mayors since the 1950s.

Around the Bend to the Future
“Perhaps soon when we speak of the
“greening of the river’ people will think of
tree-lined parks and plazas instead of just
St. Patrick’s Day,” says Beth White. “The
Chicago River, to this day, is a working
river, but it can work and be pretty too.”
Thomas Butts, principal investi-
gator for the Chicago Waterways project,
Illinois State Water Survey, says: “The
water quality of the Chicago River system
has improved significantly over the past
20 years.” He credits the innovative
programs and continual surveillance by

the Water Reclamation District for much
of the improvement. According to the
MWRD, there were no fish in the river ten
years ago; fish that swam in through the
locks would die. Today 28 species have
been identified.

Public and private interests have
forged a powerful partnership. The
Chicago River is subject to a dizzying
number of governmental units—the city of
Chicago, the Army Corps of Engineers, the
MWRD, the Illinois Department of
Conservation, the Illinois Department of
Transportation, half a dozen communities,
and forest preserve districts. Added to
the mix are groups like the Friends
of the Chicago River, the Chicago River
Aquatic Center, the Chicago Maritime
Society, neighborhood groups, business,
and industry.

Everyone agrees that the river is
better than it was once upon a time. You
can tell by the improvements in the
neighborhoods; by the industries and
businesses that no longer turn their backs
to the river; by the wildlife in the waters
and along its shores; by the increased
number of people boating on its waters; by
the number of events using the river as a
focus; by the walking and boating tours
that are attracting more and more people;
and by the number of volunteers who have
become a part of advocacy groups like
Friends of the Chicago River.

The once overshadowed sibling is
measuring up; Chicago is counting both the
river and the lake as valued members of
the family. @

Mike Isaacs is a feature writer for The
Pioneer Press. David Foster is an active
member of FOCR and edits its newsletter;
he works as curator of geography for
Encyclopaedia Britannica.

:
|
i

The Nature of Illinois Foundation

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Nature of Illinois
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Nature of Illinois
Ottawa Silica Company
Foundation, Ottawa

Michael O. Gibson
Treasurer, Nature of Illinois
Marine Bank of Springfield,
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

David E. Connor

David E. Connor & Associates,
Peoria

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie,
Bloomington

Janice D. Florin

Amoco Chemical Company,
Chicago

Kenneth W. Gorden

Kenway Farm, Inc., Blue Mound

Ralph D. Grotelueschen
Deere & Company, Moline

Walter E. Hanson
Hanson Engineers, Inc.,
Springfield

Richard C. Hartnack
The First National Bank of
Chicago, Chicago

Richard A. Lumpkin
Illinois Consolidated Telephone
Company, Mattoon

Charles Marshall
AT & T, Chicago

Stephen Mitchell
Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Chicago

James D. Nowlan

Knox College, Galesburg
George J. Oberlick

Turris Coal Company, Elkhart
Albert Pyott

Illinois Nature Conservancy,
Winnetka

William L. Rutherford

Forest Park Foundation, Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
McDermott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Susan C. Stone

Urbana ,

Roy L. Taylor, Ph.D.

Chicago Horticultural Society,
Glencoe

Donald A. Wallgren
Waste Management of North
America, Inc., Oak Brook
Charles W. Wells

Illinois Power Company, Decatur

Michael Witte
R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff
John D. Schmitt

Executive Director

Jean Gray

Associate Director

Illinois Scientific Surveys

Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

David Thomas, Director
Hazardous Waste Research and
Information Center

Supporters*

Corporate and Foundation:
Amax Coal Foundation; Amoco
Foundation; Arthur Andersen &
Company; James and Marjorie
Anderson Foundation; Andrews
Environmental Engineering, Inc.;
Archer Daniels Midland; Atlas
Refuse Disposal; Baxter
Woodman, Inc.; Francis Beidler
Charitable Trust; Bell & Howell
Foundation; Benton & Associates,
Inc.; Bi-Petro; Booth & Hansen;
Borg-Warner Foundation, Inc.;
Boulevard Bancorp, Inc.; Carlson
Knight Kudrna, Inc.; Caterpillar
Foundation; Elizabeth F. Cheney

Foundation; Chicago Community
Trust; Chicago Title & Trust;
Coffield, Ungaretti, Harris &
Slavin; Commonwealth Edison;
David E. Connor & Associates;
Crawford, Murphy & Tilly; Arie &
Ida Crown Memorial; Deere &
Company; Deluxe Corporation
Foundation; Gaylord Donnelley
Trust; Gaylord & Dorothy
Donnelley Foundation; R.R.
Donnelley & Sons; Draper &
Kramer Foundation; DuQuoin
State Bank; Farnsworth & Wylie;
Field Foundation of Illinois; Jamee
& Marshall Field Foundation; First
National Bank of Chicago; Forest
Fund; Freeman United Coal
Mining Company; William B.
Graham Foundation; Greeley and
Hansen; Hamilton Consulting
Engineers; Hanson Engineers;
Harris Foundation; Henry,

Meisenheimer & Gende; Claude H.

Hurley Company; Hurst-Rosche
Engineers; Illinois Bell; Illinois
Coal Association; Illinois
Consolidated Telephone Company;
Illinois Farm Bureau; Illinois Mine
Subsidence Insurance Fund;
Illinois Power Company;
International Minerals &
Chemicals Corp.; Joyce
Foundation; Kankakee Industrial
Disposal; Kankakee Water
Company; Klinger & Associates;
Lester B. Knight & Associates,
Inc.; Kraft, Inc.; Lakeridge
Kennels, Inc.; Layne-Western;
Marine Bank of Springfield;
Material Service Foundation;
Brooks & Hope McCormick
Foundation; Robert R. McCormick
Charitable Trust; Morgan Stanley
& Company; Patrick Engineering,
Inc.; Peabody Coal Company;
Rand McNally & Company;
Randolph & Associates; R & H
Construction; Regenstein
Foundation; Rhutasel &
Associates; Sahara Coal Company;
Sargent & Lundy Engineers;
Schaumburg School District; Shell
Oil; Sheppard, Morgan &
Schwaab, Inc.; J.R. Short Milling
Company; Sosland Publishing
Company; A.E. Staley Company;
Edmund B. Thornton Foundation;

Webster, McGrath, Carlson, Ltd.;
Whistling Wings.

Individual Supporters:

James Anderson, Gregson Barker,
Henry Barkhausen, Monika Betts,
Jane Bolin, Mr. & Mrs. Henry T.
Chandler, David E. Connor,
Wesley M. Dixon, Jr., Gaylord
Donnelley, James & Nina
Donnelley, Laura Donnelley,
Strachan Donnelley, Ph.D., Mr. &
Mrs. Thomas E. Donnelley II,
Clayton Gaylord, William L.
Graham, Jr., Walter Hanson, Ben
W. Heineman, Fredrick Jaicks,
Estie Karpman, Dr. Morris
Leighton, Ri: hard Lenon, Richard
A. Lumpkin, Beatrice C. Mayer,
Middleton Miller, Thomas R.
Mulroy, Albert Pyott, John Shedd
Reed, Robert P. Reuss, William
Rooney, Frank A. Rossi, William
Rutherford, John D. Schmitt,
Harvey M. Sheldon, Mrs. Len H.
Small, Harold Byron Smith,
Edmund B. Thornton, Fred L.
Turner, Mrs. Leo Whalen, William
W. Wirtz, Michael & Patricia
Witte, Louise Young.

*Contributions of $200 or more

The Nature of Illinois
Foundation

Scale of Contributions

Personal Memberships**

Founding $1,000 per year
Contributing 100 per year
Family 50 per year
Individual 25 per year

**Includes $6 processing fee

Corporate/Business
Memberships

Founding $10,000 per year
Benefactor 5,000 per year
Associate 1,000 per year
Sponsor 500 per year
Patron 250 per year

In cooperation with the Marketing
Bureau of the Department of Commerce
and Community Affairs.

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Springfield, IL
Permit No. 453

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08S: LaSalle; Suite 1666;
Chicago, IL,60604

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THE NATURE OF

TLLINGIS

~ Spring/Summer 1991

Published by
The Nature
of Illinois

Foundation — \

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

Spring/Summer 1991 - Biodiversity

From the Foundation

More than a century ago the Surveys and their predecessor
agencies began to catalog the flora and fauna and the mineral and
water resources of our state. Their work helps us appreciate the
connections between all living things and makes us marvel at the
ways in which geology and climate have interacted to create the
wonderful diversity of habitats we enjoy in our state.

And their work goes on—to describe what is still here,
to warn us about what is in danger of disappearing, and to tell us
what is already gone. (The word they use is “extirpated.”) Sound
science provides us with the vital information we need to make
informed decisions that guard our health and our environment.
And our work at the Foundation goes on—to get the message out
about the importance of the Surveys and to develop educational
projects to raise the level of science literacy of both children
and adults.

Beginning with this issue, the Nature of Illinois Founda-
tion Board is making a commitment to break into the recycling
cycle. We feel that recycled paper is reliable enough now so that
we can maintain the high standards of our magazine. It costs a bit
more for the privilege, but we hope that as we (and others)
increase the demand, the price of recycled paper will come down.

I hope you will enjoy reading about the natural heritage
of Illinois and the history and the work of these unique scientific
agencies. And I hope you will join me—you will find a member-
ship form in the pages of the magazine—in supporting the work
of the three Illinois Scientific Surveys as well as the Hazardous
Waste Research and Information Center (our fourth ally in sol-

ving the problems of disposing of the by-products of civilization).

Warmest regards,

Po bd bm ey

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Table of Contents

Biodiversity in Illinois 1

54,000 and Counting 3
Early naturalists left behind a priceless legacy

documenting the state’ s floral and faunal diversity.

And the count goes on.

Picture the Illinois Forest 5
Ever diminishing forest communities bear the burden for
protecting soil, water, and air and for providing habitats

for wildlife and plants.

Surveying Illinois >
Biorhythms Currents Geograms
Centering On Waste The Foundation

Science in the Public Interest 13
Stephen A. Forbes ushered in the ecological movement

more than a century ago with his ground-breaking work

on the interdependence of living organisms.

Down to Earth 17
The pied piper of geology leads a field trip back in time to
recreate the story of Illinois’ beginning half a billion’

years ago.

The Art of Recycling 22
A kaleidoscopic jungle emerges from scrap lumber in the
studio of central Illinois artist George Colin

About the Cover

Flowers and leaves of the white water lily float on the surface
of the water, but the fruit ripens below. Blooms are usually
open only from early morning until noon.

Printed on recycled paper

Published by The Nature of Illinois Foundation
Volume V, Number III

Editorial Staff
Jean Gray Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation, Chicago

Stay In Touch

Name, address, delivery changes, and membership information should be sent to
The Nature of Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle, Suite 1666, Chicago, IL 60604,
(312) 201 0650. Master Card and Visa accepted.

Copyright 1991 by The Nature of Illinois Foundation. All rights reserved.

Ferocious looking, but harmless to humans,

bullsnakes are important to Illinois because

injurious rodents make up a large portion of
their diet. Forty-six species of snakes occur

in Illinois.

oday it is not the colliding of

continents or the succession of

giant ice sheets that shapes the
landscape of Illinois. It is the people who
live and work in the state that are the
significant controllers of the land and its
diversity of plants and animals.

Clearly, natural forces continue to
interact with the by-products of civiliza-
tion, but the balance began to shift when
the first settlers cleared prairies, wetlands,
and forests to grow their food and build
their homes. As population grew, so did the
demands upon the land. But while change
has accelerated at an alarming rate, our
400-mile-long state continues to support a
wide variety of habitats and a dazzling
diversity of plant and animal species.

Unless things change dramati-
cally, however, in a decade or two we will
have lost one in five of our native species
of fish and flowering plants, one in four of
our native birds and mammals, and one-

”%

half of our native freshwater mussels,
according to a report from the Center for
Biodiversity at the Illinois Natural
History Survey.

Scientists in Illinois began the
cataloging of species more than 150 years
ago. Their work goes on with explorations
of bi

restoration ecology, and environmental

versity, conservation biology,

management—within a framework of
social and economic well-being. Today the
value of natural ecosystems and the
contributions they make to our physical,
emotional, and economic well-being is
appreciated by a large proportion of the
public as well as by scientists.

Education, legislation, and the
activities of caring individuals are needed
to protect the natural heritage of Illinois.
We who live and work in the state will
continue to be the significant controllers of

Illinois’ landscape and biodiversity.

n

NATURAL HISTORY sunt

JUN 07 19

LIBRARY

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]

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

54,000 AND COUNTING

Herring gulls are common on Illinois lakes and
rivers, where they are primarily scavengers, but
also feed on fish. Their migration is regulated
by ice conditions—they need ice to rest on and
open water for feeding.

n the mid-nineteenth century few men

made their livings as natural scientists.

Early cataloging of native Illinois
species was undertaken by self-taught
naturalists and other amateur enthusiasts,
who often spent more of their waking
hours studying natural history than at their
“bread and butter” work. Examples include
Dr. George Vasey, who practiced medicine
while botanizing on the virgin prairies of
northern Illinois, and Cyrus Thomas, who
practiced law while collecting insects.
Thomas would ultimately become Illinois’
third state entomologist.

In 1853, the formation of the

Illinois State Agricultural Society brought
these early naturalists together. To encour-
age the collection of species and the
documentation of the state’s floral and
faunal diversity, the society offered prizes
at its annual fair, the predecessor of the
Illinois State Fair. At the fourth Illinois
State Agricultural Society Fair in 1856,
Robert Kennicott, a self-taught naturalist

(opposite) The moist, sandy swales of Illinois
Beach State Park support prairies inhabited by
wood lilies, phlox, and black-eyed Susans that
intermingle with sedges and rushes in the
moister sites.

by Susan L. Post

from Cook County, won seven first
premiums for his Illinois natural history
collections. These included shells illustrat-
ing the conchology of Illinois, mammals,
plants, birds, reptiles, and twenty-five
species of fishes. Each premium paid $10,
the same amount paid for prizewinning
swine and sheep. Another prize winner of
note that year was John Deere, who
received two first premiums for plows.

Early Species Lists

Three species lists were published in the
Illinois Agricultural Society’s first transac-
tions of 1855: The Mollusca of Southern
Illinois by H.A. Uffers of the Illinois
Geological Survey, which listed 87
species; The Birds of Southern Illinois by
H. Pratten, also of the Geological Survey,
which listed 184 species of birds from
Wayne and Edwards counties; and The
Animals of Cook County by R. Kennicott,
which listed 49 species of mammals, 187
species of birds, 35 species of reptiles and
amphibians, 30 species of fish, and 23
species of mussels. His list of mammals
included black bear, buffalo, elk, and gray
wolf; the passenger pigeon was considered

abundant. These five animals have disap-
peared from Illinois, and the passenger
pigeon is extinct worldwide.

Kennicott stressed that his list
included only the animals that had been
observed within the limits of Cook County.
A catalogue of the entire state would
increase the list of birds to about 300 and
double or triple the number of mammals
and reptiles. Kennicott’s list of fishes and
mollusca was but a small fraction of the
number existing within the state.

The first state plant list of 1,052
species was published in 1857 in the
second volume of the Illinois Agricultural
Society Transactions. Subsequent volumes
updated the catalogs, adding 52 species of
mammals, 235 species of birds, and 1,184
species of plants. Insects, 5,000 species,
were also included.

Natural History Survey Studies Diversity
By the turn of the century, biologists from
the State Laboratory of Natural History,
later to become the Illinois Natural History
Survey, were systematically sampling the
state’s habitats and adding to the species
lists. These early field investigations

There are 17 species of turtles in Illinois. The slider is the species most often seen basking on

stranded logs, with many individuals congregating on sunny days. Sliders are found throughout

state, with the possible exception of the far northern counties

formed the basis for understanding these
ecosystems and the natural histories of the
organisms that inhabited them. The Survey
as envisioned by its first chief, Stephen A.
Forbes, continues today to catalog the
organisms found in Illinois, recording their
distributions, determining their life histo-
ries, and defining their relationships to each
other and to the environment. (See Science
in the Public Interest, page 13.)

Even today, when we have
amassed more scientific knowledge than at
any other time in our history, the majority
of organisms on Earth remain unknown.

In 1990, Survey scientists set about to
determine the number of species native to
Illinois. The organisms in the Phylum
Chordata——reptiles, amphibians, fishes,
birds, and mammals—are conspicuous and
their numbers are fairly well known. In
other groups, however, numbers are far less
certain. Research in these groups is at an
early stage, and new species are frequently
found. Even though the current Illinois list
of insects totals 17,000, that number is only
an approximation. An even more difficult

The adult Io moth stays up all night and never eats a thing—tts only purpose is to mate and lay eggs
to begin the next generation. The large eyespots on both sexes probably startle birds or other large

predators and keep the moths from being eaten.

group to count is the nematodes, parasitic
and free-living roundworms that may
outnumber even the insects!

A Meeting Place for Species

The incredible diversity of species found in
Illinois is more readily appreciated when
we compare it to that of other regions.
Illinois is host to more than 54,000 species
of native organisms. Lying at the junction
of the eastern deciduous forest, the western
great plains, the southern coastal plain, the

A master of deception, the mature larvae of the green-clouded swallowtail butterfly mimics the
markings of a rough green snake. The large eyespots are not on the head of the caterpillar but on
the thorax. The head is concealed below the body. This is one of approximately 150 species of
butterflies found in Illinois.

Ozark uplift, and the boreal forest, the
state provides habitats for organisms
characteristic of each of these different
geographical areas.

Beall Woods, a remnant of the
eastern deciduous forest, is an Illinois
Nature Preserve along the Wabash River.
It has, in its 270 acres, more than five times
the number of tree species found in the
nearly three million acres of the Greater
Yellowstone Ecosystem. Perhaps equally
surprising, one-fourth of all species of
freshwater fishes and mussels of North
America north of Mexico are represented
in Illinois.

The Pine Hills-LaRue Swamp
region of southwestern Illinois, covering a
mere 2,000 acres, contains limestone cliffs
like those of the Missouri Ozarks, swamp-
land that mimics parts of Louisiana, and
densely wooded coves reminiscent of the
Appalachians. It is the most diverse natural
area of its size in the Midwest. Represented
in its flora and fauna are 35% of the state’s
species, including 1,000 species of native
plants and more amphibian and reptile
species (61) than are found in any other
region of comparable size in the United
States. By comparison, the Great Smoky
Mountain National Park, an area 260 times
greater, contains only about 1,200 native
species.

While catalogs and check lists are
necessary to record the constant influx of

(continued on p. 24)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

PICTURE THE ILLINOIS FOREST

arely is a photograph of a

forest—or even a single

tree—chosen to convey
the character and landscape of
Illinois. Instead, book and
calendar publishers show us the
classic skyline of Chicago or
impressive rows of corn or
soybeans stretching to an infinite
horizon. A surprising 12% (4.27
million acres) of Illinois, however,
is forested. An additional 900,000
acres of land contain significant
numbers of trees but are not
generally considered forestland.
These include the ribbons of trees
that follow the course of a stream
or create a windbreak along a
field. Add to these the trees that
line city streets and make up what
has come to be known as the
urban forest. Taken together, these
5 million acres of land with trees
provide remarkable benefits to the
citizens of Illinois.

Small Parcels, Many Owners
More than 90% of the forests of Illinois
are privately owned. Most of the
remaining 10% in public ownership is

the federally owned Shawnee National
Forest in southern Illinois. Each of

the approximately 169,000 Illinoisans
who own forestland owns an average of
21 acres. Because the Illinois forest has so
many proprietors and because

their parcels are small,
forest management on a
statewide scale is difficult
to achieve. The fragmen-
tation of the Illinois forest
was made clear in a recent
study of forest parcel size. Of
the more than 10,000 forested parcels
larger than 40 acres, about 44% are smaller

iy py dem
4 > se

by Louis R. Iverson

Beall Woods Nature Preserve, Wabash County

than 100 acres; only 10% are larger than
600 acres. Fragmentation of forest habitat
has troubling implications for wildlife,
especially the neotropical migrant birds
that breed in the Midwest but winter in the
Tropics; a concerted effort must be made to
protect larger parcels and consolidate
smaller ones.

The Diversity of our Forests
The wide range of latitude between the
northern and southern boundaries of the
state, a distance of nearly 400 miles,
accounts for a considerable range of
climatic conditions and a remarkable
diversity of habitats. As a result,
Illinois supports numerous

species of trees—more than

Oak-hickory forests dominate on
about half of the forestland, and
these forests are commonly older
than 60 years. Young oak stands
have difficulty regenerating these
days because forest fires are rare,
and sunlight must penetrate to the
forest floor if oak seedlings are to
establish themselves. As a result,
oak-hickory forests have dimin-
ished by 14% since 1962.

Maple forests, on the
other hand, have expanded—an
astonishing 4100% since 1962—
and now account for a fourth
of the Illinois forest.
While developing
oaks need sunlight,
maple seedlings

4
% y ‘
WS
is

thrive under dense
canopies, and so

maples are taking over

in many areas. A third

major forest type, elm-ash-

soft maple, is common on
bottomlands and accounts for a
sixth of the present forest. This type,
however, has been reduced by half since
1962 because of the conversion of bot-
tomlands (low-lying lands along a water-
course) to croplands and because of the
ravages of Dutch elm disease.

Less common forest types like
oak-gum-cypress, oak-pine, and shortleaf
pines are confined by climate to the
southern counties; white pine 1s most
common in the western part of the state,

where it has been extensively planted.

A Look Back
When European settlement began
about 1800, approximately 38%
(13.8 million acres) of what was \

become the state of Illinois was

250 have been reported statewide.

yt

)

Floodplain forest with redbud, Pine Hills Ecological Area, Union County

forested. The remainder of the landscape
was prairie. By 1860, a flourishing timber
industry had been established, and by 1900
the rate of deforestation in Illinois was as
high or higher than that of any deforesta-
tion currently under way in the Tropics. By
1923 only about 22,000 acres of forestland
remained untouched.

Today’s forest, covering an area
about a third the size of the original forest,
is essentially regrowth from cut-over

timber. Only about 11,600 acres
remain in a relatively undis-
turbed condition, and only
11% of the state has retained
its original vegetation type.
Illinois ranks a distressing
49th among states, exceeded
only by its agricultural neighbor
Iowa, in percent of land remaining in
original vegetation type. Fortunately,
Illinois has in place a progressive nature
preserve system that has succeeded in
maintaining remnants of what we once so
abundantly had.

Guardian of Biodiversity

Because row-crop monocultures (single
crops such as corn and soybeans)
dominate the Illinois landscape—

more than 80% of the state is crop-

land—the biological diversity of our state
depends in large measure on our remaining
forests. Most native plant species that have
somehow managed to find a niche are
closely associated with forest habitats:
1,414 of the 2,318 species native to
Illinois, fully 61%, are found in forest

a

By 1900 the rate of
deforestation in Illinois was
as high or higher than that

of any deforestation

currently under way in
the Tropics.

ot

habitats. A large number of rare plants also
survive in forest habitats: nearly half of the
366 threatened and endangered plants of
Illinois are found in forest settings. The
faunal diversity of Illinois also depends on
forests. According to one index, 75% of the
wildlife habitat in the state is found in
its forests. The forest types of
most value to wildlife are mid-
aged oak-hickory and old-aged

elm-ash-cottonwood, and
both have been decreasing
dramatically in recent
decades. If we are to protect
this irreplaceable biological
diversity, we must maintain

and restore forest communities.

Guardians of Soil and Water
For every pound of corn, soybeans, wheat,
or oats grown in Illinois today, 3.3 pounds
of soil are lost through erosion by water.
Soil erosion, with its accompanying
degradation of surface water, is a serious
threat to the future of an agricultural state
like Illinois. Forest vegetation, on the other
hand, provides watershed protection and
protects against excessive soil loss.
Consider, for instance, that the
erosion rate on Illinois cropland averages
four times the rate on forestland—7 tons
per acre compared to 1.6 tons. The
difference is even greater on sloping,
erodible soils that lose 24-39 more tons per
acre each year they are under cultivation
than they would if forested. In 1982, crops
were grown on 1.75 million acres of highly
erodible Illinois soil. Had those acres been
converted to forestland, 36.5 million tons
of soil would have been saved—nearly
20% of the total soil loss of the state.

Oak-hickory forest showing maple seedlings in understory. An example of maple takeover.

Options under the federal Conservation
Reserve Program and the state Forestry
Development Act provide financial
incentives to convert these highly erodible
acres to woodlands. (See Planting Trees—
An Act of Faith, page 8.) Trees planted as
windbreaks and shelterbelts are also
extremely effective at reducing wind
erosion of soils.

Guarding our Quality of Life

Forests offer opportunities for recreation
that can be found in no other setting. In
1987, nearly 19 days or partial days per
resident were spent in activities that took
place on or near forestlands. Almost every
citizen of the state realizes recreational
benefits from our forests, and the
capacity of forests to renew the
physical and spiritual well-
being of young and old alike
should not be underestimated.
Outdoor recreation also
contributes significantly to the
Illinois economy; in 1987, approxi-
mately $6.3 billion were spent by those

pursuing recreation in the Illinois outdoors.

About 900,000 acres (2.7% of the state) of
publicly owned land is available in Illinois
for recreation; however, this figure

translates to less than 0.1 acre per resident

and places Illinois an unenviable 46th
among states in public open spaces per
resident. To make matters worse, public
land is concentrated in southern Illinois and
Illinoisans are concentrated in the north.
The urban forest is often the only
exposure to a relatively natural environ-
ment for many Illinois city dwellers, a
group that accounts for 83% of the state’s
population. And, as a matter of fact, most
counties in Illinois have a higher concen-
tration of trees within the city limits than
outside! Champaign County, for example,
is 1.4% forested, but the community of
Champaign-Urbana has tree cover over
27% of its area.
Because of its unique setting
within cityscapes, the urban forest
provides advantages that are less
commonly associated with rural
forests: temperature modification and
energy conservation, abatement of air,
water, and noise pollution, masking of
unpleasant views, and psychological
and aesthetic benefits. The urban forest
also plays a relatively more valuable role in
reducing global warming. Because city
trees help us to conserve energy, they
reduce the amount of carbon dioxide
from the combustion of fossil fuels.
Indeed, that saving is even greater

than the contribution urban trees make by
taking up carbon dioxide and releasing
oxygen as they photosynthesize. Because
each Illinoisan contributes about twenty
times the amount of the gases responsible
for global warming as the worldwide per
capita average, the urban forest of
Illinois is truly a significant

resource that needs to

be expanded.

Timber Economics
Timber products from Illinois
forests make an important Yd
contribution to the economy of the
state. In 1983, 161 million board feet were
harvested in Illinois. Forest-related
industries employ more than 55,000 people
with an annual payroll of nearly a billion
dollars. Another two billion is contributed
to the economy through the manufacture of
furniture and construction materials. An
enormous quantity of firewood is also
harvested from Illinois woodlots—nearly
two million cords a year. In fact, about
43% of the trees harvested in the state in a
given year are used for firewood. About
three-quarters of the trees cut for
firewood, however, come from
dead trees so the environmental

impact of the harvest is minima!

With careful management prior to, during,
and following timber harvest, most of the
other benefits of the forest can be main-
tained and, in some cases, even enhanced.

A Commitment to Our Future

The forests of Illinois are important to the
soil on which the economy of the state is
built. They are important to the quality of
the surface water in the network of streams
and rivers that crisscross and outline our
state. Wildlife depends on woodlands for
habitat, and many rare and endangered
plants make their homes only in the
sheltered forest understory. Forests are a
vital link in our efforts to slow global
warming and to conserve energy.

We in Illinois, like all citizens of
this planet, need to become ecologically
literate if we are to care for the Earth more
intelligently in the next century than we
have done in the 20th century. Children are
particularly receptive to this kind of
education, but land managers and owners
must also learn more and volunteers of all
ages are needed by the many organizations
engaged in activities that directly or
indirectly help to protect, maintain, and
expand our forests. Many of the natural
resources of our fragile planet cannot be
renewed; our forests are a magnificent
exception. @

Dr. Louis R. Iverson is a member of the
Center for Biodiversity of the Illinois
Natural History Survey and the Depart-
ment of Forestry of the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Readers
who would like to learn more about the
Illinois forest should consult the publica-
tion from which much of the information in
this article came: Forest Resources of
Illinois: An Atlas of Spatial and Temporal
Trends. This 181-page book and accompa-
nying wall map are available for $4.00
from the Illinois Natural History Survey,
Distribution Center, 607 East Peabody
Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61802.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Planting Trees—An Act of Faith
When a farmer plants a crop in spring, he expects a harvest in the fall. When that
crop is “forest,” however, the harvest can be delayed fifteen years—or even longer.

With the support of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the
Forestry Development Act (FDA), planting forests can be well worth a landowner’s
time and effort. Combined incentives under these two plans can provide to a
landowner reimbursement approaching 100% of his costs. Dan Schmoker, Forest
Management Program Administrator, Illinois Department of Conservation, points
out that the benefits to society are immeasurable—cleaner air, watershed protection
against soil erosion, improved water quality, decreased sedimentation in streams
and rivers, enhanced habitat for wildlife, and an additional resource base for future
wood supplies.

CRP has helped owners of small land parcels in Illinois plant 14,740 acres
of trees since 1986. Under this plan, landowners receive technical assistance for site
preparation and planting, advice on types of trees to plant, a cost-share plan for
seedlings, and even the loan of specialized planting equipment. Participants are
advised on forest land management and ultimately, if they wish, proper harvesting
plans for their tree crop. Effective beginning in March 1991, CRP land contracted to
tree planting will earn annual rental payments for 15 years. These cash rent pay-
ments plus tax savings of from $6-16 per acre per year make an ultimate harvest
cost-effective. <

Future timber resources and cost-effectiveness aside, Schmoker points out,
“There is something to be said for promoting intangible values—like sunsets viewed
through the trees in winter, the sight and sound of warblers in the spring and
summer, and good clean water in large amounts to provide trout and smallmouth
bass the habitat they require.”

With proper stewardship, we can enjoy both the tangible and intangible
benefits of forested land in Illinois.

For a list of organizations involved in conserving forest resources, contact

The Nature of Illinois Foundation.

Sunset through the trees (Courtesy Southern Illinois Tourism Council,
Carolyn T. Scott, photographer)

BIORHYTHMS

Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Peterson Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes

After nine years of preparation,
the Peterson Field Guide to
Freshwater Fishes-the first
such guide to include all
freshwater

fishes known )

to occur in )

North America |

north of

Mexico-is

nearing release. Authored by
Drs. Larry Page, INHS, and
Brooks Burr, Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale, the
book includes descriptions and

Endangered Plant Search
About 17% of the higher plants
native to Illinois (2,500+
species) are listed as threatened
or endangered. Some species on
the list are known only through
historical records or from a few
small living populations. Field
searches were made in collabo-
ration with the Morton Arbore-
tum for 137 of these species.
Existing populations were

—————

Nature Photography Workshops
Michael Jeffords (INHS
entomologist and staff photog-
rapher for The Nature of
Illinois) and Susan Post (INHS
research biologist) conduct
photography and natural history
workshops at various times
during the year. Workshops

range maps for 790 species and
illustrations for 617 of them.
Many are shown in color for the
first time. Approximately half
the illustra-
tions are by
Survey artist
John Sherrod.
Although the
North
American fish fauna represents
a small fraction (4%) of the
world’s total, it is the most
diverse temperate freshwater
fish fauna in the world.

found for 57 species, but 71
species were not located. Of the
latter, 48 may still occur in the
state and will be looked for in
future years; the others appear
to have been extirpated (wiped
out). Such searches are useful
to the Illinois Endangered
Species Protection Board in
revising the list of threatened
and endangered plant species.

begin with an orientation and
discussion of nature photogra-
phy, followed by a day of
picture-taking in the field. A
critique of photographs follows
about ten days later. There is a
$15 fee for the three-session
workshop which is open to all
levels of photographers 18-
years-old and above. To receive
notification of future work-
shops, call Michael Jeffords
(217) 333 5986.

Atlas of Breeding Birds

Survey scientists, in cooperation
with the Illinois Department of
Conservation and state and local
chapters of the Audubon
Society, are documenting the
species of birds that breed in the
state. Over 10,000 square miles
of Illinois will ultimately be
surveyed in 10-square-mile
blocks. From 1985 through
1989, approximately 500 blocks
representing 85 counties were
visited by volunteers during the
breeding season. During 1990,
11 counties were surveyed; the
remaining six counties are

All Bees are not Honey Bees
Although the European honey
bee is the most familiar bee in
Illinois, the state contains many

native bees, including bumble
bees, sweat bees, leaf-cutter
bees, and solitary bees. Among
the most interesting of these are
the female solitary ground-
nesting bees. This is the only
known bee that constructs her
own nest and takes responsibil-

slated for 1991. All species of
birds seen or heard are recorded.
Various criteria are used to
confirm the breeding status of a
species, including nest building,
nest occupation, eggshells or
other evidence of nest use, and
presence of recently fledged
young. Currently, the atlas
includes 201 species, 163 of
which are confirmed as
breeding in Illinois.

ity for providing food for her
progeny. The largest genus of
solitary bees in North America
is Andrena with some 500
species. INHS Entomologist
Dr. Wallace LaBerge recently
completed a revision of the
genus Andrena of the Western
Hemisphere with the publica
tion of the last of thirteen major

scientific papers.

CURRENTS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS)

ISWS Launches Center for Global Climate Change

“Media hype made ‘global
warming’ a household word,
but if we have two or three cool
years in a row, the media will
find a new issue. Policy-makers
and the public will go on to the
next household word and forget
all about climate change. That
would not be a good thing.”

Stanley Changnon,

Chief Emeritus and Head of

the ISWS’s new Center for
Global Climate Change

Jittery weather-watchers have
been predicting that worldwide
temperatures would rise up to 9
degrees F within the next 50 to
100 years. Although blame is
usually leveled at deforestation
and the ever-increasing global
release of carbon dioxide (CO2)
and other trace gases from the
burning of fossil fuels, the
drought of 1988 provided the
real national momentum for the
Global Climate Change (GCC)
issue. ISWS joined the five
other Regional Climate Centers
in the United States last year in
authoring a position paper,
“Climate Change and the
Greenhouse Effect.” They
suggested that: “The 1988
drought was probably not tied
to the ever-increasing atmo-
spheric burden of our waste
gas,” but that it “...fits within
the historical range of climatic
extremes over the past 100
years.” Their conclusion,
however, was that global
climate change “‘is an issue of

growing national and interna-
tional concern.”

There is evidence that CO,
and other trace gases are
steadily increasing—up 25
percent since the 1850s, with
most of the increase occurring
in the last three decades;
and global climate models do
predict general warming,
increased moisture in the
atmosphere, and changes in
the regional distribution of
precipitation.

What scientists do not
know are the effects of “natural
feedback.” For example:
Would an increase in the
frequency and duration of cloud
cover—the result of warmer
temperatures—act as a cooling
“buffer” to reduce overall
global warming? Nor are the
possible sociological and
economic impacts well-
understood. Current climate
models cannot predict with any
accuracy if climate change will
occur gradually or in a series of
major shifts interspersed with
years of little change. While
one model predicts that in 50
years Lake Michigan will be
two feet lower than the current
average, another suggests a
decrease of nine feet. These two
variations would have vastly
different effects on water
supplies, transportation, and the
economies of the U.S. and
Canada.

In response to the potential
seriousness and ambiguity of
the greenhouse-climate change

issue, the ISWS, building on its
decades of monitoring and
research, has launched the new
Center for Global Climate
Change. Stanley Changnon,
named by Survey Chief Richard
G. Semonin to head the project,
points out: “Interest and
concern is growing. We are
receiving more requests for
information and scientific
guidance on policy issues, and
we have provided expert
testimony in Congress. The
ISWS is gearing its research
and data gathering activities to
respond to those needs.”

The Center will monitor
regional conditions to help
detect the onset and magnitude
of GCC; perform research
related to GCC with particular
emphasis on analysis of
potential impacts (social,
economic, natural); and serve
as a statewide information
service and clearinghouse.

In addition, the Center is
assembling a sizeable, but
rigorously reviewed and
screened, collection of refer-
ence materials for use by
private citizens, business and
industry, government officials,
and other scientists.

Changnon has already
called on three internationally

respected research scholars to
help Survey scientists formulate
research projects: Dr. William
Riebsame, Director of the
Natural Hazards Center at the
University of Colorado; Dr.
Michael Glantz, Director of the
Environmental and Societal
Impacts Group at the National
Center for Atmospheric
Research; and University of
Illinois Professor, Steve
Sonka—all world authorities on
the environmental and socio-
economic impacts of weather
and climate.

“Tt is a tribute to the
Survey that three such eminent
researchers are eager to work
with us as we launch this
important project,” said
Changnon.

Research efforts of the
Center for Global Climate
Change will involve all three
Illinois Scientific Surveys. “It is
fortunate that Illinois has three
surveys that bracket the natural
resources,” said Changnon.
“Their unbelievably rare and
valuable data bases go back
more than 100 years, giving
Illinois the best foundation for
further studies on climate
change and for making wiser
policy decisions than any other
state in the nation.”

Lea

GEOGRAMS

C

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS)

Snapshot of the Earth—450 million years ago!

Volcanic explosions ripped the
earth. Skies were dark world-
wide for weeks; ash hung in the
atmosphere and circled the
globe. Up to 3,000 cubic
kilometers of ash fell after these
catastrophic events. Compare
that figure with the 0.6 cubic
kilometer released from the
1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption or
the combined volume—55
cubic kilometers—from three
historic eruptions: Tambora in
Indonesia (1815), Krakatoa in
Java (1883), and Mount
Vesuvius in Pompeii, Italy

(79 A.D.).

Serendipity and good
geological detective work
brought this story to light about
15 years ago. Dr. Dennis
Kolata, ISGS Geologist (Head
of Basin and Crustal Analysis),
was at work on a project to
determine the thickness and
distribution of various kinds of
rocks throughout the upper
Mississippi valley.

“We noticed several
persistent clay beds that seemed
to appear at the same stratigra-
phic position,” said Kolata.
“They were distributed over a
wide area—from Rockford to
Minneapolis. When we had
them analyzed, we found they
were K-bentonite, an altered
volcanic ash. Because they’re
so widespread, we conclude
that they came from huge
volcanic eruptions.”

Kolata’s initial discoveries
grew into a joint investigation

with Professors Warren D.
Huff, University of Cincinnati,
and Stig M. Bergstrom, Ohio
State University. The focus of
their 10-year collaboration has
been on two ash beds traced
from Minneapolis to Birming-
ham to maritime Canada,
covering an area of approxi-
mately 600,000 square miles.
According to Kolata, 450
million years ago volcanoes
were strung along the eastern
margin of North America in an
island arc system, long since
destroyed by colliding conti-
nents and erosion. In this time
of intense volcanic activity,
North America straddled the
equator and was submerged in a
warm shallow sea teeming with
an abundant tropical marine
fauna and flora. Only the ash
that fell into watery environ-
ments was preserved and

accumulated as ash beds.
Ash that fell on land was
washed away.

Aware that ash beds of the
same age occur in Baltoscandia,
the team traveled to Estonia,
Sweden, and Norway in August
1990 to continue their geologi-
cal detective work. “Early
analyses suggest,” Kolata said,
“that these beds may have
originated from the same source
as those in North America.
They are clearly more wide-
spread than we first suspected.
Now,” cautioned Kolata, “we
have to do the careful analytic
work to test the hypothesis.”

Tracking a Volcano

Each ash bed has a unique
chemistry, so chemical finger-
printing is one technique for
tracing individual ash beds over
long distances. The volume of

the ash deposited is estimated
from the thickness of the K-
bentonite deposit as measured
in quarries, roadcuts, and drill
holes. Coarser ash, which falls
to the earth quickly, can be
found in beds up to five feet
thick near the volcano’s center.
Finer ash carries farther, and
layers become thinner toward
the outer limits of the ash fall.

“The explosive volcanic
activity that produced these two
ash beds must be counted
among the greatest known
catastrophies of nature,” said
Kolata. Although fossils found
in the ash indicate that many
animals died, there appears to
have been no massive planet-
wide extinctions. Fossil species
(tropical marine life) that
appear in the layers immedi-
ately below the ash deposits
occur in the layers above as
well. “It took some of them a
bit of time to migrate in and
repopulate. But several feet
above the ash, many of the
same species recur,” Kolata
pointed out.

“These ash beds are useful
to geologists,” emphasized
Kolata. “Because they were
deposited rapidly—a flash in
geologic time—they provide
very precise widespread time
lines. They are snapshots of
geography at the time of
deposition. They are also key
marker beds that can aid in the
exploration of oil and gas and
other mineral resources.”

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

=ager CENTERING ON WASTE

en OS

Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (HWRIC)

Recycling Used Lubricating Oil
Enough used lubricating oil is
disposed of improperly in the
United States each year to equal
ten to twenty Exxon Valdez

oil spills.

More than one billion
gallons of lubricating oil is sold
annually and, while 750 million
gallons is recycled or reused,
much of the remainder ends up
being improperly disposed of
and contaminates our soil,

THE FOUNDATION

New Board Members Named
Four new members have been
elected to The Nature of Illinois
Foundation Board in the past
year.

Kenneth W. Gorden retired in
1989 after more than 40 years
of farming— growing corn,
soybeans, and certified seed. He
still resides on Kenway Farm in
Blue Mound, Illinois. Gorden
received his B.S. in agriculture
at the University of Illinois in
1947 and has been active
through the years in service to
agriculture, the University, and
his community.

Kenneth W. Gorden

surface water, and groundwater.
Used lubricating oil can be
re-refined and used again as
lubricating oil, or it can be used
as a fuel. Collection of used oil
for recycling or reuse has long
been practiced at the industrial
level and in automotive
services. Because they generate
large quantities, it is cost-
effective for a collection firm to
pick it up. For do-it-yourself

Ralph D. Grotelueschen

Ralph D. Grotelueschen
joined Deere & Company in
1967 as a research plant
biochemist and was appointed
Director of Safety, Standards
and Environment in 1984. From
1977 to 1978 he was part of the
Presidential Executive Inter-
change Program where he
worked for the U.S. Environ-
mental Protection Agency as a
policy analyst. During most of
his career with Deere, Grote-
lueschen has been responsible
for coordinating air, water, and
solid waste pollution control
efforts for all company factories
worldwide. He holds a Ph.D. in

mechanics and small shops this
is not always true. As a result
used oil is often thrown into the
trash or into a sewer where it

causes environmental problems.

To counter this problem,
some recycling centers that
collect glass, paper, and metals
have also begun collecting used
oil. In addition, two major oil
companies, Amoco and Mobil,
have initiated programs that
allow do-it-yourselfers to drop
off small quantities of used oil
at designated service centers.
Collection of used oil or reused

oil can solve two problems.
First, recycled or reused oil does
not enter our groundwater or
surface waters. Second, rigorous
collection of used oil can
conserve energy and reduce
dependence on foreign energy
sources.

For information on the
management and safe disposal
of used oil, as well as to receive
lists of collection centers in your
area, contact: HWRIC, One East
Hazelwood Drive, Champaign,
IL 61820 or call 217/333-8940.

agronomy from the University
of Wisconsin.

Donald A. Wallgren

Donald A. Wallgren is Vice-
President for Recycling,
Development and Environment
at Waste Management of North
America, Inc. He is a civil
engineering graduate of the
University of Minnesota and
holds a master’s degree in
business administration from
Northern Illinois University.
Prior to joining Waste Manage-
ment, Mr. Wallgren held
various positions with the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency and predecessor

agencies. He also worked for
Oscar Mayer & Co. and the U.S.
Public Health Service.

Charles W. Wells is executive
vice president and a member of
the Board of Directors of Illinois
Power Company. Except for two _
years service in the U.S. Navy,
he has served Illinois Power in
various sales and managerial
capacities since 1956. He has
been active in numerous church,
civic, and professional organiza-
tions. Wells received a B.S. in
electrical engineering and a
master’s degree in business
administration from the
University of Illinois.

Charles W. Wells

PMR The

HISTORY OF THE SURVEYS

Forbes Lays the Foundation for the,
= Illinois Scientific Surveys

by Robert G. Hays

Early Illinois naturalists on a specimen-collecting expedition

n the world of serious ecologists and

Forbes commands respect that often
borders on reverence. For it was Stephen
A. Forbes, first chief of the Illinois Natural
History Survey, who laid the foundation
for the modern ecological movement more
than a century ago with his research and
writing on the interdependence of living
organisms.

Stephen Alfred Forbes was one of
America’s most prominent scientists when
he died in 1930. And justly so. For nearly
sixty years he had been a mighty influence
on the direction of the natural sciences in
Illinois and—during much of that period—
the nation.

A comprehensive account of his
contributions to science could fill volumes.
Forbes was a 28-year old teacher at Illinois
State Normal University in 1872 when he
accepted the post of curator of the Illinois
State Natural History Museum. This

environmentalists, the name Stephen A.

appointment proved to be merely an early
milestone in one of the most enduring and
illustrious scientific careers in history.

To Study Nature Alive

The catalog of Forbes’s scientific writing is
a long one—his publications number in the
hundreds. Yet a single short paper, “The
Lake as a Microcosm,” stands in many
respects as his most important work, a true
classic among early ecological studies. In
this paper, first published in 1887, Forbes
described a lake or pond as an isolated
environment in which all organisms
depend on each other.

Forbes saw rivers and lakes and
streams as complex environments, teeming
with life. He wanted biology students to
get beyond the books and out of the
laboratory, to study “nature alive.” He
wanted children to be drawn to the
outdoors—*“the woods and fields and
waters” —and decried the loss of fellow-

CIENCE IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

ship with nature. And while other scientists
clearly recognized that human interference
with natural systems might be harmful to
those plants and animals directly affected,
Forbes gave powerful voice to the view
that resulting “oscillations of species” were
injurious to humankind, as well.

A Young Man of Conviction
Forbes was a native of Illinois, born in
1844 into a pioneer family that had settled
in the beautiful hill country of Stephenson
County near Freeport, not far from the
Wisconsin border. He knew hard times
from childhood; when he was ten, his
father died. An older brother, Henry,
managed to support the family and keep
Stephen in school.

Even as a youngster, Stephen held
strong convictions

and had the courage to
speak out on them. One sultry August
afternoon in 1858 he took issue with the
Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, who wa

Stephen A. Forbes as a young scientist during
his years at Normal

in Freeport to debate Abraham Lincoln, his
opponent in the U.S. Senate campaign. The
matter on which young Stephen disagreed
with the formidable “Little Giant,” is not
clear. In any case, his boldness brought
reproof from the adults—though it seems
likely the youth persisted in his own point
of view.

Young Stephen Forbes thrived on
mental challenge. He taught himself to read
French, Spanish, and Italian. In 1860, at
age 15, he enrolled in Beloit College in
nearby Wisconsin. But within a few
months the long-brewing Civil War
erupted and changed the course of his life.
He borrowed money to buy a horse, joined
Company B of the Seventh Illinois
Cavalry, and, in September 1861, rode off
to war.

Armed conflict held little glory
for him. He saw action in twenty-two mili-
tary engagements and rode with Colonel
Benjamin Henry Grierson’s historic
cavalry strike through the heart of Missis-
sippi in the spring of 1863. He spent four
months in Confederate prison camps and
another three months in a Yankee hospital.

“But I always tried to keep myself
human,” he wrote of his war experience.

Characteristically, Forbes kept a
daily journal of his wartime activities. He
came to love the South, with its beautiful
homes and elaborate gardens, its groves of

14

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

“dark-leaved and snowy-blossomed
magnolias,” and, most of all, its delicate
mimosa trees. Although he accepted as
“stern necessity” the duty of the invading
army, he wrote harshly of comrades who
looted the homes and farms of innocent
civilians. He took no pleasure in the
destruction wrought on the South.

Even as a prisoner of war, the
young cavalryman demonstrated the
curiosity and determination that in later
years would lead to his success as a
scientist. Imprisoned in a dreary, malaria-
ridden camp in Mobile, he persuaded his
captors to let him go into town—accompa-
nied by a shotgun-wielding guard—to buy
books. He returned to camp with a Bible
and a Greek grammar text. His subsequent
study of the Greek language helped him
maintain his morale; he noted later that
keeping alive the flame of his intellect
“through all the blasts and storms of war”
was more valuable than the more mundane
experience of going to college.

This probably was something of a
rationalization. Despite his obvious
academic potential, Forbes never had an
opportunity to complete traditional college

Early plant pathologist conducting experimental s

—-
mie ae aa:

eed treatment

training. Indiana University granted him a
Ph.D. degree in 1884, but it was awarded

on the basis of “thesis and examination,”

not course work.

At the end of the war, Forbes
returned to Illinois and entered medical
school in Chicago. But he promptly
encountered two serious difficulties: He
did not have enough money, and the
suffering of surgery patients—who lacked
the benefit of modern anesthesiology—
made medical practice unbearable for him.
He turned to natural history instead.

The Right Career

It was clearly a fortuitous choice. Forbes’s
success as a scientist and teacher led to an
early professorship and his appointment as
museum curator at Normal. He developed a
close association with some of the leading
scientists in Illinois, including Cyrus
Thomas of Southern Illinois Normal
University, state entomologist and founder
of the original Illinois Natural History
Society. In 1882 when Themas left Illinois
to join the staff of the Smithsonian in
Washington, Forbes was named to succeed
him as state entomologist.

. cinta a

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Interior of the early floating laboratory at the Havana station

(The museum at Normal, mean-
while, had become the State Laboratory of
Natural History when the State Natural
History Museum was established at
Springfield in 1877. Forbes continued to
head both the Office of State Entomologist
and the Laboratory of Natural History until
these agencies were merged into the
present Illinois Natural History Survey in
1917 with Forbes as chief.)

Defining a Survey
Forbes had enthusiastically supported
Thomas’s earlier call for a survey of the
state’s plants and animals. It was, in his
opinion, an “indispensable requisite” to the
serious study of natural history. He had his
own definition of a “survey,” however. It
involved a great deal more than a simple
census of plants and animals and the publi-
cation of lists showing their distribution.
To Stephen Forbes, scientists had
an obligation to broaden their studies to
include the relationships between plants
and animals and their environments;
investigations of diverse living organisms
were incomplete without parallel investiga-
tions of their habitats. He wanted to know
not only the kinds of fishes that lived in the
lakes and streams, for example, but also
their food sources, their eating habits, and
what other creatures shared their worlds.

Forbes’s first Museum of Natural
History Bulletin was published in 1876. It
was a list of crustacea inhabiting Illinois
waters. (The Bulletin, with appropriate
institutional name changes along the way,
is still published by the Illinois Natural
History Survey.)

Forbes had continued to teach
zoology at Normal—but that institution
was going through difficult financial times.
Trustees of Illinois Industrial University in
Champaign-Urbana were watching
developments closely, and in 1884 they
invited Forbes to join their faculty. Assured
that his scientific activities would be
encouraged and supported, Forbes
promptly accepted.

He made it clear that he expected
to continue as state entomologist. This
presented little problem. A larger question
arose over the Laboratory of Natural
History, established by statute at Normal.
Since Forbes did not want to relinquish the
directorship, he proposed that the labora-
tory be relocated to Champaign-Urbana.
The Illinois General Assembly: approved
the move, and at the same time it granted a
change in the name of the university:
Illinois Industrial University became the
University of Illinois.

From the beginning, the relation-
ship between Stephen Forbes and his new

university was one of mutual advantage.
He brought to the institution his well-
established reputation as a scientist and

the considerable assets of the state
entomologist’s office and the Laboratory of
Natural History. For its part, the university
offered vital resources to support Forbes
and his work. In 1888 he became the dean
of the university’s College of Science.

Forbes was among a small
group of longtime faculty members who
profoundly affected the course of the
University during these early years.

He was masterful in his ability to cross
administrative lines and launch extensive
research projects involving scientists from
various departments of the university,

the Agricultural Experiment Station, and
his own agencies. This ability obviously
was enhanced by the breadth of his

own interests.

One early instance of such
cooperative investigation was an exhaus-
tive study of ways to control the cinch bug,
which regularly caused extensive damage
to Illinois crops. Stephen Forbes was
among the first to appreciate the possibili-
ties of introducing diseases into insect
populations in order to control them; his
work on cinch bug fungus was among the
most significant early research in insect
pathology.

Expanding the Horizons

The Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 offered
Forbes an opportunity to demonstrate to a
much larger public the work of his agen-
cies. Their exhibition, occupying 3,000
square feet of floor space, centered around
an exhibit

an astonishing wildlife display
of 775 mounted birds, most in natural
surroundings. There also was a nearly
complete collection of the fishes of Illinois,
preserved in alcohol, and specimens of
more than 7,000 insects. Such an exhibit,
Forbes recognized, would help encourage
public support. But more important, it
illustrated his commitment to science in th
public interest.

Sie

Orchard-spraying experiment circa 1900

Stephen Forbes had already
proved himself to be a brilliant scientist
and a powerful and resourceful administra-
tor. He had been able to draw the threads
of pure science together in ways others
might never have imagined. Many of the
investigations carried out by scientists in
his agencies were of immediate practical
and economic benefit, others more impor-
tant for their general contribution to the
knowledge of natural history.

Of all his varied personal inter-
ests, Forbes found aquatic biology most
absorbing. In the spring of 1894 he opened
a biological field station on the Illinois
River near Havana, jointly sponsored by
the Laboratory of Natural History and the
university. This was an installation “unique
in the country,” he told university trustees,
“and in some respects the only institution
of its kind in the world.”

The Havana station, with field

work carried out from a floating laboratory,

was the first inland aquatic biological
station in the nation equipped for continu-
ous investigation and the first in the world
to undertake the serious study of the
biology of a river system. Forbes said the
station would have for its field the “entire
system of life in the Illinois River and
connected lakes and other adjacent
waters.” He expressed high hopes that it

might carry out scientific research in a field
up to then largely ignored, “not only in
America but throughout the world.”

A Remarkable Vision

Perhaps as much as any other undertaking,
the Havana field station demonstrated
Stephen Forbes’s remarkable vision.

But there is other evidence as well, for
today his mark is almost everywhere on
natural science in Illinois. Studies at the
Havana station led to formation of the
Illinois State Water Survey only months
later, and, by the turn of the century,
Forbes was at the forefront of an effort that
eventually led to the establishment of the
State Geological Survey.

In May of 1989, the Havana field
station Forbes founded in 1894 was
officially dedicated as the Stephen A.
Forbes Biological Station. The ninety-five
years between these events was a period of
devoted and fruitful research by scientists
using this facility. Unfortunately, it also
was a time of virtually uninterrupted
deterioration of the Illinois River because
of human carelessness.

Forbes had the foresight to realize
that the field station and its floating
laboratory would allow “a comparison of
present conditions with those of a former
time.” And, appropriately, much of today’s
work has greater significance because of

the extensive database developed under the
direction of Forbes and his successors.

Stephen A. Forbes devoted much
of his life to the study of the Illinois River,
which he saw as part of a larger system—
complex and sensitive. Forbes compared a
river system to a living organism, with
periods of growth, development, transfor-
mation, and its own “personal behavior.”
And none of these, he noted, is indepen-
dent from the larger, total environment.

He viewed a river system such as
the Illinois as he would a vibrant giant. He
observed that “the more completely one
succeeds in unravelling the structure and
analyzing the activities of this living
leviathan, the more clearly he sees that it
must be studied as a whole for an under-
standing of any of its parts, and studied in
each of its parts for an adequate under-
standing of the whole.” =

Robert G. Hays teaches communications at
the University of Illinois. His book, State
Science in Illinois (Southern Illinois
University Press, 1980), traces the history
of the Illinois Scientific Surveys and their
forerunners from 1850 to 1978. This is the
third in a series of articles on the history of
the surveys.

All photos courtesy of The Illinois Natural
History Survey

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

DOWN TO EARTH

Story and Photography by Sheryl De Vore

A fossilized rock provides evidence of ancient marine animals buried by silt and sand.

From the bottom of a dolomite quarry on the east side
of Oregon, Illinois, comes the rhythmic clang! clang! clang!
of hammers pounding 400-million-year-old sedimentary rock.
Dust clogs the eyes and dries the palate here, where once
a vast inland sea flowed. Two men, one wearing blue goggles,
simultaneously lift their hammers into the air and then heave them
onto a rock which splits open to show the fossilized
remains of a tiny, ancient sea creature. A woman
looks up against the quarry face, more than 85 feet high, and
is taken aback by the unyielding force of nature as young
children run to field trip geologist, Dave Reinertsen

asking, “What kind of rock is this?”

Follow the Leader

Here some 150 geology enthusiasts—grade
school children, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts,
teenagers, elementary-school teachers,
college professors, retirees, homemakers,
campers, geologists, and doctors—are
getting down to earth as they participate
in one of four free annual field trips
conducted by the Illinois State Geological
Survey (ISGS). The trips began in the late
1920s as an educational tool for science
teachers. Today these trips are open to
the public.

A line of 50 or more cars follows
Reinertsen, head of the ISGS Educational
Extension unit and field trip leader for
more than 25 years. The caravan winds
through the Illinois countryside to discover
what happened to the “Prairie State”
thousands and millions of years ago and to
pocket some fossils and other geological
treasures. Picks, pails, and plastic bags
in hand, the participants explore the
Oregon area on this cool, partly sunny
September day from early morning to
nearly sun-down.

The area, located in Ogle County,
20 miles southwest of Rockford, is enjoyed
for its subtle rolling hills and the scenic
Rock River which cuts through low bluffs
and wends its way past Lowden State Park.
The landforms are the result of a succes-
sion of geological incidents—the forming
of continental plates hundreds of millions
of years ago, the forces deep within the
Earth that created faults, and the retreat of
glaciers 10,000 years ago. (Faulting is the
fracture in the Earth’s crust, accompanied
by a displacement of one side of the
fracture with respect to the other.) The
oldest exposed rock material in Illinois
occurs here, dating back more than half a
billion years. There is evidence of how
faults within the Earth’s crust altered these
rocks and of how glaciers changed the
course of a mighty river. The remains of
ancient creatures lay hidden here,
embedded in rock for hundreds of millions
of years.

18

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

“What I hope the participants will
get out of these field trips,” says Rein-
ertsen, “is an appreciation for Illinois—the
natural beauty of it—the relationship
between the different rocks and the various
soils that form from the rocks, the kinds of
plants that grow in particular soils and on
the rocks, and the types of native animals
that depend on these varieties of plants.”

Continental Collisions

The stage was set more than 600 million
years ago during the Precambrian Era
when Illinois (then located where Brazil is
now) was part of a supercontinent in which
all modern land masses lay together. From
the beginning of Cambrian time, from
about 570 million years ago up to about
245 million years ago, the supercontinent
broke up, and warm, shallow seas inun-
dated the interior regions of what is now
our continent. “Shells of snails and clams
and other marine animals were buried by
silts and sands and gradually lithified into
solid rocks of limestone and dolomite,
shale, siltstone, and sandstone,” says
Reinertsen.

Some 480 million years ago, as
the continental plates began to drift about,
they collided, creating tremendous forces
deep within the Earth’s crust. What
resulted were mountains, volcanoes, and

Young geologist prepares to free an ancient
rock with his hammer.

faults, including the Sandwich Fault, which
extends from northwest of Oregon to
southeast of Joliet. These disturbances
caused the bowing, tilting, and faulting of
the rocks that had been layered neatly in

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“One of the top three or
four fossil assemblages of the
world is in Illinois.”

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the Earth’s crust. Later, erosion helped to
expose some of these ancient rocks,
including the 480 million-year-old St. Peter
Sandstone found here.

Upon encountering the sandstone,
several children immediately cup the soft,
smooth, white and gray uniform, grains in
their hands. An eight-year-old Lin-
colnwood resident chisels away at the soft
sandstone rock, known for its purity and
ability to “disaggregate” into sandy grains
after a mere rub. This rock, also found at
Starved Rock and Buffalo Rock near
Ottawa, IIllinois, is mined for plate glass,
window glass, and windshields, as well for
use in the oil industry. “The St. Peter
Sandstone is deeply buried farther south in
the state and not accessible for commercial
use,” says Reinertsen. “But here, it was
brought to the surface by the arching and
faulting of bedrock and erosion.”

Listening to the Rocks

A father proudly watches his son examine
ancient rocks and comments that the ISGS
excursions provide “education, fresh air,
and exercise. If children are never exposed
to these kinds of things, then as adults
they'll end up in front of the television
set,” he says. Indeed, the youngster seems
as enthralled with the St. Peter Sandstone
as another child might be while playing
Nintendo. “I like to learn about the

Amateur geologists look for evidence of fossils.

different rocks—the igneous, sedimentary,
and metamorphic,” recites the budding
geologist, who has studied the science

in school.

A visit to a nearby abandoned
quarry gives all the geo-trippers a rare
opportunity. Here, close to a fault, the St.
Peter Sandstone is metamorphosed. Heat
and pressure caused the rock to become
quartzitic, making it hard and resistant to
breakage. “When the sunlight hits it right,
it looks like a handful of glistening sugar,”
describes Reinertsen, who responds to the
beauty in each different rock.

Students from Highland Commu-
nity College closely examine the metamor-
phosed St. Peter Sandstone and their
instructor points out the brecciation that
occurred due to faulting. “A brecciated
rock is one consisting of sharp-cornered
bits of fragmented rock, cemented together
by sand or other particles,” responds a
student when asked for a definition.

At this site, faulting, bowing, and
tilting have also exposed the oldest
bedrock strata (Cambrian) in Illinois—500
million-year-old dolomite. Parts of the

ede

Heavy boulders, frozen
within great sheets of ice,
were carried from as far

away as Canada.

dolomite jut out from the ground, tempting
those armed with hammers to try to free a
piece to take home as a souvenir. Other
parts of the dolomite are softball-size
remnants that visitors can easily pick up to
examine. “What you're holding is half-a-
billion-years-old,” says one man to a young

boy, who looks at him quizzically, wonder-
ing just how old that is.

“When you think about the age of
these rocks you realize how insignificant
you are on this Earth,” says one participant
who has taken the ISGS trips for 22 years.
“In the scheme of geological timing, the
existence of humans is but a second,” he
philosophizes.

Nearby, a mother gives her son a
lesson in conservation. “Don’t chip away
so much of that rock,” she lectures. “You
want your great-grandchildren to be able to
see it. Like an endangered animal, once it’s
gone, it’s gone.”

Human intervention, however, has
exposed some rare evidence of faulting in
the Oregon area. A railroad cut through
some ancient rocks left behind examples of
faulting at work. Standing on a bridge
overlooking the tracks, participants can see
horizontal layers of rocks interrupted by

rock debris. “You can see the vertical

displacement and the fault zones here,”
says Reinertsen. “We rarely see this sort
of thing in Illinois. It was buried by glacial
drift, then exposed because of the

railroad cut.”

Ice Age Sculpture
Glaciers had a heavy impact on the Oregon
region. Beginning some 1.6 million years
ago and ending about 10,000 years ago,
massive tongues of ice flowed southward
from the Canadian centers near Hudson
Bay and converged in the central lowland
between the Appalachian and Rocky
mountains. “Because Illinois lies entirely
in the central lowland, it was invaded by
glaciers from all of the North American
centers of continental glaciation,” points
out Reinertsen.

Glaciers scraped and smeared the
land over which they rode. Moving ice
carried gigantic amounts of rock and earth

Field trip leader Dave Reinertsen insp.

20

cts a “find”

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

materials for hundreds of miles, filling in
ancient valleys and creating flatter land
forms such as our Illinois prairies. Standing
on an upland farm area near Oregon,
Reinertsen and the group pause to imagine
what the Earth was like when huge sheets
of ice plowed through. “We are standing
on 40 to 50 feet of glacial cover,” says
Reinertsen. “Glaciers smoothed the area
creating gently undulating surfaces. When
the valleys are filled with ground fog, the
different surface elements are more easily
recognized from this vantage point.”

The serene beauty of an early fall
day requires a moment of silence from the
group. Participants then retreat for lunch at
scenic Lowden State Park where an
impressive 48-foot-high reinforced
concrete statue of an American Indian
stands on the bluffs overlooking the Rock
River. Often called Black Hawk, in
reference to the Indian chieftain who

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with a visitor.

inhabited this area prior to white settle-
ment, the statue attracts visitors from
hundreds of miles away.

The story of how the statue got
there begins almost a century ago in 1898
when Chicago attorney, Wallace Heckman,
purchased what is now the park area.

A patron of the arts, Heckman founded
an artist colony which became known as
the Eagles’ Nest for the majestic birds
that nested in a cedar tree atop the high
river bluffs.

One of the artists, sculptor Lorado
Taft, often walked past the spot where the
statue is now located and meditated on the
Indians who once lived there. The Indians
had fought hard against white settlers to
keep their land, but eventually they failed,
and Taft was inspired to create his memo-
rial to the American Indian. The statue was
dedicated on July 1, 1911.

Although the artist colony
disbanded in 1942, the statue stands as a
reminder of those idyllic days. The Illinois
Legislature appropriated funds in 1943 for
a memorial to former State Governor
Lowden and the area, including the place
where the statue stands, became Lowden
State Park. Sixty-six additional acres were
given to Northern Illinois University to be
used for an outdoor teacher education
program.

Here visitors can walk down
narrow winding steps in the woods to the
river and pause at intervals to gaze at the
statue, perhaps contemplating the look in
the statue’s eye and think about what the
area meant to the Native Americans.
Visitors might imagine Chief Black Hawk
surveying his land sadly after he lost it in a
hard-fought war. “Rock River was a
beautiful country,” he is reported to have
said. “I fought for it. It is now yours. Keep
it, as we did.”

But the area did not always look
as it did when Chief Black Hawk enjoyed
it, reminds Reinertsen. The Rock River
wends through Oregon only because of the
glaciers. The pre-glacial Rock River was

located some 18 miles east of Oregon, but
glacial forces caused it to change course.
“As a result, the river has been a great
waterway for generating energy for the
communities along the bank,” explains
Reinertsen. Observers can appreciate the
great force glaciers must have exerted to
change the course of this moving body of
water, which was powerful in its own right,
as evidenced by the bluffs it carved.

A visit to a nearby gravel pit
provides further evidence of a glacier’s
mighty force. Rocks such as granite were
carried to this quarry from as far away
as Canada. Here visitors can examine
heavy boulders that were frozen within
the great sheets of ice and displaced to
this new location.

A Rich Fossil Record

Glaciers may have greatly disturbed the
Earth and uprooted heavy material, but
embedded deep within dolomite in the
Oregon region is evidence of the tenacious-
ness of nature. Fossils!

a

About 600 million years ago,
Illinois was part of a
supercontinent and it was
located where Brazil is now.

Oe

“To think how extremely old
fossils must be—that they were once living
creatures is amazing,” exclaims an 87-
year-old Kewanee resident who has been
going on the ISGS field trips almost since
they began. He recalls the thrill of finding
seemingly ordinary rocks and cracking
them open to expose fossils. “I'll never
forget one day when I found a rock, gave it
a good blow with my hammer, slid it open,
and saw the fossilized remains of a
butterfly. It was wonderful.”

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Lorado Taft's 48-foot-high statue of an
American Indian, popularly known as “Black
Hawk,” stands on the bluffs at Lowden

State Park.

Dr. Merril Foster, a geology
professor at Bradley University in Peoria,
says he has found some of the best fossils
on ISGS trips. “The ISGS has shown me
locations I didn’t know about,” he says. On
a recent trip he discovered blastoid fossils,
extinct cousins of the starfish. “Illinois has
one of the best blastoid populations in the
world,” adds Foster, who collected the
artifacts and then brought students back to
the spot to examine and measure species
and discuss their variations.

“People should know that one of
the top three or four fossil assemblages of
the world is in Illinois,” points out Foster,
“and that the ISGS is one of the best
programs of its kind in the country. These
field trips open your eyes to the beauty and
wonder of Illinois. You not only learn
about rocks, but about botany and history,
geography and ornithology.”

“Today I learned about the artist
colony. On an earlier trip I learned that
Shawneetown in southern Illinois was once
the metropolis of Illinois and much bigger
than Chicago. I’ve discovered killdeer
nests on trips and unusual insects such as
horsehair worms.”

At the final stop—a former
working quarry loaded with 400-million-
year-old fossil-embedded dolomite—one
of Foster’s students discovered her first
fossilized rock. “This is really a good
find,” Foster says to the delighted students
as they examine cephalopods (a class of
mollusks with a distinct head and muscular
tentacles about the mouth) and trilobites (a
class of extinct marine organism with
bodies divided into three parts).

Meanwhile, ISGS geologist
Jim Jennings is bombarded with questions
about the clams, snails, and other lithified
organisms trapped in the rocks. Field
trip participants stuff bags and pails with
fossilized rocks and load them into
their cars.

A light drizzle begins to fall and
night edges in. One by one the amateur
geologists pick up their hammers, hardhats,
buckets, and field guides and head out of
the quarry toward home. In a couple of
hundred years—the blink of an eye,
geologically speaking—these IIlinoisans
will be long gone. But tiny sea creatures
embedded in prehistoric rock will still be
here, telling stories of the ancient Earth. @

Oregon, in northern Illinois, is in a scenic
area about 20 miles southwest of Rockford.
Castle Rock State Park and White Pines
Forest State Park are nearby, as is the
John Deere historic site. For more
information on places to stay and things to
do and see in Ogle County, call the Illinois
Department of Conservation (217) 782
7454 or the Ogle County Bureau of
Tourism (815) 732 7286.

Sheryl De Vore is a nature and environ-
ment columnist and staff writer for Pioneer
Press Newspapers in Bannockburn. A
regular contributor to a number of nature-
related publications, she is a volunteer
docent and bird walk leader for the

Ryerson Conservation Area in Deerfield

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE ART OF RECYCLING

eorge Colin’s workshop is a

kaleidoscopic jungle. Fuchsias,

yellows, and shades of turquoise
blind you while eight-foot-long spotted
alligators, zigzagged purple snakes, and
Abraham Lincoln butlers prey upon you.

Colin is an artist who lives in the
tiny town of Salisbury, near Springfield.
His work, often described as folk art,
is in every state of the nation, in Europe,
and in Jamaica. It adorns President George
Bush’s Kennebunkport home and Illinois’
Executive Mansion. A nearly two-year-old
Chicago gallery called “Georgeart” sells
his work almost exclusively—and does
so at a reported average of 25 paintings
per week.

This success is a unique turn in
the life of a man who labored in a flour

s workshop

by Tara McClellan

George Colin in his Salisbury workshop with his dog

mill for 30 years and painted in his spare
time. Colin’s only formal art education was
a correspondence course in commercial art
almost 40 years ago. But about 1980 his
life changed.

“After 30 years at Pillsbury, he
had a lot of illnesses. He hurt his
back...he’d had a slight stroke and a minor
heart attack. So he started painting full
time. He turned his back on the real world
and crawled into his art. And he’s still
there,” says his wife, Winnie.

She and Colin scoured sources for
“found materials” Colin could use in his
art. “We dug bottles out of the dump and
went in everybody’s trash pile. We got all
the wood for free and recycled it. We'd
come home, take out all the nails and save
them. We’d buy some paint and make
something beautiful that everybody seems
to want.”

All of Colin’s diverse wood art is
made of scrap lumber—discarded wood
palettes, or old barn wood. “We kind of
recycle it,” says Bill Glass, Colin’s stepson

and assistant. “I think that’s a whole lot
better than building a big fire and burning
it up.”

Colin used to work with a printing
company’s discarded paper for his “flat
art,” paintings and drawings in acrylics,
pastels, and mixed media. Now his flat art,
which includes rural scenes as well as
bright, almost Caribbean-like settings,
is on new, acid-free paper for better
preservation.

Colin estimates that three-fourths
of his art is made of recycled materials: “I
would have to say I can’t think of anything
we haven't painted, from metal sculptures
to wood plows.” A quick survey of Colin’s
workshop provides evidence. The sixty-
one-year-old Colin works in a new barn,
strewn with straw and heated by a turn-of-
the-century potbelly stove. His work hangs
from the ceiling and walls, and consumes
every inch of available floor space not
already occupied by the family cats and
dog. Among his lively, often whimsical
and vividly colored works, are a painted

purse, luggage, guitar, skillet, milk cans,
and ammunition box. In his adjacent home
are painted milk, soda, and Aunt Jemima
syrup bottles.

Colin gets used furniture from the
Salvation Army, Goodwill, or friends, and
by painting them with bright watermelons,
fanning peacocks, or other colorful
designs, turns them into functional works
of art. While the Colins originally recycled
because they couldn’t afford new art
materials, they now recycle by choice.

Color is Colin’s main art signa-
ture. There are no pale hues here, only
vivid, vibrant shades. “I did some reading
on Gauguin, and he wrote that a person
ought to use pure, bright colors. I thought
that was a great idea...everybody’s affected
by color. Every artist has his own way of
presenting beauty, but I think color is one
of the most positive ways,” he says.

Colin describes his work as “‘post-
naive.” He hopes it “takes people back
into a world that’s more primitive and
pure, the world that we’re losing, the

jungle world. I'd like to try to take people
back to the days of Adam and Eve.”

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Colin began making his wood art
several years ago. He painted benches or
made standing figures and placed pieces in
his yard, which sits along a well-traveled
rural highway. Many tourists stopped on
their way to New Salem, a favorite Lincoln
site, and Colin began selling some of his
work, which became popular largely
through word-of-mouth.

In 1989 Glen Joffe, who owned
some Colin pieces, approached him about
holding a one-day show of his work at a
Chicago art gallery. Approximately
$20,000 worth of Colin’s art sold and the
gallery expanded a year later to include
other artists’ work. In April of last year the
gallery moved to a larger facility.

Now Colin works sixty or more
hours a week, resting “just long enough to
eat” according to Winnie. He completes
two to ten pieces a day. “He'll do wood,
then pastel, then wood, then maybe
acrylic,” Glass says.

When Glass returned from
California a couple of years ago to help
Colin full time, one of his first jobs was to
inventory the work Colin had amassed in a

Back to a world more primitive and pure

neighboring century-old house. Glass says
he found thousands of pieces stacked in
piles which reached to the ceiling.

“T think that this is just a basic
need in me—to express myself this way,”
Colin says. “I feel lost if I don’t do this. I
feel like I’m not giving. This is my way of

giving I guess.”

Tara McClellan, a regular contributor to
The Nature of Illinois, is a free-lance
journalist and arts reporter for Public

Radio in Springfield

“IT would have to say 1 can't think of anythir

we haven't painted

(continued from p. 4)

new species into our floral and faunal
community, they are no less useful for
writing obituaries of forms that have
disappeared. With the exception of the
showiest birds, mammals, and flowering
plants, however, biologists are reluctant to
say with finality that a species is extinct.
The possibility always exists that a few
individuals or a small population will be
discovered in some remote habitat.

The vast majority of species
worldwide are unmonitored. Like the dead
in Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard, they may pass from the Earth
unnoticed and unknown.

Susan L. Post is an Assistant Research
Biologist at the Center for Biodiversity of
the Illinois Natural History Survey. A
complete table of Illinois species numbers,
including species that have been extir-
pated, is available in Natural History
Survey Bulletin 34, Article 4, Symposium
Proceedings: Our Living Heritage.

The bird’ s-foot violet is one of the first species

to bloom each spring on the glacial terraces of
northern Illinois. It is most common in dry or
sandy prairies.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Biodiversity in Illinois

Biodiversity on the Road

The rich natural heritage of Illinois is the subject of an elaborate traveling exhibit,
Biodiversity in Illinois, developed by the Illinois Scientific Surveys with the support
of The Nature of Illinois Foundation. }

Photos, maps, narratives, and specimens explore the delicate balance that
exists between the forces of nature and all living things. Included are explanations
of how the geology of Illinois contributed to an abundant variety of plants and
animals and how climate interacted with landforms to create distinct habitats that
support such diverse species as prickly pear cactus and native pine, snapping turtles
and wild turkeys.

Since Biodiversity began its trek around the state at the Chicago Botanic
Garden in January, a new electronic question-and-answer panel has been added.

In addition, a set of books (described below) is now traveling with the display so
parents, teachers, and children can sample some of the best of what’s available
in children’s science and nature literature.

At many locations along the way, visiting scientists from the Illinois
Scientific Surveys and Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center are
giving lectures to complement the exhibit. If you would like an itinerary of places
Biodiversity will visit in the future, or would like to enquire about having the exhibit
visit your community, contact The Nature of Illinois Foundation (312) 201 0650.

The Newest and Best in Nature Books for Children

NatureConnections, a project of the Chicago Public Library, has compiled a list of
17 notable nature books. Selections are suitable for children from preschool to grade
nine and include such provocative titles as And Then There Was One: Mysteries of
Extinction and Never Kiss An Alligator. We owe it to our children to provide them
with books like these—beautiful, well-written, and scientifically sound. For an
annotated book list, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to Books, The Nature
of Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle St., Suite 1666, Chicago, IL 60604.

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Ii NATURE OF

LLINOIS

_ Fall 1991 - Southern Exposure

From the Foundation

Scientists tell us that most of the species of plants and animals on
earth are unmonitored and that only about two percent of them
have been cataloged. We don’t know what is tucked away in
various habitats, we don’t know which of them are threatened or
endangered, and we don’t know what role these unknown species
might play in the health of our ecosystem.

If we concentrate on restoring and preserving not just
bits and pieces, but whole ecosystems, the plants and animals—
known and unknown—will have a chance at survival as well.

Beautiful, diverse southern Illinois, the focus of this
issue of The Nature of Illinois, is an area where caring individu-
als and federal, state, and private agencies are working together
to beat the clock and even—where possible—turn back the clock
to save a precious, diverse natural area.

We are proud of the role the Illinois Scientific Surveys
and the Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center play
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You will find a membership form in the pages of the magazine.

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Pe bd Money

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Table of Contents

Cache—A Rising Star 1
One of Illinois’ largest remaining wetlands has powerful

allies, and things are looking up in the Cache River Basin.

Plankton: Life’s Invisible Link 6
Diminutive creatures, in a world you never see, vibrate in
a fantastic frenzy and form the foundation of our food chain.

Surveying Illinois 9
Biorhythms Currents Geograms
Centering on Waste

Southern Exposure 13
A progression of actors—mound builders, settlers, slave

traders, miners, foresters—all played roles in the drama of

the scenic Shawnee Hills.

Into The Woods 17
A vital landscape, bursting with beauty and literally as old
as the hills, offers places to bird, camp, fish, and hike.

Giant City 21
Its towering bluffs sheltered Paleo-Indians as early as

10,000 B.C. Today it is a rustic refuge for visitors to

southern Illinois.

Dean of the Ducks 24
Frank Bellrose’s career at the Natural History Survey

spans more than SO years. It is a career that has made—

and continues to make—a difference.

About the Cover

The green frogs lives near the edges of swamps, ponds, or
lakes and can often be found among the rotting debris

of fallen vegetation.

Printed on recycled paper

Published by The Nature of Illinois Foundation
Volume VI, Number I

Editorial Staff
Jean Gray Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation, Chicago
Stay In Touch

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Copyright 1991 by The Nature of Illinois Foundation. All rights reserved.

AN URGENT PLEA TO OUR READERS!

Many of you may have been receiving complimentary copies of The Nature of
Illinois and many others of you may be preparing to read this copy in a library,
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As you enjoy this issue's articles and beautiful photographs, please know
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Our budget tells us we may have to reduce the total number of pages in each
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And to those subscribers who have been strong supporters in the past, I
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John D. Schmitt, Executive Director
The Nature of Illinois Foundation

if
—
=

CACHE—A RISING STAR

“I read that Daniel Boone came over
from Kentucky a few times but never did
like it here. He didn’t like swamps and
he didn’t like mosquitoes. In his opinion,
the land around the Cache River was
Just worthless.”
Max Hutchison, Cache River Ecologist
for the Nature Conservancy, whose family

has lived in the Cache River Basin for
three generations

oone would have been puzzled by

the enthusiastic crowds that came

together May 18, 1991, to dedicate
a joint venture to save “worthless” old
Cache and her surrounding swampy
wetlands, hill prairies, and bottomland
forests—a project they hope will some day
conserve and restore 60,000 acres in this
unusual valley tucked away in the narrow
southern tip of Illinois between the Ohio
and Mississippi rivers. Clearly, public
opinion about the Cache had swung full
circle since Boone’s assessment of it.

The Governor of Illinois and
federal and state legislators attended the
dedication at Shawnee Community College
that day, as did the Citizen’s Committee to
Save the Cache River and the four Joint
Venture partners that spearheaded the
project: The Nature Conservancy (TNC),
the Illinois Department of Conservation
(DOC), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
and Ducks Unlimited (DU).

The movers and shakers came
from the U.S. Department of the Interior,
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and IIlinois
Nature Preserves Commission. There were
local bankers and farmers, Boy and Girl
Scouts, the media, volunteers, hunters,
fishermen, birders, geologists, botanists,
biologists, ecologists, teachers, and
students. Many of them had worked
diligently for this day, some for as long as
25 years.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

by Jean Gray

LIBRARY

Noted for its ability to withstand flooding, the buttonbush is a common inhabitant of Cache River

bottomlands. Its fruits are eaten by wildlife, and are particularly appealing to mallards

What’s the Cache?

What was it about the Cache that captured
the attention and imagination of such a
diverse group?

It might have been the recognition
that this was one of the largest, most
valuable remaining wetlands in Illinois
an area essential for flood control, ecosys-
tem purification, and wildlife habitat. Or it
might have been something that touched
their spirits.

Start with the Upper Cache, a
natural time machine where one can
journey back two hundred years—and

more—to presettlement Illinois. There

Little Black Slough and Heron Pond make
up a mood-piece of primeval tupelo and
cypress swamp, a fine example of true
southern swamp at its northernmost range.
Great blue herons, green herons, and the
rare yellow-crowned night heron are
regularly found here. The pileated wood
pecker, black vulture, turkey vulture, and
rare Swainson’s warbler are here, too. An
important stop for Mississippi Flyway
waterfowl, this is the breeding ground for
brightly plumed hooded mergansers and
wood ducks

Atop nearby Wildcat Bluft

coneflowers spill down well-drain

soiled limestone outcrops amidst little
bluestem, big bluestem, side-oats grama,
prairie dock, and Indian grass. Remnants of
hill prairies like this one—once several
square miles in size—still offer impressive
views of floodplain forests and upland
woods from lofty positions on south-
facing bluffs.

Just off the blacktop on a road
near Belknap, there is a small treasure that
was cypress and tupelo until it was drained
and cleared for grazing just a few years
ago. Fed by a clear spring, this was a
favorite stopping place for travelers in
covered wagon days. Here, despite recent
disturbances to their habitat, rare copper
irises bloom—a whole colony, in shades
that vary from lemon yellow to dark rusty
copper. “You see the copper iris on the
edges of swamps down in Louisiana,” says
Max Hutchison, “but you don’t often see
them this far north.”

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Limekiln Springs Trail on the
Lower Cache, newly developed by The
Nature Conservancy, leads through stands
of overcup oak, pin oak, kingnut hickory,
tulip tree, sugar maple, sugar berry, red
maple, sweetgum, mulberry, and black
walnut. New wooden walkways lead over a
sometimes-flooded forest floor to a spring-
fed slough with stands of cypress and
tupelo. Dave Maginel, TNC’s Lower Cache
River Land Steward, reports that the
flooded forest in spring and fall has a living
carpet of honking, quacking waterfowl.

Buttonland Swamp, where the
state champion cypress grows, is a perfect
place to see tupelos and marvel at
thousand-year-old bell-bottomed bald
cypress trees surrounded by orange-tipped
“knees,” some as high as ten feet tall.
Cottonmouth snakes swim dark lines
through bright green duckweed-covered-
swamps here, and prothonotary warblers

flit among buttonbush branches and
Virginia creeper vines. River otters and
mink can sometimes be spotted swimming
by and even the federally-endangered bald
eagle, absent for so many years, now
makes an occasional appearance.

How the Cache Was Lost
These magic places are some of what
remains of the rich watershed of the Upper
Cache River that flows west to east out of
the Shawnee Hills, and of the Lower Cache
River that heads back westward through
the wide flat valley carved out—and then
abandoned—by the ancient Ohio River.
During the past 90 years alone,
230,000 acres—more than half—of the
former wetlands have been drastically
disturbed and changed. The story of what
has happened to the Cache since the mid-
1700s mirrors the world-wide struggle of
man to control, tame, and exploit the land.

At first the lowlands were spared
because early settlers, deterred by the
gloomy swamps and huge trees, settled in
the more open country and upland wooded
areas along the rivers. Market hunters,
trappers, and commercial fishermen, on the
other hand, saw opportunity in the abun-
dant wildlife harbored by the wetlands, and
loggers soon discovered the river basin
with its cypress and tupelo and rich
bottomland forests. After the Civil War,
more and more land was swallowed up by
timber interests—the Cache had some of
the finest timber in the world—and
sawmills sprang up at Karnak, Belknap,
Ullin, and Rago. The sawmills did well
but, in many cases, once the virgin timber
was downed, the cutover swampland was
considered useless. Although reforestation
was an idea whose time had not yet come,
there were some examples of responsible
timberland stewardship—notably, the Main
Brothers, who owned the largest mill and
were selective in their logging practices.
Hutchison points out that “It was not
logging that was responsible for the
decimation of the Cache, it was the
drainage.”

Ditches, originally carved out of
the earth to float logs to the sawmills,
foreshadowed the serious ditching,
dredging, and channeling that would
ultimately split the Cache in two and turn
acre after acre of swamp and bottomland
into farm fields.

After World War II, large-scale
land clearing accelerated, and by the 1960s
and °70s a frenzy of speculation saw land
change hands so fast that nobody locally
knew who owned it any more. Some of the
land was gobbled up by out-of-state buyers
who had never laid eyes on what they had
purchased.

(The land, however, registered
intermittent protests; while many upland

(opposite) Snowy egrets are occasional
visitors to the wetlands along the Cache
where they feed in the shallow water

on frogs, snakes, and crayfish

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

The red-shouldered hawk, one of Illinois’ endangered species, finds refuge in the moist, diverse
woodlands of the Cache River wetlands.

farms did well—except where the soil was
thin and droughty—the bottomlands and
swamps refilled with flood waters often
enough to create hardships, ruin crops, and
lead to more-than-occasional bankruptcies.)

Clashes arose between timber
interests, farming interests, and fishermen
and hunters—sport hunters now, not
market hunters. The Cache River Drainage
Commission, which had been formed in
1911 to “improve” the land, was viewed as
demon or darling, depending on which
group you asked.

Whose Wetland is it Anyway?
Coffee-shop talk in the 60s often focused
on how agricultural interests were infring-
ing farther and farther into wetter and
wetter areas. There was strong feeling that
some of the land being cleared was
absolutely not productive for agriculture.
Many of the local people had grown up
hunting and fishing; they loved the Cache,
and they could see good wetlands being
traded for farmland that was marginal at
best, and in many cases just plain poor.
“But these drainage people seemed to have
uncontrollable powers,” commented Anice

Corzine, a Cache booster who saw his
family’s land being ruined and, like the
others, was frustrated by what seemed like
a battle that could not be won.

It was the love for duck hunting
that brought Neal Needham into wetlands
conservation. Needham, a lifelong resident
of the Cache and now a bank president,
knew how to mobilize the concerned local
people and, even more important, how to
engage forces from outside the community.
His first call for advice went out to Frank
Bellrose, the Illinois Natural History
Survey’s authority on waterfowl and
habitat management. (See “Dean of the
Ducks,” page 24.) Another important
call was to Corzine, and on June 10, 1979,
The Citizens Committee to Save the Cache
River was incorporated, and one piece
of the coalition to save the Cache
was in place.

The turning point came in
January 1980, when TNC heard about the
campaign on the Lower Cache and invited
Needham to bring his slides of this
impressive wetland to Chicago. Soon after,
TNC bought its first piece of land on the

Lower Cache.

Heron Pond is a prime example of true southern swamp at its northernmost range.

Another important player in
elevating the Cache beyond a local issue
was Henry Barkhausen. Marvin Hubbell,
DOC wetlands program administrator,
says, “It was Barkhausen’s tenacity that
kept things moving and boosted the Cache
project to the next level. Barkhausen is a
hunter, conservationist, and businessman
who knows the Cache and loves it well.”
As Director of the DOC under Governor
Ogilvie, Barkhausen saw the birth of the
precursor of the DOC’s Natural Heritage
Division and the beginning of strong state
initiatives for preserving the natural
resources of Illinois.

The Cache was not unknown to
ecologists and naturalists. The unique
value of the area’s habitat, plants, and
wildlife had been noted as early as 1963 in
an Illinois Natural History Survey publica-
tion by botanist Robert A. Evers. The work
of botanists and biologists at Southern
Illinois University continued to raise the
consciousness of ecologists and conserva-
tionists in Illinois about the precious
natural heritage of the Cache.

Throughout the ’70s, during the
ten years prior to the blossoming of the
campaign to save the Lower Cache, the
DOC and TNC were already putting
together valuable pieces along the Upper
Cache—Wildcat Bluff, Heron Pond, and
Little Black Slough. On through the *80s,
they continued to add to their holdings
along both the Upper and Lower Cache;
however, 200 years of unwise decisions
had destroyed the integrity of the area’s
hydrological system, and nobody had a
clear idea of how to heal the wounds that
had been inflicted.

When the DOC called in the
Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS) in
1982, it was the first time scientific data
collection and monitoring would be
available to provide the basis for informed
management of the hydrology of the Cache
River System. (See “Currents,” page 10.)

“The importance of sound
science in making wise conservation
decisions cannot be overestimated,
particularly in the Cache where everything
depends on water,” says TNC’s Assistant
Director Paul Dye. “If you can protect the

hydrological system of a wetland, you're
on your way.”

How the Cache Will be Won

In 1986 Congress enacted the Emergency
Wetlands Resources Act, setting the stage
for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to
join the DOC, TNC, and Citizens Commit-
tee in their coordinated effort on behalf of
not just pieces of wilderness but entire
wetlands ecosystems.

On June 26, 1990, the Service
established the Cypress Creek National
Wildlife Refuge with a purchase boundary
of 35,200 acres along the Cache River and
a major tributary, Cypress Creek. (“Pur-
chase boundary” identifies those lands the
Service is empowered to buy from willing
sellers.) The refuge will be managed and
protected for the benefit of plants and
wildlife, and Jerry Updike, refuge manager
for the Service, plans to open the area to
the public for interpretation, education, and
outdoor recreation.

The DOC Lower Cache River
Natural Area now has some of the finest
remaining bottomland forests in Illinois.

Their recent acquisition of an important
tract of Main Brothers land brings the
acreage under its stewardship in both the
Upper and Lower Cache to 9,000 and, for
the first time, DOC is maintaining on-site
staff in the Cache.

TNC is establishing the 20,000-
acre Lower Cache preserve in the Limekiln
Slough area and continues to assist the
Service and DU in land acquisition. DU
acquired 1,000 acres east of Interstate 57 in
1987 and is developing a waterfowl-
management area. Hardwood reforestation
began in 1989 with TNC volunteers
collecting acorns for direct seeding on
former cropland, using methods pioneered
and proven by the U.S. Forest Service and
wildlife agencies in Mississippi and
Louisiana. (Hutchison has recently sighted
wildlife species that have been absent from
the Cache for years; and Updike states that
his top three priorities are: habitat! habitat!
habitat! “If you bring back the habitat, the
critters will return,” he says.)

TNC and DU are already building
the next addition to the project—the Frank
Bellrose Waterfowl Reserve—which
should be ready for dedication next year. It
will include 2,100 acres within the Cypress

Colonies of copper irises bloom in a spring-fed

field near Belknap. The copper iris, often seen
on the edges of Louisiana swamps, is rare
in Illinois

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Understanding Wetlands

from damaging overloads of siltation.”

top. Drive some nails down through the sponge—the nails represent trees and the
sponge represents the layer of vegetation and leaf litter. Then when you pour on
water, it is absorbed by the sponge and, because it is released slowly, the soil stays
on the table. What this means in the real world is that the soil stays in the wetlands
and the water is filtered and released slowly into the aquifers, plants, nearby
waterways, and the atmosphere, saving rivers and streambanks from erosion and

Jerry Updike, Refuge Manager U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

“Take a tabletop—the table represents bedrock. Put soil on it, pour on water, and the
soil just washes off the table. Now put some soil on a table and lay a thin sponge on

Creek National Wildlife Refuge to be
restored, developed, and managed for
wood duck nesting and for migrating
waterfowl.

“A project of this size has got to
be economically viable,” says Dye. “If we
can’t find a way to repair the natural
system down here and simultaneously
improve economic opportunities, we will
have failed. Land resource decisions have
to be driven by economic realities.”

The U.S. Soil Conservation
Service and County Soil and Water
Conservation Districts are encouraging
landowners to plant poor cropland with
permanent cover or convert it back to
timber; landowners with good cropland
are being advised about sound agricultural
practices that not only will be economi-
cally advantageous but also will protect
the wetlands.

Dye sees good prospects for
future sustainable timber harvest in the
Cache and a shift in the economic base to
tourism, that will serve hunters and
fishermen, birders, hikers, canoeists, and
campers.

There are opportunities for
scientific research and education as well.
John Yopp, dean of the graduate school of
Southern Illinois University, and his
faculty are exploring the formation of a
consortium with the other active players in

the Cache. “I see great opportunities for

unique wetlands research and also opportu-
nities to study the interface between
agriculture and wetlands,” says Yopp.

The Last Great Places

This spring, as excitement was growing on
the Cache project, TNC announced a bold
new initiative: “Last Great Places,”
working models for large scale ecosystem
conservation in the Western Hemisphere.

Twelve sites have been selected in con-

junction with more than 100 public- and

private-sector partners to demonstrate that
the protection of functioning ecosystems
for the preservation of species diversity can
accommodate human economic and
cultural needs. Dye believes the Cache is a
prime candidate for “Last Great Places”
Status because of its value as a wetland
system, its importance as a stopover for
migratory birds, and also because it has a
valuable core natural area that needs a
protective buffer zone.

“By reason of the fate of this
location,” says Dye, “we can capture an
incredible amount of biological diversity
and protect a wide range of biological
resources. What has been happening on the
Cache mirrors the challenge we face
around the world to strike a new balanc«
between economic needs and ecological
conservation.”

It is no small challenge. @

“Mosthryozoans are marine: fewer than SO of

PLANKTON: LIFE’S INVISIBLE LINK

green-backed heron stands
motionless, poised over a shallow
marsh, its eyes intently watching
the water, waiting. A perch swims by.
Snatch. The heron grabs the fish, then flies
off to eat in peace. The water is again calm,
still, seemingly lifeless.

A Magnificent Microcosm

Yet, hidden below the water’s surface,
microscopic life continues to vibrate in a
fantastic frenzy. Helicopter-like bodies that
could fit a hundred times over in a drop of
water spin at dizzying speeds. S-shaped
wriggling beings, smaller than the tiniest
worm visible to the naked eye, creep about,
extending and contracting their bodies.
Cylindrical-shaped creatures, just a few
micrometers long, create miniature
whirlpools with tiny pulsating hairs on
their mouths to filter in their prey.

These individual beings, collec-
tively called plankton, are the very basis of
the food chain. Indeed, if it weren’t for
them, the green heron you enjoyed
watching catch its prey, the bullfrog you

by Sheryl De Vore

hear bellowing on a warm summer’s
evening, and the painted turtle you catch
sunning itself would not exist. “Everything
bigger that lives in the water is ultimately
supported by plankton,” says Phil Ross,
aquatic toxicologist for the Illinois Natural
History Survey.

Plankton is a collection of millions
of plankters—microscopic bacteria, plants,
and animals that live freely on the water’s
upper levels. “Plankton can be found in all
surface water whether it’s a puddle, a pond,
or the ocean,” says Ross. Plankton even
exists in the water in your birdbath. You
can find some of the same species of
plankton at the surface of the Cache River
wetlands that you can find in Europe
and Asia.”

The plankters’ link with the food
chain, their incredible beauty when
observed through a microscope, and their
various reproductive and feeding strategies
make them intriguing for scientists such as
Ross. Indeed, the study of plankton even
helps our understanding of pollution and
other environmental concerns.

The word plankton comes from a
Greek word meaning “wanderer.” And
although some plankters can swim, they
are so tiny that they are often at the mercy
of the water’s current, propelled wherever
and however the wind blows. Thus,
plankters live more readily in standing
water than they do in moving streams
and rivers.

Although the human eye can
detect the larger plankters, a microscope is
essential for viewing their intricate detail
and beauty. Many are transparent; when
you view them through a microscope, you
can see internal organs such as their
digestive tracts, their eggs, even their
beating hearts.

You can also observe how some
plankters propel themselves through the
water in search of food. Rotifers, for
example, are fascinating to watch as their
tiny hair-like appendages (called cilia) beat
in a steady, wave-like fashion to create
images of spinning wheels.

“It’s exciting,” says Ross. “The

animal is there, but you can’t see it until

you put it under a microscope. And then
you can see, for instance, the cyclops,
pulling itself through the water with
helicopter-like appendages on its head.”

At first a drop of pond water
viewed under the microscope may seem to
be just a drop of water. But then a tear-
drop-shaped creature comes speeding by,
doing figure-eights on its way in and out of
your vision. Creatures shaped like lemon
slices may float by. Or a worm-like being
may wriggle beneath the lens.

“The real beauty on this planet is
the microscopic world we can’t see with
the naked eye,” says Linda Curtis, environ-
mental biology instructor at College of
Lake County in Grayslake. Curtis annually
takes her class out to gather pond water for
viewing plankters under the microscope.
They may see, for instance, the beautiful
patterns on the shells of diatoms, a type of
phytoplankton or plant plankter.

“Diatoms are incredibly intricate
and beautiful under a microscope—as
intricate and beautiful as the stained glass
windows of Notre Dame Cathedral in
Paris,” says Ross. He has, as a matter of
fact, slides of diatoms and stained glass
windows that look remarkably similar.

People living in the Victorian era
recognized the wonders of the invisible
world of plankton, says Curtis. Many
owned microscopes and arranged diatom
Shells with the point of a needle to make
beautiful designs which they would show
their friends.

The Base of the Food Chain

Diatoms are at the very bottom of the food
chain along with other phytoplankters and
bacterial plankton. Phytoplankters are
incredibly small, diverse plants that capture
energy through photosynthesis, converting
sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into
carbohydrates just as leaves on trees do.
“You might find as many as 150 species of
phytoplankters in one cup of pond water,”
says Ross.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

These phytoplankters are eaten by
herbivorous zooplankters—animal-like
creatures with sieve-like appendages.
Carnivorous zooplankters will munch on
other zooplankters. Larger zooplankters
provide nourishment for minnows and
small fish, which, in turn, are eaten by
larger fish. The green heron then completes
the chain by eating the larger fish.

Similar food chains occur in the
world’s oceans, seas, and other bodies of
water, including Illinois’ wetlands. The
chain becomes more complicated as some
zooplankters feast on both phytoplankters
and other zooplankters and certain fish eat
plankton at one stage in their lives and
other non-plankton treats as they grow.

Plankton is an essential ingredient
in the water’s ecosystem. It takes thou-
sands of pounds of plankton to add one
pound of growth to a heron. Consider that
90 percent of the energy contained in a
food source is converted to heat when a
animal eats it, leaving approximately ten
percent of the energy for its predator.

Rakosy’s microscopic photography captures the
female cyclops, its egg sac bulging. These tiny
creatures have one large eye as did the mythical
giants they are named for.

Start with 10,000 pounds of
algae, a type of phytoplankton. The algae
would provide 1,000 pounds of energy
for its predator, daphnia, a zooplankter.
Small fish, such as sticklebacks, consume
daphnia and get 100 pounds of growth
for every 1,000 pounds of daphnia. That
would convert to ten pounds of growth for
their predators, perch—ending up with
one pound of growth for a heron that eats
the perch.

A Variety of Lifestyles

Birds such as herons reproduce sexually
through mating, followed by the laying and
hatching of eggs. But some plankton can
reproduce both asexually and sexually.

Phytoplankters reproduce rapidly
through cell division. Diatom cells, for
example, are formed of two halves, one of
which fits over the other like a box lid.
When they divide, usually at night, the two
halves separate and a new second half
grows on each of the two new cells.

Most phytoplankton cells live
only a few days, some for just a few hours,
giving them little time to reproduce
any other way. Still, on rare occasions,
diatoms and other phytoplankton will
actually reproduce sexually. A male
and female merge to form what is called
an auxospore, which develops into
a new diatom.

The film of green or blue-green
algae you might see on the surface of
ponds is actually thousands and thousands
of cell-dividing plankters. Normally most
phytoplankton growth gets gobbled up by
zooplankters; however, polluting nutrients
such as phosphorous and nitrogen can
cause huge algae blooms that grow too fast
for zooplankton to eat. “Then the algae die,
sink to the bottom of the pond, and their
decomposition consumes oxygen that fish
need to survive. So fish die,” says Ross.

When kept in check, however,
algae and other phytoplankton provide
nourishment for herbivorous zooplankton

such as the daphnia or water flea, which

Plies

Volvox, a type of algae, is often seen as green,
fuzzy growth on submerged logs and rocks in
ponds. These simplest of plants contain
chlorophyll and, through the process of
photosynthesis, convert solar energy into the
chemical energy that is stored in food.

are filter feeders. Appendages on their
mouth parts create a current of water which
sweeps in food. Daphnia, as well as other
filter feeding plankters, can sense what’s
inedible. They bend their stomachs and use
sharp claws to fiercely eject unwanted
particles back into the water, like a baby
spitting out its food.

Female daphnia and other
plankters can produce eggs alone without
any help from males through a process
called parthenogenesis. The eggs hatch
inside the female. Then she gives birth to
live young, miniatures clones which in turn
eat phytoplankton to grow and mature.

“It’s a quicker, simpler, easier
way to reproduce than finding males,” says
Ross. “There’s less wasted energy.”
However, daphnia can also reproduce
sexually. When the amount of light in the
day shortens and the water temperature
drops, heralding winter, male daphnia
begin showing up to fertilize what become
the female’s “resting eggs.” These eggs,
which contain hardier, cold-resistant shells,
will fall to the bottom of the lake and
hibernate until spring when they will hatch.

Cyclops, a carnivorous zooplank-
ter, has one large eye spot, hence its

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

common name, taken from the one-eyed
creature of Greek mythology. Cyclops, of
which there are a least 40 different species,
reproduce sexually, as do most higher
order zooplankton. The larva of some
cyclops species jump in and out of view
under the microscope, then float for a
while quietly, buoyed up by long hairs.
Remarkably adaptable, some species of
cyclops occur all the way to the Arctic
Here in Illinois, they bear two generations
of young that grow to adulthood within the
six-month-long growing season. Farther
north, the same species will reproduce only
one new generation per year.

In the Arctic, each life cycle takes
two years. The animal is unable to reach
sexual maturity before it must retreat from
the pending frigid winters. It hibernates in
an immature state, completing its cycle
after the next spring thaw.

In the Interest of Science

While plankters such as diatoms, daphnia,
and cyclops provide a source of fascination
and help in our understanding of the food
chain, they also serve an important role in
evaluating what is happening to our
environment. Diatom shells, for example,
may provide clues on the study of acid rain
and pollution. Certain types of diatoms
thrive in more acidic conditions, while
others need a less acidic environment.
Because their brittle silica shells do not
decompose, diatoms can provide a view of
life dating back tens of thousands of years
to help scientists chart the cycle of

water acidity.

“You can discover which kind of
diatoms existed through time and then you
can determine whether the level of acidity
in water is just part of a natural progression
on earth,” says Ross.

The world of plankton is opening
up to scientists now more than ever. Newly
refined plankton nets enable scientists to
trap and study smaller and smaller plank-
ters, and, with the development of electron

microscopy, scientists can focus on units as

small as one scale on the shell of an
individual plankton cell. Perhaps more
secrets will be discovered by examining
these invisible beings that start the chain
that enables us to enjoy the green heron
partaking of an afternoon meal. @

You can view the hidden world of plankton
through January 1992 at the Chicago
Academy of Sciences, 2001 North Clark St.
in Chicago. There you will discover,
”Plankton Portraits: Life in a Water
Drop,” an exhibit featuring the microscopic
photography of Alex Rakosy of Riverdale.

Sheryl De Vore is a nature and environ-
ment writer for Pioneer Press Newspapers
in Bannockburn. Although birding is her

first love, she has enthusiastically pursued

the study of plankton for this article.

Photos and caption information courtesy
Alex Rakosy and The Chicago Academy
of Sciences

This microscopic juvenile fairy shrimp, called
a naupilius, is found in ponds and temporary

pools during the first few weeks of spring, often
appearing while the water is still covered
with ice.

BIORHYTHMS

On the Lookout for Badgers
During the past ten years,
evidence of badgers has been
found in most Illinois counties.
Survey researchers are now
identifying the primary badger

Badger (Susan Post photographer)

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

regions within the state and
investigating the ecology of
badgers that live in widely
different regions representing
various environmental condi-
tions. Badger adaptations for a
fossorial (adaptation to digging)
lifestyle include a wedge-
shaped head on a short neck,
large membranes that protect
the eyes from dirt, short erect
ears protected by long hairs,
partially webbed toes, and two-
inch curved claws.

Because badgers are
primarily nocturnal, they rarely
come in direct contact with
humans, and their presence
goes undetected unless they dig

Aquatic Plants: A Balancing Act
The layer of green algae on the
surface of a quiet pool and the
seemingly endless platelike
lotus leaves that cover the water
are the primary producers of
energy in lakes, ponds, and
rivers. These plants need
sunlight and carbon dioxide to
live and grow, and they release
oxygen, essential to other life in
the water. Aquatic plants also
provide food and habitat for
organisms living in the water
and on land. Large plants
rooted in pond and lake
bottoms help stabilize sedi-
ments and temper the force of
waves, thus reducing erosion
along shorelines.

Sediments, washed mainly
from adjacent farmlands,
continually enter ponds, lakes,
and rivers and deposit nutrients,
often in excessive quantities.
These nutrients often lead to
early season algal “blooms”
that can reduce penetration of
light sufficiently to limit or
prevent the growth of large,
submerged plants. If, however,
these submersed plants can take
advantage of the overabun-
dance of nutrients, they also
develop abundant populations.
The balance between aquatic
vegetation and the surrounding
ecosystem is delicate but

near human residences. Badgers
are known for their pugnacious
personalities and are more than
willing to hold their ground
with any mammal that disturbs
them. They pose little danger to
humans, but other animals that
meet up with badgers and don’t
retreat promptly are likely to
become the badger’s next meal.
The highly transitory behavior
of badgers—they are often here
today and gone tomorrow—
often proves frustrating for
researchers. If you are aware of
badger sites or activity, contact
the Natural History Survey at
(217) 333-5199.

crucial, and either too much or
too little vegetation jeopardizes
the entire system.

Yellow pond lily

Illinois counties
with reports of deer
ticks as of December 1990.

And Better Look Out for
Deer Ticks!

The deer tick, which spreads
the bacteria that cause Lyme
disease, has expanded its range
in Illinois and been found, for
the first time, in the southern
third of the state. Since 1987
the deer tick has been found in
26 Illinois counties. The tick’s
distribution is determined by
INHS researchers and by
volunteers who examine deer
kills at deer check-stations
during the hunting season.
More than 5,000 deer were
closely examined for ticks in
the 98 counties that allow
firearm hunting.

Anyone engaged in
outdoor activities in tick-
infested areas (see map) should
take precautions against tick
bites. The best protection is to
wear sturdy shoes, long pants
with cuffs tucked into socks,
and a long-sleeved shirt.
Although this may present a
less than fashionable appear
ance, it will minimize the
likelihood of tick bites. For
additional protection apply tick

repelling sprays to clothing

CURRENTS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS)

The Scars of the Beautiful Cache River Basin

“One of the most unique and
important areas in the nation” is
how a State Water Survey
report describes the Cache
River Basin. But, as ISWS
principal scientist Mike
Demissie notes, “its complex
hydraulic system presents
tremendous problems to
researchers.”

Demissie, who is in his
ninth year of studying the basin,
says that flooding and poor
drainage of nearby farmlands
have been troublesome for
years. “A number of major
channelization and levee
projects have turned wetlands
into farmland.”

When the Illinois Depart-
ment of Conservation (DOC)
called in the Water Survey in
1982, it was the beginning of
scientific documentation in the
Cache River Basin. By the mid-
1980s, Water Survey studies
had helped to resolve a bitter
conflict between the state and
the drainage district. Demissie
says, “The data showed clearly
that activities to drain the
wetlands just wouldn’t do what
the district wanted anyway. The
only impact would be to
complete the destruction of the
wetlands.”

The Water Survey’s expert
testimony in court helped bring
about an injunction to halt a
bank-clearing project on the
Lower Cache, and, in an out-of-
court settlement, responsibility

for maintenance of the channel
under dispute was shifted
from the drainage district to
the DOC.

At about the same time,
there was concern that gullies,
formed by the entrenchment of
Upper Cache channels, would
drain Heron Pond, killing its
ancient trees. The Water Survey
recommended that the gullies
be stabilized with crushed rock
and gravel. “It did the trick,”
says Demissie.

Demissie explains that
wetlands are important not only
for the diverse biological
communities they harbor, but
also because they serve
valuable hydrologic functions
such as flood control, entrap-
ment of sediment and nutrients,
water-quality improvement,
groundwater recharge, stabili-
zation of streambanks, and
erosion control.

Cypress trees grow in 2,000-acre Horseshoe Lake, one of several ISWS

—= —— y

projects funded by the federal Sportfish Restoration Act through the
Department of Conservation. According to Ming Lee, ISWS researcher,
the lake has lost one-third of its volume since 1951 because of sand, silt,
and clay sediment deposits. ISWS is recommending management
Strategies to eliminate sedimentation and raise the level of the lake.

The 9,500-acre Horseshoe Lake Fish and Wildlife Management Area is
the winter refuge for 100,000 Canada geese and has been a popular
recreational area in southern Illinois since the 1920s. (Courtesy ISWS)

Sediment can affect the
complex food chain that feeds
the biotic system of rivers. For
example, soil particles diffuse
sunlight, which in turn prevents
or reduces photosynthesis.
Sediment can also introduce
contaminants that are deadly to
fish and introduce nutrients that
stimulate so much plant growth

Water Survey researcher Rich Allgire with water monitoring and
sampling equipment at an overpass on the Cache River (Courtesy ISWS)

that the oxygen level in the
water is reduced. Silt can fill
fishes’ gills, strangling them,
and has been known to destroy
fish spawning grounds.

Ongoing ISWS data
collection and the development
of mathematical models have
resulted in recommendations to
stabilize some of the Upper
Cache River channel and
contro! the flow of sediment
into the Lower Cache River
wetlands. The first structures
are in the design phase and
should be ready for installation
by 1992.

The data that Demissie and
his colleagues have collected
have proved valuable not only
to the DOC but also to other
agencies conducting wetlands
studies: The Nature Conser-
vancy, the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service.

= GEOGRAMS

Geological Mapping Pays!
The ISGS has assessed the
benefits and costs of statewide
geologic mapping programs as
required by the 1991 Illinois
Senate Resolution 98. Using the
documented cases of Boone and
Winnebago counties and taking
into account the variations in
geology and regional mapping
needs, survey geologists
estimate the cost of a statewide
mapping program would range
from $21 to $55 million.

A high price to pay? Not
according to Dr. Subhash B.

Mineral Resource Search
What’s the likelihood of finding
new mineral resources—or
extensions of known deposits—
in southern Illinois? To answer
this question, the ISGS is
participating in the Contermi-
nous U.S. Mineral Assessment
Program (CUSMAP) of the
U.S. Geological Survey
(USGS). CUSMAP provides
detailed geological, geochemi-
cal, and geophysical studies in
regions known to contain—or
have potential for—mineral
deposits.

The project, begun in 1986
in cooperation with four state
geological surveys and the
USGS, focuses on the 7,500-
square-mile Paducah quad-
rangle, which covers a section
of southern Illinois and adjacent
parts of Missouri, Kentucky,
and Indiana.

A preliminary assessment
of mineral resources within the
Shawnee National Forest—

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS)

Bhagwat and Dr. Richard C.
Berg, authors of the study,who
feel the benefits of geological
mapping clearly justify the cost.
They point to direct benefits
that accrue from the wise
selection and design of waste
disposal and industrial sites,
sound urban development and
zoning decisions, planning of
mineral exploration and
extraction strategies, and
assessing infrastructure needs.
Indirect benefits include
avoidance of land and water

contamination, the implementa-
tion of public health improve-
ments, and public education.
While some benefits are
quantifiable, many are difficult
to translate into dollars.

Based solely on the
projected savings derived from
avoiding future costs of
cleaning up waste disposal and
industrial sites, statewide
benefits could be between $64
and $148 million on an invest-

(Department of Energy and Natural Resources photo)

fluorspar, metals, absorbent
clay, kaolin, sand and gravel,
coal, oil, and gas—was carried
out with the USGS in Denver
last October, and this past
spring, researchers from the
state geological surveys and the
USGS met to construct and
evaluate conceptual models of
mineral occurrence in the study
area. The ISGS demonstrated
the effectiveness of the Illinois
Geographic Information System
(GIS)—a computer system
which creates multi-dimen-

sional, layered maps from
bedrock up to surface
features—to produce final
assessment maps which show
the relative potential for
occurrence of previously
unknown deposits.

Results of the project will
be made public in 1992. They
should enable industries to
assess the benefits of investing
in Illinois, and they can serve as
the basis for wise policy
decisions by state and federal
agencies.

Geologists collecting surface data
(ISGS photo)

ment of $21-$55 million for an
appropriately detailed geologic
mapping program. Many other
benefits were monitored and
listed although not included in
these projections. Benefit/cost
ratios might well increase if
such benefits were quantified
and included in the calculations.

The study is available as
ISGS Open Files Series 1991-5
and is being edited for publica-
tion as Circular 549.

Field Trips Slated for 1991-92
Field trip geologist Dave
Reinertsen will introduce
groups to the geology of Pere
Marquette State Park on the
scenic Illinois River in the
western part of the state on
October 26, 1991; Cave-in-
Rock on the Ohio River in
southern IIlinois in April 1992;
and the Galena area in north-
western Illinois in May 1992.
To obtain a brochure about
these free trips, contact ISGS,
615 E. Peabody Dr., Cham-
paign, IL 61820-6917, or call
(217) 333-4747.

Field trips attract geology

enthusiasts of all ages

photo)

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

ee CENTERING ON WASTE

ee

“all ode Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (HWRIC)

Left Over Paint—What a Waste!
Illinois ranks among the top
five states in the nation in the
production of paints and
coatings. Few of us are aware
of the quantity of waste
generated in both producing
and applying paint.

The Illinois General
Assembly has required that
HWRIC identify options for
waste reduction in the manufac-
ture and use of paint, make
recommendations for education
programs focusing on the
reduction of paint-related
wastes, and make recommenda-
tions for legislation aimed at
reducing and better managing
such wastes. Concerns include
air pollution from such sources
as solvent evaporation and
liquid wastes from spills, off-
spec batches, and oversprays.
Solid wastes also take up

landfill space and may pose a
threat to groundwater.

To fulfill the state mandate,
HWRIC is polling more than
500 Illinois companies (paint
manufacturers, users, and
removers) to determine the
amount and types of waste they
generate and how the waste is
managed. HWRIC also makes
on-site visits to selected
manufacturers to seek out
innovative pollution prevention
techniques that can be shared
with other companies. An Ad
Hoc Advisory Committee made
up of members of industry,
trade associations, and environ-
mental groups will review the
project and its results and
provide advice.

In the meantime, here are
some recommendation from the
National Paint and Coating
Association:

e Figure out what each job
requires and buy only what

you need.

e Use all of the paint you have
purchased by applying a second

coat or using it for touch-up.
e@ Give left-over paint—in its
original container, label
intact—to someone who can
use it.

e@ Never pour thinners,
turpentine, mineral spirits, and
solvents down drains or storm
sewers. You can reuse them if
you let the used turpentine or
brush cleaner sit in a closed
container until paint particles
settle. Pour off the reusable
clear liquid and return it to the
original container, or label the
new container clearly. In
Illinois, it is legal to dispose of
the dried paint residue in the
household trash.

For assistance in finding waste
disposal programs in your
area, check the Yellow Pages
under “waste disposal,” or
contact HWRIC, One Hazel-
wood Drive, Champaign, IL
61820, 217/333-8940 and ask

for the pamphlet Paint

Disposal...the Right Way.

Getting the Lead Out

Spent batteries are a problem
because they leak and are
dangerous to handle. It is also
illegal to dispose of them
improperly. Used Lead-Acid
Batteries: Management Tips is
available free from the HWRIC
Clearinghouse (217/333-8940).
The publication is the first in
HWRIC’s new “Pollution
Prevention” series. It provides

12

information on regulations
governing lead-acid batteries
and gives management tips for
businesses (particularly
automotive maintenance shops)
and for homeowners. This
publication includes a three-
page list by county of smelters
and battery recycling centers in
Illinois.

TNT Poses Wastewater Risks
TNT has not been manufactured
in the U.S. for the past several
years. The “redwater” generated
during its production—as
suggested by its ominous
name—is hazardous.

In a joint project with the
U.S. Army Construction
Engineering Research Labora-
tory, a redwater treatment
technology called Wet Air
Oxidation is being evaluated in
HWRIC’s Hazardous Materials
Laboratory. The goal is to
render, through appropriate
treatment, a wastewater accept-
able for disposal under federal
environmental laws. HWRIC
scientists are developing
methods to measure the hazard-
ous components in redwater
before and after treatment.

In a separate part
of the study, Natural History
Survey scientists will evaluate
redwater toxicity. Applying
an established group of toxicity
tests, these researchers will
monitor the effectiveness
of the treatment processes at
various stages of the HWRIC
research project.

The chemical and toxico-
logical tests will help define the
optimum operating conditions
for the Wet Air Oxidation
process and its potential for
application to redwater treat-
ment on a production scale.
Development of a successful
treatment procedure for
redwater is a critical first step to
producing TNT again in the
United States.

SURVEYING HISTORY

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE

A Record of Human Activity

outh of U.S. Highway 50, about

parallel with St. Louis, the Illinois

landscape begins to change. The
expansive grand prairie that is the heart of
central Illinois gives way to the gently
rolling Mt. Vernon Hill Country. Here,
wide stream valleys alternate with low hills
on a landscape only lightly altered by
glaciation. The subtle change from prairie
to hills prefigures a more dramatic change
when the Mt. Vernon Hill Country gives
way to the powerful and imposing
Shawnee Hills. Cutting across the southern
part of the state from the Mississippi to the
Ohio River, the unglaciated Shawnee Hills
are best described as a rugged escarpment,
approximately 800 feet high, made up of
300 million-year-old sandstone. It is an
area of magnificent vistas, tall bluffs, deep
canyons, fascinating rock formations,
forest, woodland, and swamp habitats,
clear streams, and unusual flowers. It is
unlike most of Illinois and is one of the
state’s most scenic regions.

The Early Years

To the casual observer the Shawnee Hills
appear almost unspoiled in their native
beauty, but settlement in the area predates
any distinctly U.S. activity and takes us
back to the beginnings of human life on the
North American continent. At Modoc, in
Randolph County, just a few miles
northwest of the Shawnee Hills, artifacts at
least 10,000 years old have been found.
Several miles north of the Modoc site is
Cahokia. This large urban complex
flourished roughly between 900 and 1250
A.D. and influenced settlements through-
out the Mississippi valley. Estimates of its
population range from 20,000 to 40,000.

in the Shawnee Hills

by David Foster

Miners waiting for transportation in a Saline County mine, c. 1920 (ISGS photo)

When explorers and settlers of
European extraction arrived in southern
Illinois after 1673, Cahokia and other
mound-building communities were already
gone, having vanished so completely that
even contemporary Indians were unaware
of them; their native American successors,
however, continued to use the Shawnee
Hills as their forbears had. They hunted,
mined, and farmed.

The French entered southern
Illinois in the late 1600s and eventually
developed a string of settlements in the
Mississippi River valley. Though in
possession of southern Illinois until 1763,
the French never colonized to the degree
their English counterparts did on the

Atlantic seaboard. Their Illinois settle-
ments remained small. French economic
activity centered on grain farming and
fur trading.

From 1763 to 1783, southern
Illinois was in British hands, but
then control passed to the United States.
Penetration into southern Illinois by
American explorers and settlers began
before 1800 and quickened after various
Indian cessions were made during the
first ten years in the 19th century.
These settlers were mostly Southerners,
coming from Kentucky, Tennessee, or the
Carolinas. They settled in the river valleys
and wooded groves near the streams.

The Ohio River was the major transport:

tion artery, and a number of settlements
grew up on its banks.

The early pioneers looked for
wooded areas to settle because the riches of
the prairie were as yet unknown and trees
were an absolute necessity for any success-
ful settlement. Trees were used for fuel, to
construct fences, to build houses, and to
power primitive industries. Trees also had
to be cleared to allow for farming. The
resulting deforestation was devastating to
the Shawnee Hills. The loss of tree cover
exposed the soil to easy erosion, and, in
some parts of the Shawnee Hills, rain
runoff cut gullies as deep as nine feet and
much valuable top soil was lost. Because
Shawnee Hills soils are without the
nutrient-rich glacial deposits of the rest of
the state, the problem of erosion has
severely limited agricultural productivity.
As a consequence, agriculture has not been
widely successful in the Shawnee Hills,
and widespread abandonment of farm land
began as early as the late 1800s. A second
growth of trees covers many of these
abandoned lands.

Farmers, of course, were not
exclusively responsible for deforestation.
Some of southern Illinois’ earliest indus-

SURVEYING HISTORY

tries were heavy wood users. Salt, plentiful
in the saline springs of Gallatin County,
was extracted from brine by boiling. When
all the trees nearest the springs had been
used as fuel, wooden pipelines were
constructed to carry the brine to other, as
yet uncut, trees. By 1828, five such salt
works were in operation. These operations
flourished for a number of decades, but,
due to increased competition from other
non-Illinois sources, ceased production

by 1875.

The smelting of iron ore was a
similar wood user. Smelting furnaces were
constructed in Hardin and Jackson counties
to create pig iron from local ore deposits.
The first such mine opened in 1837 and the
last closed in 1883. Charcoal was the
primary fuel.

Trees, however, were only one
victim of settlement. A guide to the state of
Illinois printed in 1837 already lamented
the loss of buffalo, elk, bear, and otter.
Birds were also decimated by early settlers.
Market hunting left the Shawnee Hills
devoid of partridges, swans, pelicans,
cranes, and passenger pigeons, just to
mention a few. These birds were hunted
and sold in the markets of big cities

Embarkation of General McClernand's brigade—the advance of the great Mississippi expedition
during the Civil War. (From Harpers Weekly; courtesy of the Illinois State Historical Library)

14

primarily as food, though their quills and
feathers were also in demand. The loss of
forest habitat is also partly responsible for
the disappearance of these birds and
animals, but indiscriminate hunting
remains the primary culprit.

This early environmental crisis
was paralleled by a far more obvious
spiritual crisis that haunted southern
Illinois during the first half of the 19th
century: the crisis of slavery and the Civil
War. Slavery was an early divisive issue in
southern Illinois where it existed legally in
the French regime and then under a
semblance of legality during the early
years of statehood, when slaves could be
used as contract laborers or indentured
servants. Southern Illinois was the center
of support for the unsuccessful attempt to
amend the constitution in 1824 to legalize
slavery. During the spirited senatorial
election between Lincoln and Douglas in
1858, southern Illinois, having heard one
of the famous debates in Jonesboro,
remained strongly pro-Douglas. In 1861,
an attempt to create a separate, pro-
confederate state in southern Illinois took
place in Williamson County, and what is
now Giant City State Park was a refuge
and hiding place for many confederate
sympathizers.

This, of course, is not the whole
story. For all those with confederate
leanings in southern Illinois, there were
even more dedicated to a free Union. Many
southern settlers had come to Illinois
precisely because it was free. After the war
began, thousands of pro-Union Southerners
from war-torn areas flooded southern
Illinois, seeking refuge in such towns as
Anna, Jonesboro, and Centralia. Northwest
of the Shawnee Hills, an underground
railroad route existed from Rockwood in
Randolph County to Carlyle in Clinton
County, and southern Illinois enlistments
in the Union army were, throughout the
war, above national quotas. The full extent
of the tension caused by these divided
loyalties can only be guessed at, but it is

safe to say that nowhere else in Illinois was
the agony of the Civil War more keenly
felt than in these southern Illinois counties.

Mineral-Rich Hills
Another major activity that has affected
and continues to affect the Shawnee Hills
is mining. This is a mineral-rich area, and
the mining of a number of minerals—such
as fluorspar, kaolin, silica, and fuller’s
earth—began in the 19th century. These
minerals continue to be important in the
local economy, but according to Jim Baxter
of the Illinois State Geological Survey
(ISGS), their extraction is not particularly
damaging to the environment. The areas
mined tend to be small in size, with few or
no harmful by-products. Abandoned mine
areas are also being successfully reclaimed,
and the existence of untapped reserves of
these minerals is highly probable. (See
Geograms, page 11.)

The mineral usually associated
with southern Illinois, however, and which

ie 7? om ia Be

View of a busy main street in Belknap, c 1905. Sawmill towns prospered in the Cache River Basin until the virgin timber was gone.
(Photographer unknown, courtesy Max Hutchison)

still looms so large in its economy is coal.
The first shipment of coal from a commer-
cial mine near Murphysboro dates from
1822, and by 1840 commercial mining was
becoming well established.

The surface mining of coal is
especially damaging to the landscape, but
since the early 1960s, the reclamation of
mined lands has been mandated by law and
many reclaimed lands have been success-
fully returned to their natural, pre-mining
state. Heinz Damberger of the ISGS points
out that surface mining involves no change
in the composition of materials at the mine
site, only in the arrangement of those
materials. There is little danger from the
drainage of surface mining sites because
any acid is neutralized by a heavy
limestone overburden. The main potential
source for acid drainage in Illinois is from
refuse material of coal cleaning plants,
and, according to Damberger, this is a
localized problem with little ramification
for the larger region.

Coal mining’s effect on southern
Illinois has been more than environmental.
Violence was an early legacy, and William-
son County has the distinction of being the
location of one of the most notorious
examples of labor violence in the United
States. In 1922, coal miners were on strike
across the country, and for reasons not
entirely clear, the United Mine Workers
local allowed a mine near Herrin to operate
during the strike as long as the coal
remained unshipped until after the strike
was settled. Known strike-breakers were
brought in to work the mine, and it soon
became apparent to the striking miners that
the company would ship the coal whether
the strike was settled or not. Their outrage
reached the breaking point when one of the
striking miners was killed from a shot
believed to have been fired by a coal
company guard, setting off a bloody chain
of events involving thousands of miners
In the end, the mine superintendent, a

reputed union-buster, was summarily shot

in spring of 1937 (ISWS photo)

and 18 scabs, unarmed and defenseless,
were brutally slaughtered. A total of 214
miners were indicted for murder; not a
single one was convicted.

The Birth of a National Forest
Widespread unemployment in the mining
industries and the continued failure of
marginal farming operations made the
Great Depression especially severe in
southern Illinois. The creation of the
Shawnee National Forest in 1939

was partly a response to this situation.
The government became a ready buyer
for much of the least productive land
and embarked on the huge task of forest
reclamation. More efficiently managed
timber industries and the development
of recreational sites also helped the
local economy.

Although an extensive second
generation of trees had already appeared
throughout the Shawnee Hills by the
1930s, the Forest Service continues to
restore trees to lands where tree cover has
been removed and the most serious erosion
has taken place. Loblolly and shortleaf
pines have been planted as a short term
solution to keep valuable soil from
continuing to wash into the Mississippi and
Ohio rivers; these pine forests are slowly
being converted to the original hardwood

16

Old Shawneetown, once the largest town in Illinois, after the waters of the Ohio River flood receded

SURVEYING HISTORY

forests of pre-settlement days. The Forest
Service has also restored some original
ecosystems or habitats where feasible. Not
all of the forest area was heavily wooded in
pre-settlement days; some areas, called
barrens and glades, consisted of relatively
open areas dotted with an occasional
stunted oak and a ground cover of various
dry grasses and vegetation. Through
careful seeding and controlled burns, some
of these natural remnants have been
restored.

In all fairness to the residents of
the. Shawnee Hills, both past and present,
much of the area’s decline must be blamed
on factors beyond its control. The opening
of the Erie Canal in 1825 shifted popula-
tion movement in Illinois to the north. The
emergence of Chicago as a transportation
hub confirmed the importance of east-west
trade routes over north-south ones. The
appearance of railroads doomed the river
ports to limited growth. Improvements in
the plow and other farming techniques
shifted agricultural activities to the prairies
of central and northern Illinois. But
perhaps most significant have been the
rivers that brought southern Illinois to
prominence in the first place. Kaskaskia,
Illinois’ first capital, was located seven
miles from the Mississippi on the banks of
the Kaskaskia River, but during a serious

flood in the late 1800s, the Mississippi
appropriated the channel of the Kaskaskia,
expanded it, and literally drowned the
town. Likewise, Shawneetown, on the
Ohio River at the entrance to the Shawnee
Hills from the east, was so devastated by
the Ohio River flood of 1937, that the city
was moved three miles inland. Old
Shawneetown, once the largest town in
Illinois whose confident bankers reputedly
snubbed a delegation of Chicagoans
looking for a loan, is now a ghost town, its
once important buildings almost totally
gone and its main street a picture of
decrepitude.

But it may very well be that the
Shawnee Hills are most threatened by
climate change, especially global warming.
Wayne Wendland of the Illinois State
Water Survey says that a permanent
increase in temperature of just a few
degrees would cause the bulk of the forest,
except along river banks, to migrate slowly
to northern Illinois or southern Wisconsin,
where rainfall and temperature would be
more similar to that which the forest
experiences now. What would remain of
the Shawnee Hills would be more dry
grassland than forest.

Perhaps it is unimportant to know
whether local residents, outside forces, or
the future will have the greatest impact on
the Shawnee Hills. Perhaps it is enough to
know that this historically significant and
resource-rich area remains a gem in the
landscape of Illinois, still largely unknown
and underappreciated, where federal, state,
and local agencies are carefully managing
the sometimes contentious interplay
between natural and human forces. It is
safe to say that despite years of use and
abuse, the Shawnee Hills are looking very
good. May they continue to be an Illinois
showplace. @

David Foster works as curator of
geography for Encyclopaedia Britannica
in Chicago but has close family ties to
southern Illinois.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

NTO THE WOODS

ar above the rain-swollen
river valley, scrub cedars
jut precariously from
age-old limestone cliffs. Fingers
of sunlight reach timidly through
the dense canopy of hickory
and oak trees, stretching to caress
the leaves and petals of wildflow-
ers and delicate ferns on the forest
floor. Overhead, silver-winged
turkey vultures glide effortlessly
on the updraft, silently cutting
through the humid, mid-
morning air.
Three hundred and fifty
feet below and to the west, a
dense yellow-green carpet of
microscopic flowers floats
languidly atop the pristine waters
of a spring-fed swamp. Along the
shoreline, indigo buntings and
yellow-breasted prothonotaries
reveal their hiding places in quick
flashes of brilliant color, their
brief songs echoing from the
bluffs back to the distant treetops.
This is the Shawnee
National Forest, a 261,357-acre
federally protected woodland in
southern Illinois. Although it is
one of the nation’s smallest
national forests, the Shawnee is
the most biologically diverse area within
the state. It is also the most scenic.
Cradled in the arms of the Ohio
and Mississippi rivers, the 1,308 square-
mile forest touches nine counties and
encompasses 55 separate ecological areas
ranging in size from the two-acre Split
Rock Hollow to the 2,585-acre LaRue-Pine
Hills in Union County (described above).
The federal forest is also the home of Bell
Smith Springs and Ferne Clyffe, as well as
eight other federal recreation areas and a
half dozen state parks. It is a vital land-

by Bill Furry

The native columbine is often found growing on relatively steep

slopes in ravines and along bluff edges and can form spectacular
assemblages in late spring

scape bursting with natural beauty, literally
as old as the hills.

Grits and Crayfish

The “southern” in southern Illinois isn’t
simply a geographic demarcation. The
adjective has cultural, political, and social
applications as well. Cairo, for example,
the state’s southernmost city, is 36 latitu-
dinal minutes (about 41 miles) deeper into
Dixie than is Richmond, Virginia, the
Confederate capital of the American Civil
War. Some 240 miles south of Abraham

Lincoln’s home in Springfield,
Cairo is closer to Vicksburg,
Mississippi, than it is to Chicago.
But the region’s most distinguish-
ing features are geologic,

not cultural.

According to Larry Page,
biologist for the Illinois Natural
History Survey’s Center for
Biodiversity, the unique character
of southern Illinois is primarily
the result of an oversight
in nature.

“That part of Illinois was
not glaciated,” says Page,
referring to the great ice flows
that carved out the fertile Illinois
prairie basin, but stopped at the
northern slope of the Shawnee
Hills. “Consequently, southern
Illinois is the oldest biologically
undisturbed region in the state.
The older an area is, the more
time things have to migrate
there,” says Page.

Nowhere in Illinois is
this biological diversity more
pronounced than in the LaRue-
Pine Hills in southwestern Illinois,
where more than 1,150 species of
vascular plants (ferns, conifers,
and flowering plants) are found.
According to Shawnee National Forest
ranger Ray Smith, that number is conserva
tive, because it does not include the vast
number of lichens, liverworts, and bryo
phytes found in the forest. Ninety percent
of the mammals and 35 percent of the plant
species known to occur in Illinois are
found in the Pine Hills. Designated a
National Heritage Landmark in 1975
LaRue-Pine Hills is the essence of pre
settlement Illinois, possessing upland and
lowland forests, prairie barrens, cliffs

springs, caves, ponds, and a swamp

By midsummer the water usually dries to a mere trickle.

LaRue-Pine Hills is home to 23
species of snakes, including the scarlet
snake, a variety found nowhere else in
Illinois. The copperhead, mud snake, green
water snake, and timber rattlesnake are also
at home here, as is the cottonmouth water
moccasin in plentiful numbers. It is said
that in the early spring there are more
snakes slithering in LaRue swamp than
there are lobbyists doing likewise at
the statehouse. Twice a year (in April
and October) the swamp road is closed to
vehicular traffic, allowing migrating
reptiles safe passage from their winter
haunts in the bluffs to the lowland swamp,
and back again to hibernate in the fall.

Endemic to the bluffs at LaRue-
Pine Hills is the rare eastern wood rat, a
bona fide pack rat that builds its nest from
whatever materials it finds closest at hand.
The bluehead shiner and the blind cavefish
also occur in Illinois only at LaRue-Pine
Hills, as do several unusual invertebrates
such as the dwarf crayfish.

There are several ways to gain
access to LaRue-Pine Hills ecological area,
but the most spectacular view is from the
Levee Road. This scenic gravel byway
turns east off Route 3 about eight miles
north of Ware and parallels the Big Muddy
River. The approach to the bluffs from this
vantage is stunning.

Once inside the Pine Hills,
visitors will find well-tended nature trails
of various gradations, many leading to
scenic overlooks of the LaRue swamp.

A designated campground with full
facilities is just two miles down the bluff
road. Primitive camping is permitted
throughout the Shawnee National Forest,
but special permits are required outside
designated areas.

Larry Stritch, a botanist and
heritage specialist for the U.S. Forest
Service at the Shawnee National Forest
main office in Harrisburg, works to
preserve the integrity of the natural areas
throughout the forest. Maintaining public

lands for ecological research is often a

tricky business. “If you don’t bring the
public to the area, they'll never see the
value of spending dollars to preserve it,”
says Stritch. “But if a natural area becomes
too heavily trafficked, its value as a
pristine research area diminishes.” The
answer, Stritch believes, lies in education.
For the last five years southern
Illinois environmental and nature groups
have pooled their resources and expertise
to sponsor the LaRue-Pine Hills
Appreciation Day, held in late April.
The Illinois Shawnee Nature Commission,
the Native Plant Society of Illinois, the
Shawnee Group of the Sierra Club,
the U.S. Forest Service, Southern Illinois
Audubon, and others participate in the
planning and preparation of a series of
excellent programs throughout the ecologi-
cal area. There are guided wetland canoe
trips across the LaRue swamp; workshops
on edible plants, mushrooms, and
wildflowers of the region; and special
hikes for children.

Although all-terrain vehicles are
permitted on gravel roads, they are never
allowed on trails. Rappeling is forbidden, as
bryophytes growing on the surface of the
limestone bluffs can easily be obliterated by
a single careless step. Specimen-collecting
is not permitted without the written consent
of the U.S. Forest Service. Hunting in
season is permitted, subject to the rules and
guidelines of the state Department of
Conservation.

Smith says that spring and fall are
the best times to visit the LaRue-Pine Hills
and Page believes one of the best ways to
experience the area is at night. “Pick a
warm night in May,” he suggests, “and
bring a flashlight. If you shine your light
along the bluffs on the swamp side, you'll
occasionally see the burning eyes of an
eastern wood rat. But the real show at
LaRue after dark isn’t visible, it’s audible.
Once the spring sun sets over the swamp,
the night belongs to the ever-croaking,
ever-chirping, ever-singing frogs.”

A Bridge to Yesterday
About 60 turkey-vulture miles east of
LaRue-Pine Hills and 30 minutes southwest
of Harrisburg is Bell Smith Springs, another
national recreation area known for its
splendid scenery, its variety of flora and
fauna, and its accessible system of trails.
Unlike LaRue-Pine Hills, which gets its
name from the native stands of yellow pine
that dominate the forest, Bell Smith Springs
is nestled among sugar maple, tulip, and
beech trees and is surrounded by upland
hickory and oak trees. The clear, spring-fed
waters of Bay Creek flow through a
wooded ravine surrounded by sandstone
bluffs, making this forest island one of the
most natural attractions in the state.

Bell Smith Springs Recreational
Area is as well-known for its biodiversity as
LaRue-Pine Hills. More than 700 different
varieties of ferns and flowering plants have
been identified at Bell Smith, 20 percent of
the total number of such plants in Illinois,
according to Southern Illinois University

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

botanist emeritus Robert H. Mohlenbrock.
Two species of thrips—small, often-wing-
less insects of the order Thysanoptera—
are endemic to Bell Smith. In June the
brilliant yellow blooms of the flowering
prickly pear cactus decorate the floor of the
forest, as do other succulents such as the
Illinois agave and flower-of-an-hour,
whose pink petals bloom for a brief 60
minutes before withering.

John Schwegman, a heritage
botanist for the Department of Conserva-

tion, grew up in southern Illinois and has
made a detailed study of the flora of the
region. According to Schwegman, there are
plants growing in the cool shade of Bell
Smith Springs that botanists believe are
relics from the last ice age, which retreated
from Illinois some 10,000 years ago. The
hay-scented fern, a threatened species in
Illinois, grows along cool, shaded creek
bottoms as does the plant called leather-
wood. Neither species is found elsewhere

in Illinois. One of the rarest of Illinois

Moist, north-facing cliff walls in Round Bluff Nature Preserves in Ferne Clyffe State Park supp

The trees he

relatively diverse vegetation of ferns, mosses, and even small trees

small cracks in the porous sandstone and eventually cause portions «

fthe rock t

plants, French’s shooting star, is occasion-
ally found along the undershade of
sandstone cliffs at Bell Smith Springs.

The trails at Bell Smith Springs
alone are worth a trip to southern Illinois.
Starting at the parking lot at the end of
Forest Road 848, hikers begin the descent
into the Bay Creek canyon, walking an
asphalt trail down to a series of steps cut
steeply into the rock face. At the foot of the
steps, a choice of trails is offered. To the
left, a trail leads to such scenic spots as the
natural bridge, boulder falls, and sentry
bluff. The massive natural bridge is 30 feet
high, 20 feet wide, and more than 125 feet
long, and was slowly carved out of the
sandstone by centuries of water erosion.

The trail to the right passes by
deep, spring-fed pools that are welcome
swimming holes on hot summer days and
leads to the site of the spring for which the
area was named. Beyond the spring is an
old grist mill where early pioneers took
corn to be ground into flour. At Hunting
Branch is a picnic area. Camping is
permitted at the Teal Pond and Redbud
Campgrounds. A nominal fee is charged.

Getting to Bell Smith Springs
requires perseverence, but it’s worth the
effort. Drive south from Harrisburg on
Route 145 and turn right (west) on Forest
Route 402 at Delwood. After about six
miles on this gravel road, turn left on
Forest Route 447 and drive two more miles
to the Bell Smith Springs entrance.

Emma’s Ferne
Ferne Clyffe State Park is located one mile
south of Goreville on Route 37, about 15
minutes from Marion. The most accessible
of the three forest areas, Ferne Clyffe is
also the most heavily used. More than
400,000 people visit the park each year,
testimony to its natural beauty and excel-
lent facilities.

Not far from the entrance to the
park is the 16-acre Ferne Clyffe Lake,
stor 1inbow trout, largemouth

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

bass, bluegill, channel catfish, and redear
sunfish. Although the lake is not open to
swimming or boating, a one-mile

trail circles the lake, giving hikers and
fishermen unlimited access.

The main attraction at Ferne
Clyffe State Park, however, isn’t fish.
Meandering through the 1,100-acre park
are ten hiking trails, about 15 miles worth.
The quarter-mile Rebman Trail was
named for Miss Emma Rebman,
the schoolteacher who originally sold the
land to the state. It is an easy trail leading
directly to Hawk’s Cave, a 150-foot long
shelter bluff that hosts an intermittent
waterfall. Ferns abound in this splendid
woodland grotto set amidst some of
the most impressive rock formations
in Illinois.

Other trails explore the woods or
command stunning vistas. The mile-long
Round Bluff Nature Preserve Trail
introduces hikers to some of the park’s 700
species of plants, while the eight-mile
Happy Hollow Horse Trail offers a little bit
of everything plus a lot of exercise.

Ferne Clyffe has several camp-
grounds. At the class “A” Deer Ridge
Campground there are modern shower
facilities, picnic tables, and cooking grills.
At the class “D” primitive campground
called Turkey Ridge, grills are provided
and drinking water is available at nearby
parking lots. Other sites include a youth
group campground, a backpackers camp-
ground, and an equestrian campground for
those who bring their horses to the park.

Pack Your Bags

The Shawnee National Forest is open year-
round, and every season in the forest has its
natural wonders. Ferne Clyffe State Park,
Bell Smith Springs, and LaRue-Pine Hills
are only three of the many splendid places
hidden away in the Shawnee, but they offer
a representative sampling of what visitors
to southern Illinois can hope to find there
this fall. a

Bill Furry is a regular contributor to The
Nature of Illinois and a staff writer for the
Illinois Times in Springfield.

Sandstone outcroppings appear in many areas of the Shawnee Hills. Where there is shade, thick
carpets of mosses and lichens and an occasional gnarled red cedar or blackjack oak grow on what
was once bare sandstone.

uggedly beautiful, its landscape

rises and falls and splits apart,

telling a geologic tale 315 million
years old. Ten thousand years ago, prehis-
toric tribes sought refuge under its rock
overhangs as they took advantage of the
area’s seasonal food resources. Prior to the
Civil War, settlers etched their names on its
secluded sandstone walls. Fifty years ago,
young workers chiseled a rustic retreat out
of its own oak and stone.

Today Giant City State Park shares
with its visitors a rich geologic and archi-
tectural heritage.

A Man-Made Retreat

Tucked into the Shawnee Hills of Southern
Illinois, Giant City State Park seems far
away from the frenetic world that typifies
other parts of the state. Contributing to the
serenity of its wooded 3,700 acres is a
lodge constructed in the 1930s by a 150-
member unit of the Civilian Conservation
Corps (CCC). Refurbished by the Illinois
Department of Conservation within the last
few years and now on the National Register
of Historic Places, the lodge is a tribute to
the craftsmanship of the young men who
hewed oak logs on site for beams and
pillars and cut locally quarried sandstone
for walls and archways.

Visitors taking one of two match-
ing circular stairs to the lobby’s arched
mezzanine can feel the Corps’ Rock-of-
Gibraltar construction techniques. Massive
timbers and stone, etched with marks of
their crafters’ tools, resemble those of
medieval castles. The entrance doors, as
well as the floors and all lintels, are
constructed of solid white oak. Positioned
around the towering fireplace is the original
furniture the CCC crafted of local white
oak and maple. A decades-old photograph
near the hearth shows how little the lodge’s
interior has changed through the years.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS _

GIANT CITY

by Anne Mueller

The lodge at Giant City State Park, constructed by the CCC in the 1930s, is on the National
Register of Historic Places. (Department of Conservation photo)

Adjoining the lobby and part of
the original construction is a cocktail
lounge. Its atmosphere is subdued today
compared with the late 1930s when 15
cents would buy a beer and a nickel would
start the victrola for revelers drawn
inside by a red neon sign that spelled out
“The Lodge—Chicken—Dine and
Dance—Steaks.”

People today still make special
trips to enjoy the lodge’s food, but now
meals are served in a new dining room
with seating for almost 200. As part of the
construction undertaken in the 1980s, the
dining room maintains the lodge’s rough-
hewn style. Also harking back to an earlier
age—specifically, to prices set 10 years
ago—is a family-style chicken dinner for
$5.95 a person served every Sunday.

Overnight guests at Giant City
have their choice of three types of cabins.
The lodge’s 12 one-room “historic” cabins
have been rebuilt on their original founda-
tions but, unlike their 1936 counterparts,

are equipped with electricity and bath

rooms. Eighteen recently constructed
duplexes, called “prairie” cabins, feature a
bedroom and a living room. Groups of six
might opt for one of the four larger “bluff”
cabins with fireplace, wet bar, and deck
overlooking scenic woods.

Weekends are booked far in
advance for all the lodge’s cabins, but
those seeking lodging during the middle of
the week are more likely to find a vacancy.
They might also have a chance to find
themselves alone on a trail, to see the land
as it was seen by the earliest of visitors.
While visitors today consider the area
visually intriguing, it probably was of
interest to prehistoric people as well. They
were likely drawn to the area because its
geological and topographic variations
supported diverse plant and animal

resources.

The Prehistory of a Giant City
Nearly 300,000 years before the Wisconsin
glaciers reshaped northern and east-central

Illinois, other ice age glaciers advanced to

the farthest southern point that continental
glaciation would ever extend in North
America. Occurring more than a quarter of
a million years ago during a period known
as Illinoian glaciation, these ice masses
covered nearly 80 percent of Illinois but
stopped just north of the area now known
as Giant City.

The glaciers managed to leave
their mark, however. As they melted away
from southern Illinois 200,000 years ago or
so, their meltwaters eroded the area’s 315-
million-year-old Pennsylvanian bedrock.
Called Pounds Sandstone, it formed long
ago when a succession of inland seas
receded, exposing great expanses of sand
from time to time. These ancient beaches
later were inundated by encroaching seas,
which also brought new sediments across
the area to bury the old beaches. Pressure,
caused by deep burial and mineralized
groundwater that slowly flowed through
the sand, solidified and cemented the sand
grains together.

French's shooting star, among Illinois’ rarest

plants, is one of the park's small treasures.

No
Nm

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

The rectangular joint pattern
evident in the Pounds Sandstone is the
result of stresses within the earth, which
also tilted tie rocks slightly to the north
and east. Water, which percolated down-
ward through the joints and cracks,
ultimately reached the bottom of the
sandstone where it then eroded the under-
lying Drury Shale. Because the sandstone
had been undermined by the water to some
degree, and because the water had made
the underlying shale slightly slick, rectan-
gular blocks of the sandstone very slowly
slid downslope toward a small tributary
valley of Drury Creek. This produced the
park’s unusual rock formations, which to
early settlers—it is reported—looked like
the streets of a “giant city.”

Prehistoric people had discovered
the area long before, however. They found
that another geologic feature—erosionally
formed overhangs called rock shelters—
gave them a measure of protection as they
passed through the area. The land was
forested as it is now, offering abundant
game such as deer, rabbits, and squirrels. It
also provided a variety of seasonal nuts,
fruits, seeds, and roots.

An archeological survey
conducted in 1978 by Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale uncovered
several artifacts, including fluted
and unfluted projectile points and knives.
Chert scrapers, grinding stones, and
grooved pieces also presented the archeolo-
gists with evidence of Paleo-Indian activity
from 10,000-7000 B.C. Later cultures
dating from 7000-5000 B.C. left behind
manos—hand stones used for grinding
grains—and corresponding metates—
stones with a concave upper surface used
as the lower millstone. Evidence of tribes
moving through the area from 5000-3000
B.C. was found in side-notched projectile
points, straight-stemmed projectile points,
and nutting stones.

No artifacts exist from 3000-500
B.C., but the archeological record picks up
again around 400 B.C. Tool remains during

Many of the trails are rugged, owing to the
park's terrain. (Ned Trovillion, photographer)

this time and through A.D. 600 indicate
hunting, woodworking, and the systematic
quarrying of chert deposits. The closest
source of chert-bearing limestone bedrock
is near Cobden, eight miles from Giant
City, so the people traveled or traded for it
to chip it into weapons and tools. Because
of the quarrying, some archeologists
speculate people were occupying the Giant
City area year-round beginning with this
time period.

A stone fortification dating back
to A.D. 600-900 also suggests year-round
population by the Lewis culture. Some
suspect they used the stone fort found in
the park as a defense against the more
technologically advanced Mississippian
people. The fort is triangular in shape and
two of its walls are 50-foot sandstone
bluffs. The third wall, constructed of
sandstone boulders, stretches for 265 feet
and originally was about six feet high and
nine feet wide at its base.

Hiking the “City’s” Trails

Today the stone fort, the rock shelters, and
the sheer-faced “giant city” walls are
points of interest along the park’s well-
designed trail system. Six nature trails,
ranging in length from a third of a mile to
two miles, and a 16-mile backpack trail are
mapped and detailed in self-guided

interpretive trail brochures available at the
park office. Most of the trails are rugged,
owing to the park’s terrain, but the Post
Oak Nature Trail has a blacktop surface
that can be maneuvered by most seniors,
disabled visitors, and families with small
children. Wooden paths along the route
take hikers over a pond and intermittent
streams. Prickly-pear cactus, rare in
Southern Illinois, and the namesake post
oak, handy for fence building, are two of
the plant species visitors will see along
the trail.

The crown jewel of the park’s
trail system is the Giant City Nature Trail.
Only about a mile in length, the trail is

rugged and in some places difficult to hike.

But those who make the effort will see not
only a large rock shelter used by ancient
cultures, but also the towering bluff walls
and street-like canyons that gave Giant
City its name. Walking between them,
hikers will note a temperature change
reminiscent of a descent into grandma’s
cellar. They'll notice trees growing in
unusual ways in an effort to set down roots
and reach for sunlight. They'll also see
the marks of numerous passers-by, who
150 years ago etched their names into

the sandstone walls. Much of the chiseled
graffiti is painstakingly precise,
duplicating serif lettering found on public
buildings and statues. Now some of

the detail on the soaring walls is softened
by velvetlike moss.

While the Giant City Nature Trail
emphasizes the spectacular, there are many
small beauties among the park’s abundant
plant life. Trillium Trail in the Fern Rocks
Nature Preserve is home not only to
various ferns from which it takes its name,
but also to some rare plant species.
Synandra mint, Forbes saxifrage, French’s
shooting star, and woodland bluegrass all
bloom in the nature preserve, which for 20
years has served as a protected site for
nature appreciation and study.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

While the hiking trail system is
the key to fully experiencing Giant City
State Park, other attractions also draw
people to the site. Lodge guests have
access to an outdoor swimming pool.
Fishing and seasonal hunting are available,
and picnicking is accessible to disabled
visitors. Horses are available at a conces-
sion-run stable, and twelve miles of
rugged, timbered equestrian trails give
horseback riders a close-up look at the
park. Some visitors choose to take their
horses into an equestrian campground
overnight—it and other park campgrounds
have electricity and water. Backpackers
using the 16-mile Red Cedar Hiking Trail
can elect to make the trip in one day, or set
up a primitive camp overnight and catch
their breakfast in one of the park’s se-
cluded ponds. The park presents a perfect

backdrop for those looking for recreational
variety amid striking beauty.

Giant City State Park and the
geological, botanical, and cultural features
it encompasses enables its visitors to see
slices of time. Visitors to the park can look
into and appreciate the past of Illinois, a
past that otherwise might be confined to
the pages of books. =

Anne Mueller is a staff writer with the
Illinois Department of Conservation. She is
a former reporter who moved to the state
from Wyoming, where she developed an
interest in geology and archaeology.
Background for the geological information
in this article was supplied by David
Reinertsen, senior staff geologist

with the ISGS.

Mapping out the Sights

If you plan to head down to Southern Illinois you can call or write ahead for visitor
information. For general tourism information, call the Department of Commerce and
Community Affairs 1 (800) ABE-0121. For information on Illinois recreational sites and
state parks, including Giant City Lodge, contact the Department of Conservation, Public
Information, 524 S. Second Street, Springfield, IL 62701; (217) 782-7454. For detailed
maps and information on the Shawnee National Forest contact the Forest Supervisor,
901 S. Commercial, Harrisburg, IL 62946; (618) 253-7114. If you want to learn more
about the Cache River Wetlands write or call The Nature Conservancy, 79 W. Monroe,
Chicago, IL 60603; (312) 346-8166 or the Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge,
Shawnee Community College, Route 1, Box 53D,

Ullin, IL 62992; (618) 634-2231.

SHAWNEE NATIONAL
FOREST

CASHE RIVER
WATERSHED

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Dean of the Ducks: Frank Bellrose

“Saving some land for the future, Frank,
may be the most important thing we do.”
(1960)

Glen C. Sanderson

Illinois Natural History Survey
Principal Scientist Emeritus and Former
Head - Center for Wildlife Ecology

prophetic statement. Twenty one

hundred acres of swamp and

marginal farmland were recently
set aside on the Lower Cache River and
dubbed the “Frank Bellrose Waterfowl
Reserve.” The Reserve will be developed
and managed for wood duck nesting,
migrating waterfowl, and wintering
mallards by Ducks Unlimited and The
Nature Conservancy with the cooperation
of the National Fish and Wildlife Founda-
tion, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and
Illinois Department of Conservation.

The dedication, which will be
some time next year, honors the man who
has spent his career at the Illinois Natural
History Survey studying—primarily—
waterfowl. Known as the dean of duck
researchers, or Mr. Duck, Bellrose began
studying wood ducks in 1938 and will soon
publish his long-awaited book on the
subject, based on more than 50
years of research.

Bellrose’s work has led
to a better understanding of the
importance of wetland resources.
Over the years (he “semi-retired”
in 1982) Bellrose developed the
first practical housing for nesting
wood ducks, later improving the
design to make it predator-proof;
researched waterfowl habitat and
food habits; counted waterfowl
from such vantage points as boats,
cars, trees, bluffs, and light
aircraft; broke new ground in the
understanding of waterfowl
migrating patterns; studied the

effects of season length, shooting hours,
and the use of live decoys and baiting
(banned in 1935) on waterfowl popula-
tions; and published a book, Ducks, Geese,
and Swans of North America (1976). The
book sold more than 250,000 copies, far
more than is usual for a book of this kind.
Bellrose, credited with close to 100
publications, is the recipient of an Honor-
ary Doctor of Science Degree from
Western Illinois University and has
received numerous honors and awards,
including the prestigious Wildlife Society
Aldo Leopold Award in 1985.

But perhaps his farthest reaching
achievement was his pioneering work with
the problems of lead poisoning in water-
fowl. His research at the Natural History
Survey was a major factor in the gradual
replacement of lead shot by steel. The total
ban on lead shot for waterfowl hunting will
be in full effect nationwide starting with
the 1991-92 hunting season.

The Nature of Illinois Foundation
Chairman Gaylord Donnelley, who has
been a leader in conservation efforts in the
Cache as well as other parts of the country,
hosted a luncheon last year to begin

Frank Bellrose

fundraising for the Frank Bellrose Water-
fowl Reserve. It was a fitting send-off. For
it was Bellrose, along with Glen Sander-
son, who first made Chairman Donnelley
aware of the Natural History Survey when
they met during their early work to save
the prairie chicken from extinction.
Donnelley was introduced to the
two other Surveys in turn, and
was so impressed by their work
and so dismayed by their lack of
recognition, that he agreed, in
1983, to serve as Chairman of a
group of lay people who would
act as friends of the Surveys.
Donnelley is an active member of
the Foundation (originally the
Society for the Illinois Scientific
Surveys) and is its chairman to
this day. @

Jean Gray, editor

Wood ducks (Courtesy Ducks Unlimited, Scott Nielsen photographer)

The Nature of Illinois Foundation

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Nature of Illinois

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Nature of Illinois
Ottawa Silica Company
Foundation, Ottawa

Michael O. Gibson

Treasurer, Nature of Illinois
Marine Bank of Springfield,
Springfield

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

David E. Connor

David E. Connor & Associates,
Peoria

George Farnsworth, Jr.

Farnsworth and Wylie,
Bloomington

Janice D. Florin

Amoco Chemical Company,
Chicago

Kenneth W. Gorden

Kenway Farm, Inc., Blue Mound
Ralph D. Grotelueschen
Deere & Company, Moline
Walter E. Hanson

Hanson Engineers, Inc.,
Springfield

Douglas B. Mains, M.D.

The Conservation Foundation of
DuPage County, Wheaton
Charles Marshall

AT & T, Chicago

Carleton Nadelhoffer
Nadelhoffer, Nagle, Kuhn et al,
Naperville

James D. Nowlan

Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois,
Springfield

George J. Oberlick

Turris Coal Company, Elkhart
Albert Pyott

Illinois Nature Conservancy,
Winnetka

William L. Rutherford
Forest Park Foundation, Peoria
Harvey Sheldon

McDermott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Roy L. Taylor, Ph.D.
Chicago Horticultural Society,
Glencoe

Donald A. Wallgren

Waste Management of North
America, Inc., Oak Brook
Charles W. Wells

Illinois Power Company,
Decatur

Michael Witte

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff
John D. Schmitt

Executive Director

Jean Gray
Associate Director

Illinois Scientific Surveys
Morris Leighton, Chief

Illinois Geological Survey

Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey

Richard Semonin, Chief
Illinois Water Survey

David Thomas, Director
Hazardous Waste Research and
Information Center

Supporters

Founding ($10,000)

Amoco Foundation; Edmund B.
Thornton Foundation; Gaylord
Donnelley Trust; Gaylord &
Dorothy Donnelley Foundation

Benefactor ($5,000 per year)
Archer Daniels Midland Company;
Commonwealth Edison;

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company;
Prince Charitable Trusts-Frederick
Henry Prince Testamentary Trust;
Waste Management of North
America, Inc.

Associate ($1,000 per year)
Arthur Andersen & Company;
Boulevard Bancorp Foundation;
Caterpillar Foundation; Deere &

Company; Chauncey and Marion
Deering McCormick Foundation;
Helene Curtis, Inc.; Deluxe
Corporation Foundation; First
Chicago Bank; Hyatt Regency
Chicago; Illinois Bell; Illinois
Power Company; Jamee &
Marshall Field Foundation; Marine
Bank of Springfield; Material
Service Foundation; Brooks &
Hope McCormick Foundation;
Mobay Company; Patrick
Engineering, Inc.; Rand McNally &
Company; Regenstein Foundation;
Sahara Coal Company; J.R. Short
Milling Company; Soyland Power
Cooperative, Inc.

Sponsor ($500 per year)
Chicago Title & Trust; Consumers
Illinois Water Company; Nina &
James Donnelley Foundation;
Draper & Kramer Foundation;
Elizabeth Cheney Foundation;
Farnsworth and Wylie; Forest
Fund; Francis Beidler Charitable
Trust; Hamilton Consulting
Engineers; The Harris Foundation;
Illinois Farm Bureau; Illinois Mine
Subsidence Insurance Fund; Lester
B. Knight & Associates; Mobium
Corporation; Shell Oil Company
Foundation; States Land
Improvement Corporation;
Whistling Wings, Inc.

Patron ($250 per year)
Andrews Environmental
Engineering, Inc.; Atlas Refuse
Disposal; Baxter & Woodman, Inc.;
Booth/Hansen & Associates;
Carlson Knight Kudrna, Inc.;
Cellular One of LaSalle; David E.
Connor & Associates; GE Plastics;
Greeley & Hansen; Hanson
Engineers, Inc.; Harza Engineering
Company; Henry, Meisenheimer &
Gende, Inc.; Hey & Associates,
Inc.; Claude N. Hurley Company;
Hurst-Rosche Engineers, Inc.;
Illinois Coal Association; Klinger
& Associates, P.C.; Lakeridge
Kennels, Inc.; Layne-Western
Company, Inc.; Ezra Levin
Foundation; Morgan Stanley &
Company, Inc.; RJN Environmental
Associates Inc.; Rhutasel &
Associates Inc.; Sargent & Lundy
Engineers; Sheppard, Morgan &

Schwaab Inc.; Webster, McGrath
& Carlson Ltd.; Winnebago
Reclamation Service, Inc.

Institutions

Belleville Area College; Chicago
Public Library; Macon County
Conservation District; National
Park Service; Illinois Department
of Commerce & Community
Affairs; Illinois Department of
Conservation; Illinois Department
of Energy & Natural Resources;
Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency; Carl Sandburg College;
Vermillion County Conservation
District

Individual Supporters*

James R. Anderson, Jr.; Gregson L.
Barker; Henry Barkhausen; James
F. Bere’; Monika Betts; Mrs. Philip
D. Block, Jr.; Jane Bolin; Robert E.
Brooker; Mr. and Mrs. Henry T.
Chandler; Weston Christopherson;
David E. Connor; Stewart S.
Dixon; Wesley M. Dixon, Jr.;
Barbara Donnelley; Gaylord
Donnelley; Strachan Donnelley;
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Donnelley
II; Clinton Frank; Clayton Gaylord;
William L. Graham, Jr.; Charles C.
Haffner II]; Walter E. Hanson;
Charles Marshall; Beatrice C.
Mayer; Henry W. Meers;
Middleton Miiler; Mr. and Mrs.
George J. Oberlick; George A.
Ranney, Jr.; Joseph Rich; Thomas
H. Roberts, Jr.; William Rooney;
Frank A. Rossi; William
Rutherford; John D. Schmitt;
Harvey M. Sheldon; Harold Byron
Smith, Jr.; Gardner H. Stern; Roy
L. Taylor; Edmund B. Thornton;
Fred L. Turner; Donald A.
Wallgren; John R. Walter; Mrs.
Leo Whalen; Blair H. White;
Michael & Patricia Witte; Paula
Wolff & Wayne Whalen; Louise
Young

*Contributions of $200 or more

EE el
In cooperation with the Marketing
Bureau of the Department of Commerce
and Community Affairs

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

rae
Winter eB cer Ways and Prairies

From the Foundation

If the word “survey” makes you think of roadside workers
measuring for construction projects or intrusive phone calls
auditing your buying habits, then please read on.

To me, “Survey” (with a capital S) means the Illinois
Scientific Surveys (Natural History, Water, and Geological) and
more than 150 years of cataloging Illinois’ natural resources.
Survey activities encompass hundreds of vital research projects;
educational outreach; and technical assistance to private citizens,
government, business, and industry.

Survey projects help protect our land, water, and air; our
natural resources above and below the ground; our health; and the
benefits we derive from our natural environment. Survey research
helps ensure sound, safe economic development and helps state
and local governments plan for future population growth—
answering such complex questions as where to safely site
landfills, municipal water supplies, and new construction.

Illinois is unique and fortunate among states in having
three Surveys, under the Department of Energy and Natural
Resources, that span the natural resources. The Hazardous Waste
Research and Information Center, the most recent member of the
team, assists the state and its citizens in the quest for a safer,
cleaner, more productive future for Illinois.

It is the Foundation’s mission, through the pages of this
magazine and our other educational projects, to lead you to a
greater appreciation for the state of Illinois and, even more
important, to help you understand the important role that sound
science plays in today’s world.

Warmest Regards,

Por bt Smear

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

Table of Contents

River Watch 1
The Natural History and Water Surveys dive into an
environmental management program to protect Illinois’

aquatic resources.

River Towns 5
Throughout history, the Mississippi and Illinois rivers

have provided inspiration and transportation for towns

along their banks.

Surveying Illinois 9
Surveying Groundwater

Hazardous Waste: Past, Present, Future 13
Illinois scientists try to find and cure the state’s hazardous
waste problems.

Prairie Hide and Seek 17
Insects protect themselves from predators in remarkable—
and often beautiful—ways.

Illinois Cemeteries: Whispers From the Past 21
Illinois’ prairie cemeteries provide clues about how the land
looked and how the people lived a century and a half ago.

Water Survey Chief Retires 24
Richard G. Semonin’s career at the Water Survey leaves
high achievements in its wake.

About the Cover

Cryptic katydid in a not-so-cryptic setting. See “Prairie Hide
and Seek.”

Printed on recycled paper

Published by The Nature of Illinois Foundation in support
of The Illinois Scientific Surveys and Hazardous Waste
Research and Information Center

Volume VI, Number II

Editorial Staff

Jean Gray Editor

Michael Jeffords Photographer
Design

Mobium Corporation, Chicago

Stay In Touch

Name and address changes and membership information should be sent to
The Nature of Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle, Suite 1666, Chicago, IL 60604,
(312) 201-0650. Master Card and Visa accepted.

Copyright 1992 by The Nature of Illinois Foundation. All rights reserved.

The

“My assistant and I were in an electrofish-
ing boat, sampling the fish population in a
small bay of the Illinois River just south of
Peoria. Suddenly the water rushed away
from the boat, laying it on its side with the
propeller churning into the mud. As we
scrambled to shut off the electric generator
and the outboard motor, we saw 15 heavily
loaded barges being pushed upstream past
the mouth of the bay by a diesel-powered
towboat. We just had time to observe
mussels exposed on the bottom before the
water returned in a series of waves that
swung the boat around. At that moment, I
began to wonder what effects increased
barge traffic from the bigger locks at Alton
was going to have on life in this river.”

Dr. Richard E. Sparks, Aquatic Ecologist

Illinois Natural History Survey
River Research Laboratory at Havana and

Supervisor of the Survey’s LTRM stations.

RIVER WATCH

Surveys Look After Illinois’ Aquatic Resources

by Ruth M. Sparks

wv ..” , ™=* ms ~ Pa

RALUNAL HDi eR: Currer

Fea + 1992

At the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers at Grafton (Photo by Max Schnorf)

decade ago, the U.S. Army Corps

of Engineers proposed replacing
the old dam and single 600-foot
lock at Alton, Illinois, with a new dam and
two 1,200-foot locks. The proposal touched
off an explosion of controversy that pitted
such unlikely allies as the Sierra Club and
the railroads against commercial naviga-
tion interests and the Corps.

From Confrontation to Compromise
Environmental groups feared the effects of
increased commercial barge traffic on fish,
wildlife, and aquatic vegetation. They felt
the damage would be devastating for
commercial and sport fishermen, mussel
harvesters, and recreational hunters—those
who depend on the natural resources of the
river. Because no one could say with
certainty how bad the effects would be,
these groups proposed conducting environ-

mental studies before construction began.

Navigation interests, on the other hand,
emphasized the positive economic impact
that river traffic has on the entire midsec-
tion of the country; and they observed that,
in spite of years of commercial traffic, it
was still possible to catch fish in the river.
The courts decided in favor of building the
new locks and dam.

The debate, however, forced
Congress to recognize that the Upper
Mississippi River System is not only a
barge canal, but also a biological treasure
containing 132 species of fish; 50 species
of mussels; and hundreds of species of
birds, reptiles, and mammals, as well as the
lesser known creatures that form the base
of the food chain. The compromise Upper
Mississippi River Management Act of 1986
authorized the dam, but it also established
the Upper Mississippi River Environmental

Management Program (EMP)

Canada goose nesting in a backwater slough on
the Illinois River south of Peoria

Under this program, biologists
and hydrologists began collecting the data
they needed to answer some of the trou-
bling questions that arose during the legal
battles. The Illinois Scientific Surveys are
involved with three EMP projects: long-
term resource monitoring, habitat rehabili-
tation and enhancement projects, and
monitoring physical changes associated
with boat traffic.

Taking the Rivers’ Vital Signs
The long-term resource monitoring
(LTRM) program is a biological informa-
tion-gathering project conducted from a
network of six new field stations along the
Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The Illinois
Natural History Survey (INHS) operates
the LaGrange station located at Havana,
Illinc‘s, along the Illinois River and the
Pool 26 station located at West Alton,
fissouri, just below the confluence of the
Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Researchers
collect information year-round on water
quality, plants, and fish. Standardized
methods of information-gathering make it
possible to look at large-scale trends from
upstream to downstream, from season to

season, and from year to year.

iP)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

In just three summers, John
Nelson, INHS plant specialist at Pool 26,
has documented dramatic year-to-year
changes. His study area is just upstream of
the lock and dam at Alton. During the
1988 and 1989 drought years, the dam was
closed to keep water levels high enough
to support commercial barge traffic.

This kept his study areas flooded, and they
supported a dense growth of American
lotus. The spring of 1991, in contrast, was
unusually wet, and it was necessary to keep
the water flowing freely through the dam to
prevent flooding upstream. Ironically, this
resulted in many of the backwaters close to
the dam becoming dry at a time of year
when they would ordinarily have been
flooded. The lush lotus beds were replaced
by a dense stand of smartweed, an aggres-
sive mud-flat invader that persisted even
when the water finally rose in the plant
beds later in the summer.

When Nelson compared his data
with the fisheries data collected by his
colleague Rob Maher, he noticed a close
connection between the species of plants
and the species of fish. The lotus beds of
1988 and 1989 had been inhabited by bass,
crappies, and various types of sunfish; in

1991 the smartweed beds supported drum,
gar, and carp.

Fluctuating water levels affect
fish numbers as well. In 1990 water levels
at LaGrange were above flood stage all
year, covering islands and broad areas
of floodplain forest and providing excellent
spawning areas. In 1991 the spring flood
lasted only until mid-June. When fish
populations were concentrated in the
main river once again, the success of the
previous years’ spawning became evident.
Sampling nets containing hundreds
of one- and two-year-old fish
were commonplace.

Paul Raibley, an indomitable
fisheries crew leader at LaGrange,
recounted his dilemma when a severe
thunderstorm blew in just as he had hauled
in a hoop net containing more than 1,300
one-year-old channel cats. It was
dangerous to stay and it was dangerous to
go back, so he and his assistant, Barry
Newman, just pulled the boat up against
the bank and weighed, measured, and
released every one of those fish while the
storm raged on. “Our data sheets were
soaked, and the boat was full of water,” he
said, “but we didn’t lose a single fish.”

Much of the nation’s fuel and grain is shipped year round on the Illinois River.
(INHS photo by Richard Sparks)

Impressive fish numbers make it
tempting to jump to the conclusion that the
river must be improving. In high water
years, the concentration of pollutants is
lower, but that could be due to an increase
in the volume of water rather than a
decrease in the amount of pollutants. It
doesn’t take a trained eye to see some of
the water-quality problems. Flying over the
two rivers near their confluence at Grafton,
Illinois, it is easy to see where the muddy
brown waters of the Illinois join the clearer
waters of the Mississippi. The brown
plume of Illinois River water hugs the
eastern side of the river and is clearly
visible miles downstream at the lock and
dam at Alton.

“They are two distinct water
masses,” Eric Ratcliff said. “I know which
river a water sample comes from just by
the numbers I get.” Ratcliff is the water-
quality crew leader at the Pool 26 LTRM
station. Year-round, rain or shine, he goes
out to his sampling sites and tests the water
for clarity, nutrients, dissolved materials,
and oxygen. The readings from the secchi
disk tell the clarity story.

A model of low-tech instrumenta-
tion, the secchi is a dinner-plate-sized disk
painted black and white. When lowered
into the water, the depth at which it can be
seen indicates the clarity of the water.
Ratcliff can drop his secchi disk off the
side of his boat on the east side of the river
and watch it disappear at a depth of only
three inches. As he moves across the river
and out of the plume of Illinois River
water, visibility increases to two feet. It is
the number of fine particles suspended in
the water that makes the difference.

Using a slightly higher-tech
instrument, called a conductivity meter, he
measures how much electricity a water
sample can conduct. The conductivity
meter indicates the amount of dissolved
solids the water is carrying. Whether from
road salt or agricultural fertilizers, from
sewer outfall or industrial waste, the
numbers indicate that there is more there

American lotus bed in late summer

than can be seen with the naked eye. On
most days the amount of dissolved materi-
als flowing down the Illinois is twice the
amount flowing down the Mississippi.

Surveying the Rivers’ Waves

The Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS)
has the task of measuring the physical
changes associated with traffic on the two
rivers. When a fully-loaded 100-foot-wide
by 1,100-foot-long barge-tow (as many as
three barges abreast and five deep) moves
on the river, some of its effects can be
plainly seen. The water is pushed ahead,
creating a huge bow wave in front of the
barge; behind, a large “rooster-tail” is
thrown up by the propellers; and along the
sides there is a considerable drawdown of
the water. When two of these behemoths
pass each other, they set the river oscillat-
ing back and forth like waves in a bath-
tub
minutes. Such large vessels moving

an effect that can continue up to 30

through the water can actually change the

speed and direction of the flow of the river.

Turbulence roils up the bottom sediments
and re-suspends them in the water, and the

waves contribute to bank erosion.

Measuring the Rivers’ Mud
All these effects needed to be accurately
measured, but much of the available
equipment was not suitable for use on
large rivers.

Undaunted, Dr. Nani Bhowmik,
Director of the ISWS Office of Hydraulics

and River Mechanics, and his colleagues
adapted existing instruments and even
designed and constructed new ones, testing
them under rugged field conditions. In
order to determine the effect traffic has on
water direction and velocity, they set out
13 state-of-the-art velocity meters, placing
them as close as they dared to the main
channel without running the risk of their
being run over. In order to accurately
measure the waves and drawdown, the
researchers designed and built their own
wave gauges. Connected to computers on
shore, the gauges measure velocity once
every second and wave heights every
tenth-of-a-second from sunrise to sunset.
Battery-operated pumps collect water
samples and measure the amount of
suspended sediment. Back at their comput-
ers, the researchers analyze the data,
assisted by a number of their colleagues,
including a visiting mathematician, Bijoy
Mazumder. When he left his office at the
Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta to
collaborate with the Water Survey,
Mazumder had no idea that he would be
spending time in such intimate contact with
Mississippi mud

Mud is hardly a new problem
Even in the early steamboat days, shifting
mudflats and sandbars threatened naviga
tion. Accidents and groundings were
commonplace. As human populatior
grew, however, major changes occur
the way land and water resources wer

used. More and more of the drainage ba

A =
a4 a os

Water Survey research site on the Illinois River near Kampsville. Instrumentation in the river measures velocity, sediment, and wave action.

(ISWS photo by Nani Bhowmik)

was cleared for agriculture, leading to
excessive soil erosion and increased
sedimentation.

Beginning in 1913, with the
completion of the hydroelectric dam on the
Mississippi between Keokuk, Iowa, and
Hamilton, Illinois, and continuing into the
1930s, 26 dams were constructed on the
Mississippi River and five on the Illinois.
They were hailed as a boon to commerce.
Water behind the dams, sometimes as deep
as 20 feet, backed up for miles upstream
creating deep, safe passage for the ever-
increasing river traffic. There was a
temporary increase in aquatic habitat as
backwaters became permanently flooded
and floodplain lakes expanded. Fishing was
great and populations of woodpeckers and
warblers exploded as they moved in to take
advantage of thousands of dead trees in the
now-flooded forest.

The sediment was forgotten, but it
wasn’t gone. Year after year, inch by inch,
the sediment was carried into the rivers and
settled to the bottom, filling the newly
created habitat. According to Dr. Bhowmik,
the Illinois River Valley is silting in at a
rate of from .8 inch to 2 inches of sediment
each year. When he visited backwater lakes
during the drought year of 1988, he found

that many of them were essentially dry; and
in normal years, some of them contain only
a few inches of water.

Doug Blodgett, team leader at the
LaGrange station, says “nobody cares about
the first 14 feet of sediment when the water
depth goes from 20 down to six feet deep.
It’s when the sediment gets to propeller
depth that everyone gets excited.”

Restoration and Conservation

Those last few feet of mud prompted
habitat rehabilitation and enhancement
projects. Near Peoria, for example, the East
River used to be a flowing side channel, but
it became plugged by dead trees that
trapped so much mud that the channel is
now a dead-end chute with mature trees
growing on top of the plug. It will be
restored to its pre-1965 condition by
dredging, and it will be closely monitored
before and after the work is done to assess
the biological response.

A much-publicized project is the
proposal to build islands in Peoria Lake
using sediment dredged from the lake. The
dredging would create deep areas for fish,
and the islands would act as windbreaks,
reducing wave action and turbidity.
Perhaps, given clearer, calmer waters, the

natural vegetation will reestablish itself.
Chatauqua Lake, located along the Illinois
River near Havana, has accumulated so
much sediment that it is now only 18 inches
deep. It is a candidate for restoration of
habitat for fish and migrating waterfowl, as
are Swan Lake and Stump Lake which are
located on opposite sides of the lower
Illinois River, just above the confluence
with the Mississippi.

Gathering information about
sediment, wave action, and water quality is
the first step on the long road back to
regaining what has been lost. Recommend-
ing practical ways to deal with some of the
problems is the second step, and following
up to see whether the treatment had the
desired results is the third. Management
practices need to be broad enough to
include restoration of areas that have been
destroyed as well as conservation of areas
thus far preserved. The information
gathered by the Surveys as part of the
Environmental Management Program will
help in guiding this restoration and evaluat-
ing its success. #

Ruth M. Sparks is an environmental writer
and educator who lives in western Illinois,
between the two great rivers.

f the prairie is the heart of Illinois, the

river is its soul. The tributaries of the

state, especially the Illinois and
Mississippi rivers, flow deeply through the
cultural consciousness. Looking across the
Mississippi floodplain at Cahokia, the
largest prehistoric Native American city
north of Mexico, one can appreciate the
awe and reverence Native Indians felt as
they gazed out across the “Father of
Waters.” At Dickson Mounds near
Lewistown, one can experience a similar
emotion looking out over the vast Illinois
River bottoms.

Towns that sprang up along the

Illinois’ tributaries became the nerve
centers of the state. Some prospered, others
did not. Self-righteous Shawneetown on
the banks of the Ohio River refused to loan
money to a small community on the shores
of Lake Michigan. Chicago survived,
Shawneetown sank, literally. Kaskaskia,

Chautauqua National J
Wildtife Refuge

Map produced using the Illinois Geographic
Information System. Map design by Katherine
Hunter, Illinois Natural History Survey, 1991.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

RIVER TOWNS

by William Furry

Downtown Havana

the state’s first capital, disappeared forever
beneath the muddy water of the Kaskaskia
River. Other towns, such as Alton and
Havana, thrived, developing economies
that continued to grow long after the
decline of commercial river transportation
and the emergence of the railroads.

Small but Mighty

Three highways converge in Havana—
routes 136, 78, and 97. A fourth, the
Illinois River, is the town’s westernmost
boundary. The high ground, where the
county courthouse sits, was once a favorite
fishing spot for Native Americans, and
legend has it that seventeenth-century
French explorers Marquette and Joliet
stopped at Havana for a fish fry. The
Rockwell Indian Mound, believed to be a
Mississippian burial mound, lies on
Havana’s northwest side and is now a
shady community park. In 1858 it was a
stopover point for U.S. Senate hopefuls
Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln,
who took the opportunity to present their
opinions on the expansion of slavery into

the western territories.

Although small (population
3,800), Havana was once mighty. Com-
mercial fishers in Havana at one time
supplied freshwater fish to kitchens and
restaurants in cities as far away as Boston
and New York. There are still a few old-
timers who recall the town’s heyday, when
sport fishers arrived in Havana by the
trainload, and well-iced boxcars departed
regularly with the day’s catch on board.

At the turn of the century, more than 2,000
commercial fishers worked the Illinois
River from Hennepin to Grafton, harvest-
ing annually nearly 25 million pounds of
catfish, carp, buffalo, and bass.

In the mid-1950s, however, the
heavily polluted Illinois River nearly died,
and so did Havana. Industrial pollutants
and raw sewage from northern cities
washed downstream via the Chicago
Sanitary and Ship Channel and virtually
suffocated the river. Aquatic vegetation
slowly disappeared from the once lush
river, and freshwater organisms such as the
fingernail clam, an important food source
for both fish and birds, also vanished

Today, commercial fishers along the

Illinois River harvest fewer than two
million pounds of fish per year.

Barging Down the River

Havana still relies on the Illinois River for
its livelihood, but its emphasis is now more
on shipping than fishing. The Illinois has
always been a major transportation artery
in the state, joining Lake Michigan to

the Mississippi River, first by way of the
Chicago portage, later by way of the
Illinois and Michigan Canal. But recently
the river has become even more economi-
cally vital due to rising transportation and
energy costs.

According to Jim Whalen,
manager of the ADM/Growmark elevator
and shipping dock in Havana, a single
grain barge can haul as much tonnage as
15 railroad boxcars or 60 semi-trailers, and
it consumes only a fraction of the energy.
ADM/Growmark ships 95-98% of the
central Illinois grain it processes to New
Orleans. “If you can catch a good ride,”
Whalen says, “you can get down to the
Gulf in five to seven days.” Normal
shipping time, he says, is about 14 days.

Corn and soybeans travel
downriver from Havana; coal is barged
upriver where it will eventually be
converted to energy at Commonwealth
Edison power plants. And the traffic flows
year-round. Unlike the wide, slow-moving
waters of the Mississippi, the Illinois
River rarely ices up even in the coldest of
months. The river is narrow and the current

milf

Cell block remnant from the infamous

Alton prison

6

Towboat operating on the Illinois River near Havana

strong at Havana, which keeps the shallow
river channels open for traffic. On cold
winter days in January, it isn’t uncommon
to see semi-trailers from Iowa and
Missouri in Havana, backing up onto the
ADM platform to send a load of grain

to New Orleans.

Havana has other regional advan-
tages, too. Mason County sits on top of one
of west-central Illinois’ largest natural
resources: the Sankoty Sand aquifer.
According to Adrian Visocky, Director of
the Illinois State Water Survey’s Ground-
Water Resource Evaluation and Manage-
ment Office, the Sankoty Sand—along
with overlying sand and gravel glacial
outwash—is a large sand and gravel
aquifer, 100-150 feet thick. It is recharged
directly by precipitation, Visocky says.
The water table in the aquifer generally
varies in depth from 10 to 50 feet and often
is shallow enough that residents can water
their lawns by sinking “sand points,”
small-diameter wells, and using
suction-lift pumps.

The Sankoty Sand aquifer holds
an abundance of fresh groundwater. Mason
County irrigates more than any other
county in the state, pumping a yearly
average of 153,000 gallons per day per
square mile from the aquifer, yet the Water
Survey estimates the aquifer’s potential
yield is one and a half to three times that
amount. Consequently, the fields in and
around Havana produce abundantly.

Havana is renowned for its watermelons,

cantaloupe, and sweet corn, and local
residents are equally proud of the local
pickle factory.

There’s uncommon natural beauty
in Havana as well. Ten minutes from Main
Street is the Chautauqua National Wildlife
Refuge, a 4,500-acre natural habitat and
recreation area managed by the Department
of the Interior. Chatauqua is part of the
Illinois River floodplains. For thousands of
years the bottomlands have been a stopover
on the Mississippi Flyway for geese and
ducks migrating south. Waterfowl visited
the region in such vast numbers, they
often darkened the midday sky over
northern Havana.

The Illinois Natural History
Survey has maintained a field laboratory at
Havana since 1894. (See The Nature of
Illinois, Fall 1988.) The Survey’s meticu-
lous documentation of the flora and fauna
of the floodplain has made the Illinois River
one of the most studied ecosystems in the
world. A comprehensive Survey study on
lead poisoning in waterfowl was respon-
sible for federal legislation prohibiting the
use of lead shot for waterfowl hunting.

Originally a wetland, Lake
Chatauqua was dammed, drained, and
cultivated by Mason County farmers until
1936, when the land became part of the
National Wildlife Refuge System. The
farmland reverted to wetland, and the ducks
and geese, after a long absence, returned to
their feeding ground. The refuge is also a
recreation area. Boating, fishing, and

hunting (seasonally, and in specified areas)
are permitted, as well as hiking, mushroom
hunting, and berry picking. Visitors are
encouraged to explore the grounds and
look for waterfowl, songbirds, and other
wildlife in this pristine, natural habitat.
Hikers wandering the sandy lake shore
should keep their binoculars close at hand
to catch a glimpse of the splendid blue
herons that frequent Lake Chatauqua.

City of Sinkholes

Illinois Route 100, the Great River Road, is
undoubtedly the most scenic in the state.
Beginning at Pearl in southern Pike
County, the two-lane ribbon of asphalt
parallels the Illinois River to its confluence
with the Mississippi at Grafton, where it
becomes a four-lane highway and contin-
ues on into Alton. The stretch of
embowered highway from Pearl to Grafton
is beautiful, especially in the fall, but the
drive from Grafton into Alton is splendid.
The road hugs the Mississippi River in the
shadows of towering limestone bluffs.
Bicyclists can also follow the River Road
on the Sam Vadalabene Trail, a fourteen-
mile stretch from Alton to Grafton.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

The scenic bluffs along the
eastern shore of the Mississippi River at
Alton were created when the Cap au Gres
fault system was exposed by river erosion.
According to Leon Follmer, a quaternary
geologist at the Illinois State Geological
Survey, the bluffs above Alton are riddled
with caverns and sinkholes. “Because the
bedrock is limestone, it is soluble,”
Follmer says. “Rainwater mixing with soil
acids seeps through the limestone and, over
thousands of years, forms caverns.”
Sinkholes occur when the roof supports of
a cavern collapse, creating large depres-
sions in the land surface.

The drive into Alton from the east
on Illinois Route 140 isn’t as spectacular as
the view afforded on the Great River Road.
Nevertheless, it has its own drama.

Within two miles of the Alton landing, the
landscape begins to change radically. As
one drives south on Alby Street, the narrow
two-lane road ascends the first of several
steep hills, which is quickly followed by a
plummeting descent into a deep valley.
Follmer says those characteristic peaks and
valleys of Upper Alton’s roads are actually
old sinkholes. The roller coaster ride con-

If you see one, there are probably two or three others near by. The gregarious green-backed heron

is commonly seen in groups along the Illinois River in summer

tinues until the final hill is crested, and the
entire Alton riverfront explodes into view.

The view from Alby Street hasn’t
changed much in 150 years. The old city
hall, where Lincoln and Douglas held the
last of their famous debates in 1858, is
gone, but, thanks to a vigorous preserva-
tion association in Alton, the riverfront and
several storefronts look much as they did in
the last century. Alton’s old downtown is
an interesting mixture of antique stores,
secondhand bookstores, service shops,
vacant buildings, museums, and an
information center. Down on the landing
the riverboat Alton Belle is moored, an
attractive reminder of Alton’s historic ties
to commerce, transportation, and now,
recreation.

Alton was founded in 1818 by
Colonel Rufus Easton, a St. Louis land
speculator who later served as Missouri’s
attorney general. Easton platted the town
and named it for his oldest son, but efforts
to establish a commercial venture on the
site ran aground when two Illinoisans,
Nathaniel Pope and former territorial
governor Ninian Edwards, decided they too
wanted a piece of the riverfront. Easton
eventually won the litigation, and, though
he didn’t live to see Alton incorporated as
a city, his influence is still felt along the
Alton river landing. In 1833 the shrewd
Missouri lawyer decreed that the riverfront
would forever be dedicated to the “com-
mons,” kept open to the people, and free
from private development. To this day the
Alton river landing remains public land

When Alton was incorporated in
1837, the population was nearly 4,000
That same year, an outspoken newspaper
publisher from Maine put Alton on the
national map. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a thirty
five-year-old abolitionist from Albion,
Maine, had settled first in St. Louis. But
Missouri was a slave state, and when
Lovejoy’s anti-slavery editorials first
appeared in the Observer, threats wet
made against his life. Fearing for hi

family’s safety, Lovejoy moved wit

Grafton free ferry (ISGS photo by Joel Dexter)

wife and infant son across the river into
Illinois, a free state in which, Lovejoy
believed his anti-slavery views would be
met with more tolerance.

They were not. On November 7,
1837, a large, pro-slavery mob attacked
and set fire to the warehouse in which
Lovejoy’s printing press was kept. When
the publisher refused to surrender to the
rabble, the crowd opened fire; within
minutes Lovejoy was dead and his printing
press lay at the bottom of the river.
Although charges were brought against
the leaders of the mob, no man was
ever convicted.

Alton was also the home of
Illinois’ first prison, a dreary, inhospitable
facility with dirt floors and inadequate
ventilation. In 1860 prison reformer
Dorothea Dix successfully campaigned to
have the Alton prison closed and the
prisoners transferred to Joliet, but the Civil
War created a need for a facility to house
prisoners of war, and the Alton prison was
reopened. The first boatload of prisoners
arrived in February 1862. Soon after, a

smallpox epidemic broke out, eventually
killing between 1,000 and 5,000 Confeder-
ate prisoners. A cemetery atop the Alton
bluffs commemorates those soldiers who
died at Alton during the war.

Alton’s early commercial interests
were moored to the Mississippi. Steamers
churned the water and charged the
economy, and in the mid-1800s Alton
became an important shipping center for
rural communities north of the American
Bottoms. The community grew so rapidly
in the 1830s it was even considered a
possible site for the new state capital.

But when the railroads came in
1848, Alton’s moorings slipped, and the
city founders’ dreams for Alton becoming
a major transportation center drifted down
the Mississippi to St. Louis. Although
Alton eventually recovered its losses by
expanding the city’s industrial base, the
city no longer could look to the river for its
livelihood, only for inspiration.

As one drives along the Great
River Road, watching the sunlit ripples
dance on the Father of Waters, it is

not difficult to see how a little inspira-
tion—and a lot of hard work—keeps the
wheels churning in Alton and other river
towns in Illinois. @

William Furry is a regular contributor to
The Nature of Illinois and a staff writer
for the Illinois Times in Springfield.

The next issue of The Nature of Illinois
will explore the geology of Pere Marquette
State Park near Grafton. For further
information on the Alton area, write the
Greater Alton/Twin Rivers Convention and
Visitors Bureau, 200 Piasa Street, Alton,
IL 62002; or call 1(800) ALTON IL. For
information on the Chatauqua National
Wildlife Refuge, write to the Refuge
Manager, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service,
Havana, IL 62644, or call 1 (309) 535-
2290. For general tourism information,
call the Department of Commerce and
Community Affairs: 1 (800) ABE-0121.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

SURVEYING GROUNDWATER

3 GEOGRAMS

Groundwater:
Where Does It Come From?
Where Does It Go?
Illinois has an abundance of
fresh water. Besides streams
and lakes, groundwater is a
plentiful source of water,
supplying drinking water for
half of the state’s residents and
almost all of its rural residents.
However, groundwater
resources are not uniformly
distributed, and they can be
contaminated and/or depleted
by careless, wasteful habits.
Groundwater is present in
soil, sediment, or rock forma-
tions saturated with water. It is
present in small, often micro-
scopic, interconnected pore
spaces between grains of sand
and gravel and in open fractures
in rock. The water level in a
stream or shallow well marks
the point in the adjacent soil or
rock where groundwater begins
and is called the water table.
Rain and melting snow
infiltrate the soil and, if not
used by plants, travel down-
ward to the water table—
migrating toward a stream,
spring, or pumping well. Just as
surface water moves from high
to low elevations under the
force of gravity, groundwater
moves from high to low
elevations through connected
fractures or crevices and pores
of rocks and sediments at rates
that range from feet per day to
only inches per hundreds of
years. Thus, if seepage of water

Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS)

into soil is thought of as its
birth, water from an aquifer
may be days or thousands of
years old.

An aquifer is a body of
rock or sediment that will yield
water of useable quantity to a
well or spring. Clay-rich glacial
till and shale that have low
permeability and do not
conduct water, act as confining
beds and restrict the movement
of groundwater. Thus, aquifers
act as conduits bounded by
less permeable materials.

For example, the east-central
Illinois’ Mahomet Valley
Aquifer, an ancient stream

valley filled with sand and
gravel is buried under glacial
drift that ranges from ten to
several hundred feet in thick-
ness. Even though groundwater
is moving through very small
spaces between the sand and
gravel, a well in the Mahomet
Valley can pump millions of
gallons of water per day. Such
sand and gravel aquifers in
Illinois produce 58% of the
groundwater used; the remain-
ing groundwater is produced
from bedrock aquifers.
Recharge zones are areas
between streams where surface

water seeps into the water table.

Groundwater moves from
recharge zones to low-lying
areas that serve as discharge
zones (streams, springs, and
lakes). Because aquifers are
continually fed by precipitation
and melting snow, the water
table or the level of water in a
well may fluctuate as a result of
seasonal changes, droughts, and
periods of heavy rain.

There are two main types
of aquifers: the unconfined or
water table aquifer and the
confined aquifer. Unconfined
aquifers, recharged through
direct infiltration of rainwater,
are found in counties with very

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sandy soils (such as Mason,
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where aquifers lie close to the
surface. Confined aquifers are
covered with relatively imper-
meable materials which impede
infiltration into and out of the
aquifer. Groundwater in a
confined aquifer may build up
so much pressure that, when
intersected by a well, it will
flow above ground in what is
called a flowing artesian well.
If the water level in a well is
below ground surface but above
the top of a confined aquifer,

it is referred to as an

artesian well.

The Hydrologic Cycle

Water present above, at, and
below the surface of the earth is
in continual movement. Rain,

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

falling on a corn field, may
infiltrate the ground, be taken
up by plants and/or evaporated
from both soil and plants, and
returned to the atmosphere.
Water that passes through the
soil travels downward to the
water table, where it becomes
groundwater. The groundwater
then migrates, assisted by
gravity, toward a spring or
stream that drains the land.
Once discharged into a stream,
the water begins its journey at
the surface. In Illinois, surface
water and groundwater ulti-
mately flow to the Mississippi
River and then to the Gulf of
Mexico. During its journey and
after joining the Gulf, water
evaporates, eventually forming
clouds...and the hydrologic
cycle begins again.

>

(ISGS photo by Joel Dexter)

A Fragile Resource

Because aquifers are recharged
at the surface, they are suscep-
tible to contamination from
anything (e.g., oil, pesticides,
sewage) spilled on the surface
of the ground or buried beneath
it. Water, other liquids, and
solids placed on or in the soil
migrate to an aquifer, a journey

Assessing the Risks

“Where groundwater rescurces are close to the surface,
there is a high potential for contamination; where they are
protected by thick, less permeable layers of glacial till,

the potential for contamination is less. Our task is to provide
reliable, scientific information to help the state evaluate that
delicate balance between over- and

Richard Berg studies

an Aquifer Recharge
map. (ISGS photo by
Joel Dexter)

under-protection, whether it’s the use
of agricultural chemicals, the siting
of landfills and septic systems,

or the disposal of industrial waste.
Studies and maps developed by the
two Surveys can identify and
describe statewide hydrogeologic
conditions that can be used by county
extension offices, farmers, and
government officials to understand
groundwater conditions and make
long-term plans.”

Richard C. Berg, ISGS
Head of Groundwater Protection
Section

ISGS Geologist Dennis McKenna records data from wells.

< ~<'*

that may take hours, days, even
years. Once an aquifer is
contaminated, it is very difficult
to clean up, and the process is
usually prohibitively expensive.

Excerpted from a paper by
Samuel V. Panno

ISGS Groundwater Protection
Section

Geological Survey Paper Wins Award

Three Survey scientists, Richard
C. Berg (ISGS), H. Allen
Wehrmann (ISWS), and John
M. Shafer (ISWS) co-authored
a publication which received the
John C. Frye Memorial Award
in Environmental Geology

at the Geological Society

of America (GSA) national
meeting in October 1991.

The award-winning docu-
ment, “Geological and Hydro-
logical Factors for Siting Haz-
ardous or Low-level Radioac-
tive Waste Disposal Facilities,”
was praised by Earl H. Bennett,
chairman of the awards commit-
tee as “a land-mark effort that...
will be used by many geologists
throughout the country.”

This 61-page report,
published by the ISGS as
Circular 546, presents a system-

atic approach to the selection
and characterization of candi-
date sites and focuses on the
potential for contamination of
water resources by the disposal
of hazardous and low-level
radioactive wastes. Disposal
sites require natural barriers to
the migration of contaminants
and must be stable, predictable,
and capable of being geologi-
cally and hydrologically
characterized.

The award was established
by the Association of American
State Geologists and the GSA to
recognize Dr. Frye’s substantial
contributions to the understand-
ing of environmental geology.
Dr. Frye served as chief of the
ISGS from 1954 to 1974 and,
thereafter, as executive director
of the GSA.

CURRENTS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS)

The Science of Groundwater
Protection
The Illinois Groundwater
Protection Act (IGPA), passed
by the state legislature in 1987,
establishes a comprehensive
approach to groundwater
protection that includes
research, education, technical
assistance, regulation, and
evaluation.

However, according to
John M. Shafer, Head of the
Hydrology Division of the State

Water Survey, “Having
legislation that says we will
protect our groundwater is a
long way from the reality of
protecting it.”

In the last decade or so,
according to Shafer, state
environmental, health and
welfare agencies, and the public
have become increasingly
concerned as more is learned
about how vulnerable this
precious natural resource is—
and how susceptible it is to

ISGS Geologist Dennis McKenna collects water samples in the field.
(ISGS photo by Joel Dexter)

contamination. The Water
Survey and the Geological
Survey have been working
together to help the state move
toward the reality of scientifi-
cally sound groundwater
protection.

“There’s a good supply of
groundwater for private and
municipal wells in Illinois, but
there is also a significant threat
of contamination of that water
supply,” says Shafer. The
problem, according to both
Shafer and Richard C. Berg,
Head of the State Geological
Survey’s Groundwater Protec-
tion Section, is to protect
groundwater and at the same
time keep the state’s economy
functioning and growing, to
allow for expanding population
needs and find safe ways to
store the state’s waste, and to
strike a sensible balance
between over- and under-use of
fertilizers and pesticides.

If Any State Can Do the Job,
Illinois Can

While many states have
geological surveys to map and
assess the hydrogeological
factors that affect groundwater,
Shafer is “not aware of any
other state that has a water
survey.”

“We can do it all,” says
Shafer. “We have an enviable
data base that goes back over a
century. We have sophisticated
data gathering capabilities—
from our drill rigs to advanced
instrumentation and state-of-
the-art computer resources,

John M. Shafer, Head of
Hydrology Division of the State
Water Survey

including programs we've
developed here at the Water
Survey. We have a full array of
laboratory facilities for chemi-
cal analyses. And, that aside,
we have excellent scientists
who are dedicated to under-
standing our groundwater
resource and maximizing its
value to Illinois.”

Shafer thinks the members
of the general assembly would
be surprised if they knew the
breadth of what the Water
Survey accomplishes with its
state-allocated budget.

“Our overall budget is at least
two times greater than our state
allocation because of the grants
we receive and the research

we do on contract. And the
state and its citizens are direct
beneficiaries of everything

we do.”

“Our programs at the
Surveys combine a solid mix of
applied observational science
and theoretical research. This
broad scope of effort is leading
us to some answers about our
groundwater and therein lies the
ability to control and change
things,” Shafer says.

“The Surveys are the best
bang for the buck as far as
benefits for Illinois. I don't
think that is really evident to

most people.”

Groundwater Projects - Short Takes

The Illinois State Geological
Survey (ISGS) and Illinois
State Water Survey (ISWS),
both divisions of the Illinois
Department of Energy and
Natural Resources, are involved
in a score of groundwater
protection programs that
include research, education,
technical assistance, and
evaluation. While the Surveys’
functions are not regulatory, the
results of their research
provide scientific information
and criteria for use by citizens,
business and industry, and
governmental agencies. Recent
and current projects include:

* Potential for Aquifer
Recharge in Illinois (Map) —
The ISGS has developed a map
which shows statewide patterns
for the recharge of upper
aquifers from rain and melting
snow. (Recharge zones are
areas between streams where
surface water seeps into the soil
and then into an aquifer.)
Published in September 1990,
the map is used by the Illinois
Environmental Protection
Agency (IEPA) to help identify
priority groundwater protection
regions,

* Woodstock Needs Assess-
ment — ISGS and ISWS, in
cooperation with the IEPA,
have developed protocols and
will develop a field manual to
help communities protect water
supplies. The depths and aerial
distribution of aquifers within a
70-square-mile area around
Woodstock were mapped, and
researchers plotted the patterns
and velocity of groundwater
and contaminant flow through

12

2

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

the aquifers to 167
private and municipal wells.
Because Woodstock is a
geologically complex region,
this pilot study can serve as a
model for a projected statewide
assessment of groundwater
recharge and for groundwater
contamination potential in a
wide variety of hydrogeologic
settings. The study was funded
by the Hazardous Waste
Research Fund.

¢ Rural Water Well
Sampling — The Surveys
sampled private wells in rural
areas of Illinois to evaluate the
extent of agricultural chemical
contamination. Samples were
analyzed and the data entered
into a computer system for use
by the Illinois Department of
Agriculture and Illinois
Department of Public Health in
a statewide survey of agricul-
tural chemicals in groundwater.

Other Groundwater
Protection Projects:

* ISGS field tests to determine
whether groundwater is a major
contributor to pesticide loading

in Illinois streams;
* ISGS/ISWS field and labora-
tory studies to evaluate pesti-
cide and fertilizer contamina-
tion of groundwater from
agricultural sources; * Studies to
determine the potential for
groundwater contamination at
agrichemical facilities where
large quantities of pesticides
and chemicals are stored;

¢ Methods for delineating safe
areas around wellheads to
prevent the contamination of
water supplies by landfills, gas
pumps, and other underground
storage facilities; * Studies of
synthetic/organic compound
contamination from industrial
uses in urban areas.

During the past year, the
Surveys filled a total of 3,390
requests for groundwater
information. The requests came
from consulting engineers,
individual citizens, federal and
state agencies, industries, well
contractors, municipalities, the
media, universities, and realtors.

For detailed information
about these and other Survey

Drilling for soil samples at
pesticide research study site in
southern Champaign County
(ISGS photo by Joel Dexter)

groundwater protection
projects, contact the Public
Information Offices at the
Illinois State Water Survey,
2204 Griffith Drive,
Champaign, IL 61820; or the
Illinois State Geological
Survey, 615 E. Peabody Drive,
Champaign, IL 61820.

Special thanks to Richard C.
Berg (ISGS), Samuel V. Panno
(ISGS), and John M. Shafer
(ISWS) for their assistance in
preparing “Surveying Ground-
water”; and to Suzanne
Muckensturm, ISGS Public
Liaison Office, and Laurie
McCarthy Talkington, ISWS
Publications Office, for their
comments and review of the
material. The Editor

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

HAZARDOUS WASTE:
PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

Illinois Scientists Try to Find and Cure the State’s
Hazardous Waste Problems

evin A. Cappo led a visitor down

a hallway of the Hazardous

Materials Laboratory, a brand
new $9 million building filled with
millions more in sophisticated analytical
equipment. Cappo is safety officer and
director of quality assurance and quality
control at the lab, which houses the Illinois
Hazardous Waste Research and
Information Center (HWRIC) on the
campus of the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.

Looking through the wire mesh of
reinforced glass windows, Cappo described
three sample preparation labs—one for
organic materials such as pesticides and
oils, one for metal-contaminated samples,
and a third “swing” lab for any overflow
work. In one room, researchers were
preparing samples of “red water” for
analysis. The work was part of a federally
funded study of the waste water produced
in the manufacture of TNT.

“We're trying to find out what is
in the waste water so we can treat it and
make it less hazardous,” Cappo said.

That, in a nutshell, describes the
essence of HWRIC. The aim of the Center
is to provide a coordinated, multidis-
ciplinary approach to solving the state’s
massive hazardous waste problem.
HWRIC is not a regulatory agency.
Instead, it assists Illinois industry, govern-
ment, and the public through research,
information dissemination, and technical
help. Its ultimate goal is to reduce
environmental and health risks

by William H. Allen

‘

Maze of large diameter Pyrex glass piping safely conducts potentially hazardous lab wastes to a

series of sedimentation and holding tanks.

associated with generating and managing
hazardous wastes.

A History of Hazardous Waste

Illinois is a major generator of hazardous
wastes, consistently ranking in the top
three among all 50 states in the waste
produced and disposed of by business and
industry, said David L. Thomas, director of
HWRIC since it was founded in 1984. In

-

the most comprehensive survey to date,
researchers established that 28.5 million
tons of hazardous waste were generated in
Illinois in 1986.

But the public and politicians
alike had long before suspected a major
problem. By the early 1980s, leaks at
waste-burial sites in heavily industrial
areas surrounding Chicago and St. Louis

brought concern that Illinois might have a

plethora of Love Canals hidden throughout
the state, Thomas said. A wave of hazard-
ous waste legislation that swept through
the Illinois Legislature in 1983 and 1984
provided the initiative and money needed
to establish HWRIC. The center was
started by the Department of Energy and
Natural Resources as a unit of the Illinois
State Water Survey.

HWRIC operated out of several
rented spaces in Champaign until its
headquarters, the Hazardous Materials
Laboratory, was dedicated in April 1990.
Over the years, the Center’s full-time staff
has steadily grown to 30.

Reducing Waste at the Source
HWRIC’s philosophy centers strongly on
preventing pollution.

“The nation still has to look at
ways of cleaning up contamination at the
end of a process,” Thomas said. “But early
on, we realized that industry needs to
create less waste, and when waste is
created, it needs to be recycled in the
industrial process.”

Much of what needs to be done
involves increasing the efficiency of
industrial processes, which in turn in-
creases productivity and profit. “We’re not
just talking about another environmental
program like scrubbers,” Thomas said.

14

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

“When you—an industrial manager—
invest in making your process equipment
more efficient and stopping leaks, you do
get a return on your investment, because
youre using raw materials more effi-
ciently. It makes a lot more sense from an
industry point of view, and in terms of
society and the environment.”

The Center advocates voluntary
change by industry in an atmosphere of
cooperation among government, industry,
and environmental groups. That in itself is
a major shift from the traditional
adversarial approach taken by these groups
in the past.

“We need to develop more trust
and change the way we think about
environmental protection,” Thomas said.
“People agree that this makes sense, but
it’s a difficult process to integrate.”

A Tour of the Hazardous
Materials Laboratory
The 20,000-square-foot laboratory wing of
the new Hazardous Materials Laboratory is
an impressive mixture of high-technology
and precaution.

In these labs sit $4 million worth
of state-of-the-art analytical machines.
A variety of chromotographs, mass spec-
trometers, and other devices pick apart the
secrets in minute amounts of hazardous

materials. This analysis is crucial to
HWRIC programs that develop and test
new waste reduction and treatment tech-
nologies, conduct a broad range of hazard-
ous materials research, and evaluate
contaminated samples with many compo-
nents, such as those found in samples from
an ongoing Great Lakes air-toxics monitor-
ing project.

Safety is, of course, a major
emphasis. Cylinders of gas needed to run
equipment and perform analyses are stored
in a storage bunker whose outside walls are
designed to blow outward from the building
in case of explosion. Eyewash stations and
showers are positioned every 50 feet
throughout the lab. A meticulously fine-
tuned ventilation system keeps positive air
pressure in the hallways and offices so that
a leak of hazardous material—in the
unlikely event that one ever occurs—is
confined within the particular lab room.
The system also continuously fills the lab
area with fresh air, rather than recirculating
part of the air, as in ordinary modern
buildings. And special filters put the air
back outside “in better shape than when it
comes in,” safety officer Cappo said.

Cappo moved through airlocks
past the High Hazard Laboratory complex,
a set of four labs with rigidly controlled
temperature, humidity, and airflow. All the
electrical fixtures are sealed to prevent
hazardous chemicals from escaping outside
the room. “Even though it’s a hazardous
materials lab, we work with such small
amounts of materials and under such tightly
controlled conditions that the most danger-
ous part of the day is driving to and from
work,” he said.

In one large room, the Pilot
Laboratory, technicians were preparing to
receive equipment from an Illinois electro-
plating company that was experimenting
with ways to remove an oily substance
from its plating bath solution. The company
could reuse the solution—thus saving
money—if it could learn how to remove the
oily substance.

Company researchers had come
up with a laboratory-scale reverse-osmosis
process for filtering out the oily substance.
It worked on a small scale in the company
lab, but the firm did not have appropriate
facilities for testing the waste-removal
technology at the pilot-plant scale.

“Tf it works on this scale, then
they will fit their plant with a large-scale
system,” Cappo said. “Instead of putting in
$2 million to $4 million in improvements,
not knowing whether it will work or not,
this is an opportunity for them to try it out
for a few thousand dollars.” In return for
use of the state facility, the company must
permit the Center to distribute the tech-
nology if it is successful.

Continuing the tour, Cappo
walked into the Glass Washing Room, a
long, narrow room with sinks, glass-
washing machines, and cabinets full of
flasks, vials, and other glassware. A
furnace along one wall heats glassware to
1,400 degrees Fahrenheit to burn off the
smallest traces of organic material.

The atrium spine of the building admits natural
light and allows views into high-hazard labs
and the HWRIC library.

Laboratory with computerized automated plasma analyzers for heavy-metals testing

The room looks unimpressive, but
“it is probably the most important room in
the facility,” Cappo said. “Because we
work with samples that have wastes at the
parts-per-quadrillion level, or parts-per-
trillion, or parts-per-billion, the glassware
has to be impeccably clean.”

The Focus on Research
The lab is used to conduct analytical work
for studies by Center researchers and
scientists with government, universities,
and industry. “It has greatly expanded the
support we can provide for research
projects,” HWRIC director Thomas said.

The Center itself sponsors a wide
range of scientific research projects that
seek to determine the extent of toxic
contamination in the state’s air, water, and
land; the types of wastes produced, treated,
or disposed of in Illinois; and the manner in
which hazardous wastes move through and
affect the environment. Other projects aim
to discover better technology for reducing
the amount of waste produced, cleaning up
existing waste, and more safely disposing
of waste over long periods of time.

HWRIC provides about $1 million
a year in research grants to investigators at
universities, industry, and government
agencies. Some of these projects also get
backing from federal grants.

Two particularly noteworthy
research projects have focused on assisting

in the search for cleanup solutions in two of

the state’s most contaminated areas: the
Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge in
Southern Illinois and Lake Calumet in
southeast Chicago.

The soil and water of the Crab
Orchard refuge are heavily contaminated
with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and
heavy metals from industrial activities that
began in the region in 1940. A HWRIC-
funded study started by scientists at
Southern Illinois University-Carbondale in
1987 found high levels of contaminants in
some fish species in Crab Orchard Lake—
contradicting an earlier study that found no
such contamination. The newer study
caused state officials to issue an advisory
against human consumption of large catfish
and carp taken from the lake.

Studies sponsored by the Center
are also examining contamination of water
and sediments in the lake; contamination of
insects, small mammals, and crayfish in the
refuge; and concentrations of PCBs and
trace metals in the air at several locations
in the refuge. These studies will provide
background information for comparison as
remediation of several sites in the region
proceeds under the federal Superfund
program.

The Lake Calumet area near Lake
Michigan has been the site of industrial and
municipal waste disposal for more than a
century. HWRIC has sponsored research
aimed at assessing the risks to public health
and the environment in the region and
identifying steps needed to clean up the
most threatening sources of contamination
A pioneer study—and the first
report of research funded by HWRIC—wa
“Industrial Wastes in the Calumet
1869-1970: A Historical Geogray

published in 1985. The study, by Crai

Colten of the Center and the Illinois State
Museum in Springfield, documented

the locations where industries in the region
dumped their wastes. Colten also calcu-
lated the types and amounts of wastes.

The study has served as an essential
foundation for other studies in the region
and has become a model for assembling
historical profiles of current and abandoned
waste sites in many areas of Illinois.

Striving for Waste Reduction

HWRIC’s efforts to promote waste
reduction and improve waste management
were formalized in the Toxic Pollution
Prevention Act, signed by former Governor
James R. Thompson in 1989. Industry
often resists pollution-prevention strate-
gies, but the Center has developed a
multifaceted approach to overcome what
Thomas calls “industrial inertia.”

The effort encourages waste
reduction through annual Governor’s
Pollution Prevention Awards and matching
funds for Recycling and Reduction
Techniques. However, the keystone of the

View into double-height treatability lab with
“elephant trunk” fume exhauster

effort is the Center’s Industrial and Techni-
cal Assistance (ITA) Program.

Center personnel with the ITA
Program actively advise and assist compa-
nies in developing waste-reduction prac-
tices. They visit industry sites to evaluate
waste-management practices and identify
ways to improve them, emphasizing source
reduction, recycling, and other methods for
cutting the amount and toxicity of waste.
They answer questions about hazardous
waste regulations, conduct workshops on
waste management, and provide contacts
for more information and services from
government agencies, vendors, consultants,
labs, and waste handlers.

Pollution Prevention Benefits Bottom Line

Nine Illinois companies, educational institutions, and public organizations received
top honors for their hazardous and solid waste reduction programs in the fifth annual
Governor’s Pollution Prevention Awards competition last fall. An additional 17
companies and groups were awarded certificates of merit. “The winners of these
awards have exhibited a firm commitment to protect our environment,’ Governor
Jim Edgar said, in presenting the awards.

Among those cited for outstanding achievements were Caterpillar, Inc.,
East Peoria; Illinois Power Company, Decatur; Chemical Industry Council of
Illinois, Rosemont; Advanced Filtrations Systems, Inc., Champaign; Sun Chemical,
Chicago and Kankakee; Nalco Chemical Company, Naperville; AGI Incorporated,
Melrose Park; and Northwestern University, Evanston.

In additional to environmental benefits, pollution prevention programs
bring substantial operating economies. Caterpillar alone saved nearly $700,000 last
year as a result of company-wide pollution prevention activities.

Applications for the awards were reviewed by the Illinois Department of
Energy and Natural Resources and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency
(IEPA) and approved by the Office of the Governor. The Hazardous Waste Re-
search and Information Center works closely with Illinois industries to help them
solve hazardous waste problems. The Illinois Toxic Pollution Prevention Act of
1989 established a statewide pollution prevention assistance programs at HWRIC
and at the IEPA Office of Pollution.

Since HWRIC is an information
organization—not a regulatory agency—
companies have nothing to fear in coming
forward with questions about their waste
problems, Thomas said. Once those
questions are answered and a well-
conceived plan is developed, companies
committed to waste reduction can usually
achieve their goals.

An Information Center

HWRIC’s Library and Clearinghouse are
the backbone of the Center’s mandate to
provide information to industry and the
general public. Housed in a 1,600-square-
foot area in the administrative wing of the
new Hazardous Materials Laboratory, the
rapidly expanding Library currently
contains more than 2,000 books and
government reports, 200 periodicals, and
other sources on waste-related issues.
Among its holdings are dozens of HWRIC
research reports.

The Clearinghouse maintains
booklets, pamphlets, and brechures on
topics from asbestos to underground
storage tanks. These are available free to
the public. Since Earth Day 1990, HWRIC
Librarian Sara R. Tompson has noticed a
marked rise in requests for the material
from county extension services, park
district officials, and teachers from
kindergarten to 12th grade.

“Industry has always been a
strong user of our information services,”
Tompson said. “But the Center is going to
be providing more service to educational
institutions. Getting kids to think about the
positive message of ‘reduce, reuse, and
recycle’ is clearly the best long-term way
to change things.”

William H. Allen is a science writer with
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Photographs courtesy Holabird & Root,
Architects, Engineers, and Laboratory
Planners; Envirodyne Engineers

David Clifton, photographer.

eo c
* " bySusan L. Post and Michael Jeffords

A nymphal (baby) grasshopper hides from potential predators in a friendly flowerhead.

ore than half of the living things

on prairies are insects or their
close relatives. The insects of
the prairie are beautiful, useful, destructive,
deadly, and endlessly strange and interest-
ing. Yet on visiting a prairie one mostly
notices the tall grasses and the showy

forbs. An elusive prairie cicada may buzz
in the distance, multitudes of tiny grass-
hoppers spring in front of every footstep, or
an occasional swallowtail fly by, but where
is the rest of the 50%?

Most are out of sight, either
because they are exceedingly small,
vanishingly rare, or hiding in any number
of ingenious ways to avoid becoming the
next meal for a hungry bird.

Two Rare Species

Although there are several rare insect
species on the prairie, an owlet moth
(Papaipema eryngii) and the Ohio emerald
dragonfly (Somatochlora hineana) are two
of the rarest insect species on Illinois
prairies. The first, discovered in 1900,
seldom flies, and then only at night and has

never been sighted outside of Illinois. Its

caterpillar feeds on rattlesnake master, a
prairie wildflower, boring through the
stem. A search of the Natural History
Survey’s insect collection revealed 24
adults and a single caterpillar, collected
between 1915 and 1938 in the vicinity of
Cicero by one Emil Beer. Subsequent
attempts to collect the moth failed, and
biologists assumed it was extinct, like most
of the Illinois prairies (including the

In 1989, two
Illinois biologists, Ron Panzer of North-

original collecting site).

eastern Illinois University, and George
Derkovitz, after a six-year search, finally
collected the species at Goose Lake Prairie
near Morris.

The Ohio emerald dragonfly
was first described in Ohio in the 1930s.
It is among the most endangered species of
dragonflies in the United States and is now
extirpated from Ohio. In 1983 a specimen
was collected at Lockport Prairie Nature
Since 1990 the
dragonfly has been found at five locations

Preserve in Will County.

in the state, all located along the northern
section of the Illinois and Michigan

Canal Corridor.

While these two insects are
certainly rare today, most likely because of
habitat loss, conservation efforts may
insure their continued existence. Other
more common insects, however, must rely
on their own devices to ensure survival in a

dog-eat-dog world.

Batesian and Millerian Mimicry

Insects of the prairie rely on various forms
of deception to hide from predators, or
being predators themselves, to ambush
victims; both processes increase their
chances of survival and procreation.
Deception can take many forms: mimicry,
cryptic coloration, camouflage, or protec

tive resemblance. As children the “classic”
case of mimicry we learned in school was
that of the monarch (Danaus plexippus
and viceroy (Basilarchia archippus)
butterflies—insects that frequent prairies
and open fields in spring and summer
The viceroy,

butterfly,

a palatable bright orar
looks like the monarch, a1
unpalatable bright orange butt

relation to the viceroy, so that t

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

The longhorn beetle, a clever mimic of the black-yellow striped pattern of the stinging bees and

wasps, will most likely be avoided by predators.

have learned to avoid the distasteful
monarch also avoid the tasty viceroy.

Monarch caterpillars, and subse-
quently the adults, are distasteful, even
downright poisonous, because the caterpil-
lars incorporate heart toxins into their
chemistry. Called cardiac glycosides, these
toxins are obtained from the milkweed
plants the caterpillars eat. The striped
pattern of the caterpillar and the orange
color of the adult, called aposematic
coloration, warn birds that both are to be
avoided. If a young, naive bird happens to
eat one, it is in for an unpleasant experi-
ence. Besides being poisonous, cardiac
glycosides are also emetics, that is, they
will cause the bird to vomit, not once, but
several times. All in all, the bird is in for a
bad time.

The above evidence has led
entomologists to classify the viceroy as a
Batesian mimic of the monarch. Named
after the 19th-century English naturalist
H.W. Bates who first noted the phenom-
enon in the Amazon, Batesian mimicry
occurs when a palatable animal or plant
“protects” itself from being eaten by
resembling an unpalatable or toxic species.
Recent studies in Florida, however, have
shown that the viceroy-monarch story is

not that simple.

18

Researchers found that the
viceroy is just as unappetizing as the
monarch and that the toxicity of an
individual monarch depends on the kind of
milkweed it ate as a caterpillar. While the
viceroy feeds on nontoxic willows, it
somehow manages to manufacture its own
chemical defenses (poisons). Thus, the
monarch and viceroy may actually be
exhibiting another type of mimicry, called

Miillerian. Fritz Miller, another European
naturalist working in South America during
the last century, documented this relation-
ship. In Miillerian mimicry, two or more
equally distasteful species gain greater
protection from predators by having the
same general appearance. The fewer color
patterns a potential predator has to learn,
the fewer “mistakes” it is likely to make.
Such a scenario benefits both the predator
and the prey.

Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

In Illinois, several other insect-mimicry
complexes (groups of insects that resemble
each other) occur and often involve insects
that are totally unrelated. The black and
yellow striped patterns on most of the
stinging hymenoptera (bees and wasps)
present an excellent, if confusing, example.
These readily recognizable insects are
generally avoided by many potential
molesters, humans included, because they,
and we, have learned to associate black-
yellow-black-yellow with a painful experi-
ence (note that traffic-control agencies
have appropriated this pattern for use in
warning signs). Thus all stinging bees and

The Polyphemus moth spreads it wings, revealing a startling pair of owl-like eyespots—imore than

enough to deter even the most determined small predator.

wasps that share this pattern are Miillerian
mimics of each other (remember that
Miillerian mimics are both noxious in
some way and have similar color patterns).
Many other insects, including flies, beetles,
and moths, utilize this color pattern to
good advantage and are astonishingly
good Batesian mimics of bees and wasps
(Batesian mimics resemble noxious
insects but are themselves harmless).
Some species are such clever mimics that
textbooks, newspapers, and magazines
regularly publish photographs labeled bee
or wasp that are actually harmless flies,
moths, or beetles.

The story, however, is not yet
quite complete. As any entomologist
knows, only female bees and wasps sting,
yet both males and females share the
same color pattern. Male bees and wasps,
therefore, are not Miillerian mimics,
but actually Batesian mimics of their
own females!

Putting Food on the Table

In a field of blazing stars, a wood nymph
appears to be feeding as it sways with the
plant blowing in the ever-present prairie
winds—a sulphur butterfly rests quietly
atop a thistle blossom. Upon approach,
neither insect flies away. Are both so intent
on their next meal as to be oblivious to the
approaching danger?

Hardly, for closer inspection
reveals that neither butterfly is feeding.
Instead, both have become a meal for a tiny
crab spider. Crab spiders of the genus
Misumena are ambushers who earn their
livelihood by skulduggery and deception.

Usually found in the heads of flowers,

the spiders sit motionless and wait for A prairie grasshopper poses motionless and is hard to distinguish from the surrounding

insects to arrive seeking pollen and nectar. bush prairie clover leaves

A host of winged insects can then be As if ambush weren’t enough, the happens to be on a yellow flower, it

seized and quickly dispatched with a spiders also rely on camouflage. Crab eventually changes color to blend in with

potent venom. Size doesn’t seem to matter spiders come in either yellow or white. that of its hunting ground. Crab spide

much, and prey much larger than the While they may be found on a variety of contain a pigment that is sensitive

spider—bees, wasps, and butterflies—are different colored flowers, more than eighty or yellow reflected light, and they change

common victims. percent ‘hang out’ on either white or to match their background. The pro
yellow flowers. If a white crab spider may take a week or more, but vel

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

A crab spider sits motionless, unnoticed, waiting to dispatch its prey with potent venom.

ible. Being the same color as the flower
station has two advantages for the spider; it
helps in its hunting and also provides a
measure of immunity from enemies. The
latter strategy is called crypsis.

Rather frequently, though, crab
spiders end up on flowers that they can’t
match in color. Does the spider go hungry?
Not very often, for on flowers such as
blazing star or thistle, the spider snuggles
its brightly colored abdomen into the
flower head and gives only a head-on
appearance to approaching insects—
deucedly clever, these spiders.

Keeping Body and Soul Together

A number of factors have acted together to
influence the evolutionary development of
insect design. Ecologists place insects in
food webs as herbivores and primary and
secondary consumers. Translated, this
means that insects eat green plants and
each other and, in turn, are eaten by a host
of other organisms.

An insect has its skeleton on the
outside of its body (called an exoskeleton),
which means that it is, and has been for
eons, subject to various modifications due
to natural selection by predators. In simple
terms, natural selection occurs when

predators choose between various types of

20

insects for their sustenance. An insect of a
given species may have its exoskeleton
modified in some manner by a genetic
mutation so that it is less visible to a
predator. Thus it may survive to reproduce
while its more conspicuous sibling may
not. Over time and through this process of
natural selection, insects have developed
some extraordinary methods to hide from
their enemies (crypsis) or to appear to be
something that they are not (protective
resemblance).

The gaura moth (Schinia florida)
has evolved a unique resemblance to its
host plant, the morning honeysuckle. The
bright pink-and-white moth sits on the
flowers in such a fashion that wings and
petals become indistinguishable. In fact,
we have seen bumblebees land on moths

and actually probe them with their tongues,

thinking a shot of nectar was forthcoming.
The caterpillar of the gaura moth
also gets into the act. A relative of the corn
earworm, the caterpillar is green when
feeding on leaves, but changes to a bright
pink when nibbling on flowerheads.
Equally impressive is the Polyphemus
moth (Antheraea polyphemus). This giant
silk moth rests with its hind wings folded
together over its back, usually on vertical
surfaces. When it is disturbed, as might

occur when it is being eagerly sought as a
meal by a hungry bird, a unique change in
behavior takes place. The moth drops to
the ground, spreads its wings out flat, and
flutters its hind wings, revealing a large,
startlingly realistic pair of owl-like
eyespots—more than enough to deter even
the most determined small predator.

The tenacity for survival of many
species of insects is remarkable. The
methods by which even the common
species protect themselves from predators
is even more remarkable and virtually
limitless. It is enough to say that, being in
their position on the Earth as major
transferers of energy from green plants to
higher organisms (they eat a lot and are
eaten a lot), they are certainly not walking
meekly to the slaughter. =

Susan L. Post is an Assistant Research
Biologist in the Center for Biodiversity at
the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)
and Michael Jeffords is an Associate
Scientist in the Center for Economic

Entomology and liaison for public rela-
tions and education at the INHS. Both
are regular contributors to The Nature
of Illinois.

The hackberry butterfly can depend on
camouflage as long as it picks its backdrops
carefully.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

ILLINOIS PRAIRIE CEMETERIES:
Whispers From the Past

by Tara McClellan

The showy prairie puccoon blooms almost exclusively

in prairie cemeteries.

“Every July | watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass...

It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring,
within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native
prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840s.
Heretofore unreachable by scythe or mower, this yard-square relic...
gives birth, each July, toa man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium,
spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers.

It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole
remnant in the western half of our country. What a thousand acres of Silphiwms
looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never
again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked.”

(Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press, 1949)

ost of us think of cemeteries as

sad, colorless final resting

places. But many are thriving
homes for a rainbow of uncommon flora
and fauna. Illinois has between 12,500 and
15,000 cemeteries, and slightly more than
half of those are abandoned or despoiled,
meaning they are no longer recognizable as
cemeteries. Some have become unofficial
bird sanctuaries or nature preserves because
of their high quality prairie remnants. Those
that retain even fragments of grave markers
preserve precious moments of our history.

Slivers of a Forgotten Sea

Prairies once covered Illinois like a sea of
waving grass. Now only slivers of that sea
remain. According to Don McFall, Natural
Areas Program Manager for the Illinois
Department of Conservation, “There are
two places in Illinois where you can find
original prairie—along old railroads and in
old cemeteries, because both were laid out
before widespread land use.”

These so-called “prairie cemeter-
ies” were discovered in the mid-1970s
during a two-year inventory of Illinois’
natural areas conducted by the Department
of Conservation (DOC) and the University
of Illinois (U of I). Volunteers and botanists
found 26 rural cemeteries with vegetation
from prairies and savannas (the transition
area between prairie and forest). They total
nearly 50 acres of prairie. “To find original
prairie in Illinois after 150 years of land use
was a great find,” McFall says.

Prairie cemeteries are usually
small, between two and five acres in size.
Illinois’ settlers laid them out in the early to
mid-1800s on unplowed land. (McFall says
soil core samples show they have never
been plowed.) The cemeteries started as
family burial grounds on an unused portion
of a farmer’s pasture, typically in a scenic

t on a hill or ridge.

‘It is ironic,” says Michael

Jeffords, Associate Entomologist with the
Illinois Stat tural History Survey
(INHS), “that t unwittingly

Nm
tN

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

preserved portions of what they were trying
to conquer.” Years later some of these
cemeteries were abandoned, allowing the
native vegetation free reign. “The settlers
didn’t have the time or energy to keep them
up,” Jeffords says.

Many of the old cemeteries are
gone, according to McFall. They became
overgrown, so farmers would plow and
plant as much of them as possible.

DOC and U of I researchers found
two types of prairie cemeteries, each
reflecting different land uses and planning.
One type is prairie intermixed with grave
markers; the other is mostly prairie, located
at the back of a small family cemetery.

The settlers obviously planned for more
burials than they actually had and the
remaining prairie was left untouched.
McFall says some people think the ceme-
teries should be mowed out of respect for
those buried there. “But we think letting
the native vegetation grow is a fitting
tribute to the pioneers, a living memorial
that reflects the land as they found it.”

“A small cemetery can easily have
150 different plants, mostly wildflowers—
like the shooting star, gentian, blazing star,
purple and yellow coneflowers, and wood
lily,’ McFall says. Some prairie cemeteries
are havens for endangered species. For
example, 21 rare prairie plants that were
once found throughout Ford County are
now restricted to the five acres of the
county’s Prospect Cemetery Prairie Nature
Preserve. McFall says that while prairie
grasses are dominant, the bounty of wild-
flowers transforms some of these old ceme-
teries into Monet-like landscapes. “Multiply
a prairie cemetery by 1,000, and you can
imagine what Illinois used to look like.”

“From April until late frost, there
is always something blooming,” says
Dwain Berggren, Associate Geologist at
the Illinois State Geological Survey,
describing the slightly more than three-acre
Loda Cemetery Prairie in Iroquois County.
He says there are several orchid species
there, as well as wild petunia, white trout

lily, blazing star, and about one hundred
other species. Berggren is a Volunteer
Steward and helps coordinate maintenance
activities at Loda.

“In spring, it’s a carpet of wild-
flowers,” Jeffords says about the five-acre
Weston Cemetery Prairie in McLean
County. “This is a true mesic (medium-
moist) tallgrass prairie. In wet years, the
cemetery is surrounded on four sides by
corn, and the prairie grasses are usually the
same height as the corn.”

Tomlinson Pioneer Cemetery
Prairie in Champaign County has a
different mood and is thought to be a
savanna remnant, according to Jeffords.
“Tt’s up on a hill...the tombstones stick up
through the wild hyacinth and shooting star
like the glacial boulders that were dropped
on the prairie there. Glacial boulders made
the prairie difficult to plow; tombstones
made it impossible.”

The prairie white-fringed orchid was once

locally abundant across the northern third of
Illinois. Today it is on the state's threatened
and endangered species list and occurs only
rarely in prairie nature preserves, along
railroad tracks, or in pioneer cemeteries.

Other wildlife populates these
cemeteries, too. In summer, some of the
cemeteries are prairie orchestra halls.

At Loda, “there’s a prairie cicada that you
can hear as a low buzz in the grass,” says
Berggren. “It’s a junior version of the
ordinary cicada that appears in July.”

And there is “a host of katydid and cricket
noises in both the summer and fall,”

he adds.

Berggren says Loda is also home
to hosts of spiders, rabbits, small ground
squirrels, a groundhog or two, and an
occasional fox or coyote. Uncommon
butterflies that seek out prairies, grasshop-
per sparrows, yellowthroats, and meadow-
larks live there too, according to the
Directory of Illinois Nature Preserves
(McFall, Illinois Department of Conserva-
tion, 1991).

It is common knowledge among
ornithologists and bird watchers that
cemeteries are unofficial bird sanctuaries
because, according to INHS Ornithologist
Scott Robinson, they may be “the only
areas around with greenery, especially in
urban locations.” He calls them “any port
in a storm” for birds. The solitude, open
areas, variety of trees, rich insect life, and
varied plants make them natural places for
birds to live and for people to watch them.

Honoring the Past

Because cemeteries, like museums, contain
a wealth of information about our ances-
tors, many people use them for genealogi-
cal studies. The Illinois Geographic
Information System (GIS), operated by the
Department of Energy and Natural
Resources, can help by locating a particular
cemetery close to the place a family
member is known to have died.

The GIS’s Geographic Names
Information System database includes the
name of every known cemetery in the state,
its county and exact coordinates (longitude
and latitude), and the United States
Geological Survey quadrangle on which it
appears. The database is in the public

The prairie cicada, one of the largest and most
colorful of Illinois’ cicadas, can often be found

resting on tall compass plants in prairie
cemeteries in late summer.

domain and the information is available,
free-of-charge, says Warren Brigham,
Director of the Center for Biogeographic
Information for the INHS. The System’s
toll-free number can be accessed by
computer, but Brigham prefers that new
users, or people without computers, call
him or GIS Specialist Mark Joselyn for
help in using the system. The number is
217/333-8907.

Like the people they memorialize,
cemeteries, too, are mortal. Without proper
care, they can disintegrate and eventually
disappear. Now that their historical,
archeological, and botanical value is
widely appreciated, laws have been
enacted to try to ensure their survival.

One such law, part of the 1983
Illinois Natural Areas Preservation Act,
gives the Illinois Nature Preserves Com-
mission specific authority to dedicate
cemeteries as nature preserves and perma-
nently protect them from damage and
destruction. “We felt the twenty-six prairie
cemeteries (found during the DOC/U of |
study) warranted special preservation,”
McFall says.

The Cemetery Care Act (CCA),
administered by the Office of the Comp
troller, stipulates penalties for disturbing
graves in larger cemeteries and in those

which provide perpetual care, according to

Paula Cross, Senior Staff Archaeologist
with the Illinois Historic Preservation
Agency.

“We found, however,” says Cross,
“that few cemeteries fell under this catego-
ry, since about half of all Illinois cemeter-
ies are small family plots, church plots, and
pioneer cemeteries. Because they, along
with prehistoric cemeteries, were not
protected by the CCA, the Human Grave
Protection Act was written and signed into
law in 1989. Penalties under this act
include fines of up to $10,000 and three
years imprisonment. The Illinois Historic
Preservation Agency oversees this act.

While prairie cemeteries preserve
botanical remnants from our past, grave
markers preserve moments of our history.
They let us glimpse fragments of our
predecessors’ personal lives. Cross tells
about a hand-poured cement grave marker
inscribed with a small boy’s name and the
dates of his birth and death. His marbles
and other toys are imbedded in the marker.
Cross guesses that the child’s family was
too poor to afford a proper grave marker so
they made it themselves.

Not all grave markers are so
poignant. Cross also tells about the
inscription for a man who evidently had a
serious illness for some time. His epitaph
read: “I told you I was sick.”

For information about nature
preserve prairie cemeteries, write for the
Directory of Illinois Nature Preserves,
Illinois Department of Conservation, 524
South Second Street, Springfield, IL 62706,
and include $3.00.

For additional materials, including
suggestions for using local history in the
classroom, write to the Illinois Heritage
Association, Station A, Box C, Champaign,

Illinois 61825. =

Tara McClellan, a regular contributor t
The Nature of Illinois, is a free-lance
journalist and arts reporter for [lu

Public Radio in Springfield

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Water Survey Chief Retires

“Research is the unraveling of nature’s
secrets.”

Richard G. Semonin, Chief
The Illinois State Water Survey

ichard G. Semonin retired from

the Illinois State Water Survey

(ISWS) last November after more
than 36 years. For the last five of those
years he served as Survey Chief.

As he prepared for retirement,
Chief Semonin recalled the 1897 writings
of the Water Survey’s first Chief, Arthur
W. Palmer, who pondered the downward
journey of the “water from the heavens”
and the contamination it encountered along
its path to Illinois’ waterways and commu-
nity water supplies. And, indeed, the
analysis of precipitation has been the back-
bone of Water Survey research and service

ever since the Survey was founded in 1895.

Although Chief Palmer recog-
nized the importance of rainfall and its
quality, it was only during Semonin’s
career that this recognition was fully
implemented as a major Water Survey
program. As the Survey grew and ex-
panded to a staff of more than 200 chem-
ists, meteorologists, and engineers, the
study of “heavenly waters,” Semonin
notes, was combined with that of “limbo
waters” (rivers, lakes, and streams) and
“hellwaters” (groundwater).

A Reputation for Research

Semonin began his career at the Water
Survey in 1955 as a young research
assistant in meteorology, a program then in
its infancy. He undertook some of the first
atmospheric chemistry research in the
United States, and his leadership in acid

precipitation research is widely recognized.

In the mid-1970s, he was one of a
group of researchers who established the
National Atmospheric Deposition Program
(NADP), the nationwide acid rain monitor-

ing network. He was twice elected chair-

24

Richard G. Semonin

man of the NADP Site Criteria and
Standards Committee and led the effort
through which the Water Survey was
selected to operate the program’s Central
Analytical Laboratory, which now pro-
cesses weekly precipitation samples from
200 monitoring stations in the United
States, Canada, American Samoa, and
Puerto Rico.

Over the years, Semonin has seen

the Water Survey develop a national and
international reputation for research.
No other state has such an irreplaceable
scientific resource as the Water Survey,
with its ability to provide data, conduct
research, and solve problems.

Survey Chief

Many of Illinois’ unresolved problems
have been the subject of research during
Semonin’s tenure: gradual loss of lake and
streamwater resources to sedimentation,
the potential degrading of groundwater
quality, the ever-changing weather and

climate stress on Illinois agriculture and

other sectors of the economy, and flooding
in both urban areas and along rivers and
streams.

“As the people uncover new
concerns about their water and atmospheric
resources, the Water Survey is ready to
tackle them,” Semonin said. “Few environ-
mental concerns today rank higher than the
availability of pure water to ensure the
health of the people, as well as recreation,
transportation, and a strong industrial and
agricultural economy.”

One of the Chief's major accom-
plishments was the reorganization of the
Survey to meet future state needs as they
arise. The agency’s new flexibility will
permit research and service capabilities to
be shifted rapidly to respond to top priority
issues and make maximum use of available
state tax resources.

Semonin credits unlimited
research challenges for keeping him at the
Survey for 36 years. In his retirement he
looks forward to other kinds of challenges:
fishing, golf, time with the family (includ-
ing nine grandchildren), travel, work on
family genealogy, and continuing research
and writing on weather and climate and
their impacts on the Civil War. He also
plans to work on an “unofficial” history of
the Water Survey for its 100-year anniver-
sary in 1995. @

Thomas E. Rice, ISWS

The ISWS publication, “The Illinois River:
Working for Our State,” sets forth the
serious problems that face the Illinois River
and outlines possible solutions. A limited
number of copies of this ambitious research
effort are available to Foundation members.
Those with a serious interest in the subject
can request a copy from The Nature of
Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle St.,
Suite 1666, Chicago, IL 60604.

The Nature of Illinois Foundation

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley

Chairman, Nature of Illinois

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Nature of Illinois
Ottawa Silica Company
Foundation, Ottawa

Michael O. Gibson
Treasurer, Nature of Illinois
Marine Bank of Springfield,
Springfield :
James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

Bruce Callow
The Northern Trust Company
Wheaton

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie,
Bloomington

Janice D. Florin

Amoco Chemical Company,
Chicago

Kenneth W. Gorden

Kenway Farm, Inc., Blue Mound
Ralph D. Grotelueschen

Deere & Company, Moline
Walter E. Hanson

Hanson Engineers, Inc.,
Springfield

Timothy M. Lyons

Chicago Board of Trade

Lake Forest

Douglas B. Mains, M.D.

The Conservation Foundation of
DuPage County, Wheaton
Charles Marshall

AT & T, Chicago

Carleton Nadelhoffer
Nadelhoffer, Nagle, Kuhn et al,
Naperville

James D. Nowlan

Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois,
Springfield

George J. Oberlick

Turris Coal Company, Elkhart
Albert Pyott

Illinois Nature Conservancy,
Winnetka

William L. Rutherford

Forest Park Foundation, Peoria
Harvey Sheldon

McDermott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Roy L. Taylor, Ph.D.
Chicago Horticultural Society,
Glencoe

Donald A. Wallgren

Waste Management of North
America, Inc., Oak Brook
Charles W. Wells

Illinois Power Company,
Decatur

Michael Witte

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff

John D. Schmitt
Executive Director
Jean Gray

Associate Director
Barbara Hicks
Membership Secretary

Illinois Scientific Surveys
Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey
Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey
Mark E. Peden, Acting Chief
Illinois Water Survey

David Thomas, Director

Hazardous Waste Research and
Information Center

Supporters

Founding ($10,000)

Amoco Foundation; Gaylord
Donnelley Trust; Gaylord &
Dorothy Donnelley Foundation

Benefactor ($5,000 per year)
The Ackermann Family Archer
Daniels Midland Company;
Commonwealth Edison;

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company;
The Nature Conservancy; Prince
Charitable Trusts-Frederick Henry
Prince Testamentary Trust; Waste

Management of North America, Inc.

Associate ($1,000 per year)
Arthur Andersen & Company;
Boulevard Bancorp Foundation;
Caterpillar Foundation; Citizens

Committee to Save the Cache;
Helene Curtis, Inc.; Deere &
Company; Deluxe Corporation
Foundation; Environmental
Development Corporation; First
Chicago Bank; Globe Foundation;
Hyatt Regency Chicago; Illinois
Bell; Illinois Power Company;
Jamee & Marshall Field
Foundation; Marine Bank of
Springfield; Material Service
Foundation; Chauncey and Marion
Deering McCormick Foundation;
Mobay Company; Morrow
Charitable Trust; Rand McNally &
Company; Regenstein Foundation;
Sahara Coal Company; J.R. Short
Milling Company; Soyland Power
Cooperative, Inc.; Edmund B.
Thornton Foundation.

Sponsor ($500 per year)
Consumers Illinois Water
Company; Elizabeth Cheney
Foundation; Nina & James
Donnelley Foundation; Draper &
Kramer Foundation; Farnsworth
and Wylie; Forest Fund; Hamilton
Consulting Engineers; The Harris
Foundation; Illinois Farm Bureau;
Illinois Mine Subsidence Insurance
Fund; Illinois Soybean Program
Operating Board; Lester B. Knight
& Associates; James McHugh
Construction Company; Mobium
Corporation; Shell Oil Company
Foundation; States Land
Improvement Corporation;
Walgreens Company; Whistling
Wings, Inc.

Patron ($250 per year)
Andrews Environmental
Engineering, Inc.; Booth/Hansen &
Associates; Carlson Knight
Kudrna, Inc.; Cellular One of
LaSalle; David E. Connor &
Associates; Downen Enterprises;
GE Plastics; Robert Hamilton
Consulting Engineers; Hanson
Engineers, Inc.; Harza Engineering
Company; Henry, Meisenheimer &
Gende, Inc.; Hey & Associates,
Inc.; Illinois Coal Association;
Lakeridge Kennels, Inc.;
Layne-Western Company, Inc.;
Ezra Levin Foundation; Lincoln
Capitol Management Company;
Monterey Coal Company; Anthony

C. Raccuglia & Associates;
Rhutasel & Associates Inc.; RJN
Environmental Associates Inc.;
Sargent & Lundy Engineers;
Sheppard, Morgan & Schwaab Inc.;
Turris Coal Company; Winnebago
Reclamation Service, Inc.

Institutions

Belleville Area College; Chicago
Public Library; Macon County
Conservation District; McHenry
County Conservation District;
National Park Service; Illinois
Department of Commerce &
Community Affairs; Illinois
Department of Conservation;
Illinois Department of Energy &
Natural Resources; Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency;
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of State, George Ryan; Vermillion
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
AND COMMUNITY AFFAIR
BUREAU OF TOURISM 192 13M

me The Nature of Illinois Foundation
208 S. LaSalle, Suite 1666,
Chicago, IL 60604

Non-Profit Org. e

D

se

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

Spring/Summer 1992

Published by
The Nature
of [/linots

Foundation

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

Spring/Summer 1992 — A Mission to Inform

From the Foundation

This issue of The Nature of Illinois magazine is fondly dedicated
to the memory of Mr. Gaylord Donnelley, who founded

The Nature of Illinois Foundation in 1983, guided its growth and
development, and served as its chairman until his death in April
of this year. We recount some of our memories of him in an
article on page 9. In the meantime, we carry on with the work he
cared so much about: the support of “sound science in service of
the environment and the economy” —and print here the column
prepared before his death. Jean Gray, Editor

There is more than one way to create an educational exhibit,
and The Nature of Illinois Foundation has recently collaborated
on two quite different approaches to this challenge: one, a
shoestring enterprise, built in the Natural History Survey’s
workshop, the other, a high-tech exhibit, designed and built by
museum experts. Both approaches—described in this issue—
appear to work well, and both projects help us fulfill one of our
prime missions: to educate adults and children about the role of
science in the conservation of our precious natural heritage.

It is our goal, through the pages of this magazine and
through our educational projects, to keep you learning about
science—and about Illinois. The last issue of The Nature of
Illinois covered Survey projects that monitor Illinois waterways
and protect groundwater resources; next fall our attention will
turn to geological matters. Through the articles in this issue,
you can add to your store of knowledge of the flora and fauna of
Illinois; read about some of the research projects of the Scientific
Surveys and Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center
(HWRIC), so important to our health, our natural resources,
and the economy; and learn about public service programs and
educational materials that are available to you through these
state agencies.

We hope you will help support our efforts, and the
efforts of the Surveys and HWRIC, by becoming a member of
The Foundation if you have not already done so.

Warmest Regards,

Por bod meee

Gaylord Donnelley
Chairman, Board of Directors

written April 15, 1992

The Nature of Illinois is published by The Nature of Illinois
Foundation in support of the Illinois Scientific Surveys (Natural
History, Water, and Geology) and the Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center. These four agencies span the state’s
natural resources and have a 150-year history of data collection,
research, and service. Their activities encompass hundreds of vital
research projects; educational outreach; and technical assistance
to private citizens, government, business, and industry.

Table of Contents

Forest on the Prairie 1
Prairie groves, tucked away among farmsteads and

cultivated fields, stand as refreshing oases of biological
diversity in Illinois’ rural landscape.

The Future of Our Energy Resources 5
Exhibit design experts collaborate with scientists to help
Illinois citizens make informed decisions about energy use.

Remembering Gaylord Donnelley 9
Surveying Illinois 12
Currents, Geograms, Centering on Waste

Build an Exhibit and They Will Come 15

Started on a dream and a shoestring, Biodiversity in Illinois
explores the richness of the state and earns rave reviews.

Illinois Deer 17
The state wrestles with the problem of a not-so-endangered
species that knows no bounds.

The Raccoons Come to Town 21
Formerly a country cousin, this bright-eyed, ring-tailed
creature uses wit and wile to exploit a new ecological niche.

Top Award Goes to Wildlife Scientist 24
Glen Sanderson wins the coveted Aldo Leopold Award.

About the Cover

Diminutive mushrooms are found growing in clumps on
decaying deciduous logs in prairie groves.

Volume VI, Number III

Editorial Staff

Jean Gray Editor

Michael Jeffords Photographer
Design

Mobium Corporation, Chicago

Stay In Touch

Name and address changes and membership information should be sent to
The Nature of Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle, Suite 1666, Chicago, IL 60604,
(312) 201-0650. Master Card and Visa accepted.

Copyright 1992 by The Nature of Illinois Foundation. All rights reserved

FOREST ON THE PRAIRIE

“Sometimes the woodland extends along
this river for miles continuously, again

it stretches in a wide belt off into the coun-
try, marking the course of some tributary
streams and sometimes in vast groves

of several miles in extent, standing alone,
like islands in the wilderness of grass

and flowers.”

U.S. Government Geologist Owen, 1830

hen Europeans began to settle

the Illinois country, what is

now central and northern
Illinois was largely prairie, interrupted by
forests only on floodplains, on slopes
bordering streams, in river beds, and in
isolated prairie groves. Many of these
groves were completely surrounded by
prairie, and often they were separated by
many miles. They were important to
Native Americans as landmarks and camp-
sites. The first white settlers chose to live
in these groves rather than on the open
prairie because they were often near water,
offered protection from harsh weather, and
provided wood for building materials and
fuel. In addition, prairie groves provided a
link with familiar terrain. These early
settlers were forest people, unaccustomed
to-and uncomfortable in-a vast expanse
of grassland. Today, these groves are
surrounded by farmsteads and cultivated
fields. Their original sizes and shapes have
been altered by logging, grazing, and other
human activities, but they still exist as
biological islands in the agricultural
landscape.

A Palette of Wildflowers

The typical prairie grove consists of oak-
hickory and maple-basswood forest types
that support an undergrowth of redbud,
pawpaw, prickly ash, and sassafras.

The herbaceous vegetation often includes

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY
JUN | 6 3992

LIBRARY

by Susan L. Post and Michael R. Jeffords

Trelease Woods in early spring. It is one of two 60-acre Sites

maintained for research purposes by the Department of
Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution at the University of Illin

spectacular assemblages of wildflowers.
Beginning as early as March, the floor of
the prairie grove is carpeted with wave
after wave of showy wildflowers—several
species of trillium, Dutchman’s breeches,
Virginia bluebells, and mayapples, to
name only a few. Climax forest herbs,
such as snow trillium, hepatica, and blood-
root, peak very early each spring. As
summer approaches, the canopy closes,
and the woods become dark. The spring
ephemerals—plants that grow, flower, and

disappear in a short time

are replaced by

Mourning cloak butterflies,
known in England as Camberwell
beauties, overwinter as adults

in protected sites such as prairie
groves. It is the first butterfly

seen each spring

tho

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Life starts early in spring as
many kinds of seedlings
push up through the carpet
of leaf litter in prairie
groves. It is important for
ground plants to make
headway while the sun
shines because, as spring
turns into summer, the
understory becomes shaded
by a dense canopy of trees.

thick patches of stinging nettle, bedstraw,
and poison ivy. By late summer, only the
uncommon trumpet honeysuckle and abun-
dant jewelweed bloom in the dense shade.

In the Beginning

Superficially, prairie groves are easy to
explain. Along streams and rivers, trees
were better able to compete with the
prairie vegetation because of the increased
moisture. The isolated groves were com-
posed of species that had invaded from
other forested areas and gained a foothold
in the moist prairie sod. Origins are not
often obvious, however, and the beginning
of prairie groves is no exception.

To understand the true origins of
prairie groves, we must return to the period
immediately following the melting of the
last glacier in Illinois. The fossil record of
pollen from prehistoric plants tells us that
about 15,000 years ago, as the Wisconsin
glacier receded, the northern half of
Illinois was covered with a northern-type
forest—an immense dark roof of spruce
and pines. About 12,000 years ago, large
areas of this forest were replaced by a rich.
mature deciduous forest of maple, ash,
elm, birch, and alder. This forest persisted

Trelease Woods from the
air. Like many other

prairte groves, US Square
shape might lead an unin
formed observer to con
clude that the site was
planted. In reality, its
shape was carved out along
township section lines by
logging and grazing, the
building of farmsteads, and

the planting of cultivated

for only about 1,000 years. When the
climate became warmer and drier,

the moist forests began to be replaced by
oak and hickory, species better adapted to
such conditions. About 9,000 years ago,
major climatic changes occurred, resulting
in what is called the Hypsithermal Interval,
a period characterized by very warm
temperatures and little rainfall. Within a
comparatively short time, perhaps 500-800
years, the oak-hickory forest largely gave
way to the kind of vegetation we now call
prairie. These plants were tolerant of
increased aridity, regularly occurring
droughts, and massive periodic fires. The
only trees that survived the Hypsithermal
Interval were those protected from fire.
During the past 1,000 years, the climate in
Illinois has become slightly cooler and
more moist, once again creating conditions
more favorable for the growth of trees.

Could Smokey the Bear Be Wrong?

The formation of certain types of prairie
groves and savannas, a habitat consisting
of widely spaced, broad-canopied oak trees
with prairie grasses and forbs growing
beneath them, is closely tied to the interac-
tion of fire and topography. In the early
prairie landscape of Illinois, prairie groves

and savannas were most often found on
the east side of streams and marshes,
features that acted as firebreaks, or on the
eastern slopes of hilly uplands. Prevailing
winds pushed prairie fires in an easterly
direction and, because fires burn with
greater intensity going uphill than
downhill, the eastern hill slopes were
somewhat protected. Fire-resistant trees,
such as thick-barked oaks, persisted on
these downhill eastern slopes.

The result was a savanna. In
1830, the savanna was an abundant habitat
type in northeastern and central Illinois.
Savannas usually occurred on rolling
uplands, while prairies dominated the flat-
to-gently-sloping lowlands. Evidence for
this mechanism of savanna formation
exists in the soil and in the three species
found on savannas. The soil is typically
forest-type rather than prairie soil, and
black and burr oaks, both highly fire
resistant species, are dominant.

Around 1860, when settlers
had converted much of the virgin prairie
in Illinois to farmland, the prairie fires
ceased. On many savannas, trees that
were less fire-resistant sprouted, filled the
gaps between the widely spaced oaks,

and shaded out the prairie plants.

Morels, the subject of intense

fields

early spring searches by

mushroom fanciers
ate the relatively undisturbed

woodland en\

prairt

eroves

u

appre !

mument

Yellow dogtooth lilies, much
less common in Illinois prairie
groves than the familiar white
version, produce many more
leaves than flowers, making the
beautiful blossoms particularly
precious finds.

These savannas soon developed into one
kind of prairie grove. For this reason, and
others, the savanna habitat has almost
disappeared from Illinois.

Further evidence supports the
argument that other types of prairie groves
or woodlands, those not formed from
savannas, are remnants of the extensive
post-glacial forests and not merely islands
of colonizing plant species. In these prairie
groves, a remarkable number of plant
species, especially spring-blooming herbs,
are found. The accidental transport of this
diversity of plant life to an island commu-
nity is improbable because of the great dis-
tance between the groves and the forests
from which potential colonizing plant
species might have come.

@) Parks AND FORESTS AREA ENLARGED

Bloomington

94 FUNKS GROVE

LODGE PARK

.

Monticello

ae

ROBERT ALLERTON PARK

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

The Prairie Grove of Today

Over the decades, these isolated woodlands
have undergone serious disturbances and
have actually suffered from the absence of
fires. The oak-dominated groves are giving
way to sugar maples; invasive, weedy
species are outcompeting the once domi-
nant forbs in the understory. Yet the groves
continue to exist along major streams and
in other protected sites on the prairie, their
square shapes following section lines and

PATTON WOODS

Rantoul

BROWNFIELD WOODS

« TRELEASE WOODS

Urbana

Champaign

often leading the uninformed observer to
conclude that they have been planted.
Funks Grove, Trelease Woods, and

Brownfield Woods in central Illinois still
offer sparkles of color after the long gray
winter and provide a glimpse of the

Illinois prairie grove of 200 years ago. &

The authors crisscross the state in all sea-
sons of the year with cameras and note-
books in hand. They are currently working
on a book of photographic essays docu-
menting the natural wonders of Illinois.
Susan L. Post is an Assistant Research
Biologist in the Center for Biodiversity at
the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)
and Michael Jeffords is an Associate
Scientist in the Center for Economic
Entomology and the liaison for public
relations and education at the INHS.

Funks Grove, Patton Woods,
Robert Allerton Park, and Lodge
Park offer glimpses of prairie
groves as early settlers found them
years ago. Brownfield Woods and
Trelease Woods are not open to
the public except for special field
trips under the supervision of the
University of Illinois’ Committee
on Natural Areas.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE FUTURE OF OUR
ENERGY RESOURCES

icture this familiar scene:

an armchair sits in a living room,

a glowing lamp on a small table
beside it. A book lies open, face down on
the table. In a corner of the room a televi-
sion gives off a pulsing blue light, and on
the wall a clock gently ticks. It’s your
average American living room in action.

Now here’s the pop quiz.

What kind of energy do you see in this
imaginary picture? Electricity, of course,
to light the lamp, run the clock, and give
the TV its unearthly glow. But geologist
Jonathan Goodwin sees a whole lot more
than that.

“What about the energy used to
produce the book on the table?” asks
Goodwin, who is senior geologist and
assistant chief for the Illinois State
Geological Survey. “A significant amount
of energy was used to cut down the trees,
to run the paper mill and printing press,
and to operate the author’s word proces-

Coal Interactive

Will We See the Light?

by Carolyn Arden Bresler

sor. Energy was even consumed by the
person who owns the book when he or she
went to the store by car or bicycle or on
foot to buy it.”

Goodwin isn’t being difficult,
he’s just trying to make a point: that
energy is not always what it appears to be.
The idea of a “living room of energy” was
dreamed up last fall by a team of exhibit
designers, educators, and scientists
working together to create a public exhibit
on natural energy and energy conserva-
tion. Sponsored by The Chicago Academy
of Sciences and the Nature of Illinois
Foundation, the exhibit will travel
throughout the Midwest—reaching more
than one million people. It will open at the
Academy next fall. The project team,
of which Goodwin is a member, includes

Option “A” was very

technological, with lots of
switches and meters.

———— Movin MereR > Nb
bDigES WITH ZOUND
arrEcTS

experts from the Illinois Scientific
Surveys, Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory,
and the International Laboratory for
Visitor Studies.

In their first brainstorming
session, the team members tried to come
up with a strong opening concept—a
visual way to draw people into the exhibit.
How do you get people interested in
learning about energy? Start with some-
thing familiar, they thought. Construct
a living room filled with everyday objects
such as lamps, a television, a stereo, and
an air conditioner, and let people see just
how much energy they use in their daily
lives. The message was simple.

But Goodwin didn’t buy it. “The

question is, how deeply do you want to

analyze that scene?” he says. “Looking at
the book alone, you can see that energy is
involved in almost every step of its pro-
duction. Energy is so deeply interwoven
into our way of life that we are almost
completely unaware of it. That’s one of
the things that makes it so difficult to
deal with.”

A year ago, the concept for an
exhibit on energy was just a flickering
light in the minds of the staff of The
Chicago Academy of Sciences. “We knew
that we wanted to do something on energy
and that we wanted to reach the entry-level
audience,” says Carol Fialkowski, the
Academy’s vice president for education
and exhibits. But as Goodwin pointed out,
energy is, by its very nature, complex.

“We weren't sure how to
approach such a broad topic and make it
useful and meaningful to those people,”
says Fialkowski. “So we went out and
asked them.”

The Public’s Energy 1.Q.
Under the direction of Dr. Chandler G.
Screven, an authority on museum-visitor
evaluation and director of the International
Laboratory for Visitor Studies at the
University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee,
audience research was conducted to evalu-
ate the preliminary goals and objectives
of the exhibit.

A variety of surveys were admin-
istered to passersby at six different sites:
a Chicago shopping mall, a rural state fair,

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

a downtown office cafeteria, The Chicago
Academy of Sciences, Field Museum, and
the park outside of Lincoln Park Zoo. The
people surveyed ranged in age from 9 to
70. The questions were designed to test
public knowledge and awareness of energy
in four basic areas:

¢ knowledge of the mechanics of how
energy is produced and the different
resources involved;

¢ knowledge of energy supplies and the
resources needed to meet our present and
future energy needs;

* sensitivity to environmental problems
associated with energy production, such as
storage of radioactive waste and pollution
from burning coal;

* an individual’s disposition to take

action about energy use, conservation,
environmental issues, and laws aimed

at improving the use of energy.

About two-thirds of the 388
people surveyed were able to identify the
sun as the ultimate energy source, but less
than 20% could make the proper connec-
tions from the sun to power-generating
sources such as coal, oil, and nuclear
energy. When asked to numerically order

Sete Ly

items involved in the production of
electricity from coal, only 10 to 20% of
those surveyed could create an appropriate
chain from the sun to coal to electric light,
and only half identified the sun as the first
step in the chain. About 25% correctly
chose nuclear energy as the largest source
of electricity in Illinois.

When asked which personal
actions they would be willing to take—
to either save money or ensure a cleaner
environment—people most frequently
chose lowering their thermostats and
turning off lights (65-85%), followed by
buying energy-saving materials (60-80%),
using more energy-efficient transportation
(40-50%), and getting politically involved
(15-20%).

What did all of this mean for the
energy exhibit? “We learned that people
were most concerned about the issues that
have an immediate impact on their lives,”
says Fialkowski. “We also came to the
realization that to concentrate on the tech-
nological aspects of energy transfer—from
light energy to chemical energy to heat
energy—would be a whole exhibit in
itself. Even the most educated people we

interviewed were unable to make the
proper connections between the sun, coal,
and electricity—and they didn’t care!”

Wanted: A Positive Message
Another type of survey was conducted
during a members’ night event at the
Academy. Visitors were shown three
illustrations of potential opening displays
for the energy exhibit and interviewed
for their reactions. The title on all three
drawings was “Energy: The Meter’s
Running.” Drawing “A” was very techno-
logical, with lots of switches and meters;
drawing “B” showed layers of rocks or
geological strata, representing the sources
of fossil fuels; and drawing “C” combined
a huge, bright-orange meter with a shop-
ping cart filled with everyday appliances.
None of the options elicited very
positive responses. Through personal
interviews, researchers discovered that the
visitors felt constantly bombarded with
negative messages about the future of the
world’s energy. The title given to the
exhibit, “Energy: The Meter’s Running,”
was just another negative message. “We
learned that people were sick and tired of
hearing about the problems, and that they
wanted to know what they could do to
help solve them,” says Fialkowski. “This
showed us that our exhibit had to be more
positive, if we wanted people to come
and see it.”

Option “B” showed layers
of rocks or geological strata,
representing sources of fos-
sil fuel.

With this valuable audience
input, a “new and improved” exhibit began

to take shape. A new test title was chosen:
“Our Energy Future: The Choice is
Yours,” and three goals were established:
1. to assist the visitor in understanding the
extent to which our daily lives depend on
the use of energy; 2. to assist the visitor in
experiencing the costs and consequences
of our current energy consumption; 3. to
evaluate, with the visitor, ways in which
individual actions and choices can affect
energy use.

The exhibit designers constructed
a prototype of an opening display for the
exhibit to be used in another survey. In
this display, a large meter and dial were
centered on a free-standing wall. In front
of the wall was a shopping cart filled with
boxes painted with images of appliances
such as a hair dryer and a mixer. Slides
depicting other energy-related images such
as homes, cars, and street lights flashed on
a prototype video screen. When the visitor
flipped a switch next to the monitor, an
energy message such as “turn off the
lights” appeared on the screen.

This simple, black-and-white
prototype was tested with Academy
visitors over a period of two weeks. -

The test was undertaken for two reasons:

to see if visitors understood the basic
concept, and to see if the display would
attract their attention and make them want
to enter the exhibit. According to Janice
Siska, the academy's manager of visitor
services who directed the evaluations, the
initial responses were poor. “Our first day
was very discouraging,” she says. “Nobody
liked it, nobody got it. But everybody had
lots of suggestions.”

The exhibit designers added extra
dials, drew in rocks and geological strata,
and painted parts of the display with bright
colors. The next visitor test had very
different results. “The majority of people
understood that the concept was about
energy conservation,” says Siska.

“The degree to which they understood it
depended primarily on how much prior
experience they had with the topic.

We had 9-year-olds who came in and
explained it to their parents, and we had
parents who came in and explained it to
their 14-year-olds.”

Loaded With Solutions

Based on the results of the surveys, the
original concept of a “living room of
energy’ —which focused primarily on the
problems of energy use—was changed to
accentuate the positive. The project team
decided to make the last section of the
exhibit a “living resource room” loaded
with solutions. It will feature a display of
energy-saving devices for the home such
as appliance timers, setback thermostats,
and oil recycling kits; books and brochures
on recycling, alternative energy, and other
energy conservation ideas; instructions on
how to conduct an energy audit at home,
school, or work; and a Talk-Back Board
inviting visitors to jot down ideas, give
their input, and create their own energy
saving solutions.

An interactive computer system
will challenge visitors to make individual
choices about energy as they enter
different areas of the exhibit. Upon

entering the museum, each visitor will

receive a bar-coded ticket that allows them
to log on to this network of computers.

A terminal in the living resource room at
the end of the exhibit will give visitors an
“energy score” based on the actions that
they chose, and will show them how their
choices would impact energy resources,
the environment, or the economy.

The Academy plans to use the visitor
data collected by this program to analyze
public responses and favored solutions

to energy problems.

A major section of the exhibit
on fossil fuels will explore coal, oil, and
natural gas. Visitors will learn about the
natural processes that form fossil fuels, the
rate at which they are being consumed,
and what the costs and benefits are for
each energy source. This section will also
explore the many alternatives to fossil
fuels, such as nuclear energy, solar energy,
and wind power. The familiar problems
associated with nuclear energy will be
covered here, along with the less-familiar,
positive news of current research efforts—
particularly at Illinois institutions such as
Fermilab and Argonne—to develop
improved nuclear technologies.

The exhibit will be filled with
interactive components designed to get
visitors of all ages directly involved with
learning about energy. There will be
videos to watch, switches to push, and
handles to pull. Components are being
evaluated through additional tests with
visitors during this formative phase, and,
during its six-month run at the Academy,
the exhibit will continue to be evaluated
for its effectiveness in attracting and
holding public attention and conveying
the desired messages.

Educational Programs

The Academy is developing a series of
public programs in conjunction with the
exhibit. These will include demonstrations
on alternative energies such as solar and
wind power; field trips to coal-burning
power plants; family workshops on how to

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Survey scientists serve as consultants to the
exhibit on matters older than the hills, varied as
alternate energy, and new as state-of-the-art
computer technology. Wayne Wendland (left),
state climatologist, Illinois State Water Survey,
and Jonathan Goodwin (right), senior geologist
and assistant chief for the Illinois State
Geological Survey. (ISGS photo by Joel Dexter)

do an energy audit at home; a lecture series
on current energy issues; and a children’s
summer-camp program. Storytelling
programs will feature costumed characters
representing the fossil fuels—coal, oil, and
natural gas—who will discuss their similar
origins and involve the audience as partici-
pants in the story.

Teachers and schoolchildren are
an important audience, and the Academy
plans to engage local teachers in designing
an educational package that will tour the
Midwest with the exhibit. The package
will include instructions for self-guided
class tours of the exhibit and energy-
related lesson plans for the classroom.
Fermilab is also assisting the Academy
in developing a resource base and
bibliography for teachers.

Fialkowski sees all of this as a
way of making the exhibit and its message
reach the widest audience possible.

“T think we’ve moved awareness one step

down the line by providing people with all
the tools we can imagine for them to take

action,” she says.

Economic factors are important to
individuals making decisions about their
energy use, and the exhibit team is taking
this into account. “The economic issues
are a major motivator for people to change
their lifestyles,” says Fialkowski. “In some
cases, people may realize ‘if I save energy,
I save money.’ But we’re not going to
present these economic benefits in an
unrealistic manner. We’re not proposing,
for example, that a poor family in Chicago
is going to save a lot of money by putting
in solar panels. There are other ways to
conserve energy. Keeping your car tuned
up and your tires inflated at a certain level
will reduce your oil consumption, reduce
your cost, and also contribute to cleaner
air. So it’s a win-win situation.”

An important goal of the exhibit
is to help visitors make informed decisions
about their own energy use. Another is
quite simply to get people to think about
energy.

“I hope people will walk away
from this exhibit with an understanding
of how important energy is to them,” says
Goodwin. “Energy is more than flipping
a light switch or turning a key in the
ignition. It’s our way of life.” ™

The energy exhibit opens next fall

at The Chicago Academy of Sciences,
2001 North Clark Street at Armitage. The
museum is open 10 am to 5 pm seven days
a week. Admission is $1 for adults, $.50
for children (ages 3-17) and seniors. For
more information, call (312) 871-2668.

Carolyn Arden Bresler is a science

writer and director of media relations and
publications for The Chicago Academy

of Sciences. She lives in Chicago and rides
her bike to work to burn energy and
conserve it at the same time.

Working drawings for the exhibit courtesy
Abrams, Teller, Madsen, Inc., Craig Wetli,
lead designer

GAYLORD DONNELLEY (1910-1992)

REMEMBERING
GAYLORD DONNELLEY

“When your goal is in sight, you
raise your sights”

Gaylord Donnelley
Founder and Chairman
The Nature of Illinois
Foundation

n ocean of ink has been

devoted to documenting
Gaylord Donnelley’s
extraordinary life, a fitting
tribute to the man who once led
the world’s largest commercial
printing firm. His legacy
includes an army of dedicated
friends and thousands of acres
of precious protected land. Over
the years, scores of outdoor
recreation and conservation
organizations, historic preserva-
tion societies, and civic and cul-
tural institutions have benefitted
from his generosity and commit-
ment; during his life, he was
honored by universities and
Statesmen. Most recently he was
named winner of the Chevron
Conservation Award in the
Citizen Volunteer category.

He was to go Washington, D.C.
in May to be honored at an
awards banquet.

The Nature of Illinois Foundation
was one of Gaylord Donnelley’s inspired
dreams. “Gaylord knew that the Surveys
were among the most important resources
in the state,” said Gerald Adelmann,
executive director of the Open Lands
Project. “The high quality of their research
had national significance and they needed
the support of the private sector to insulate
them from the budget’s axe. They needed
a vehicle to tell their story. The
Foundation was to become that vehicle.”

Dorothy and Gaylord Donnelley. Work on the endangered prairie
chicken led to the vision of a society to support the work of the Illinois
Scientific Surveys. (Department of Conservation photo, c.1966)

Here we offer, not a compendium
of his many accomplishments, but the
memories of those who brought the
Surveys to his attention in the first place—
and others who worked with him to create

a “society” to support their important work.

A Vision Born in the Blinds

“I MET GAYLORD DONNELLEY
when a group of us were raising funds for
the endangered prairie chicken and our
friendship flourished right along with our

plans for that project. Gaylord and Dorothy

Donnelley’s enthusiasm, their
contributions and gifts of land
were invaluable. The prairie
chicken connection led us to
hunt together and when the
ducks were not flying, which
sometimes happened, we would
sit in the blinds, discussing a
variety of conservation issues.
One of these was the possibility
of a support organization for the
Surveys—and that was the
beginning.” Glen Sanderson,
Principal Scientist Emeritus,
Illinois Natural History Survey
(INHS)

“IT WAS 1981.1 WAS
the new chief at the Natural
History Survey, and it was only
a day or two before Gaylord
Donnelley’s name came up. It
kept coming up, and before long
I met him and we became
friends. Gaylord had a great
understanding of the Surveys—
the importance of research for
itself and its importance in deci-
sions that needed to be made in
Illinois. An idea began to crys-
tallize: the Surveys should forge
a formal relationship with the
business community. He never lost time in
getting to the heart of the issue.” Paul
Risser (Vice President for Research,
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque)

“MY FIRST MEETING WITH
Gaylord ‘to get the society up and running’
was on a snowy, sleety, miserable after-
noon in that magnificent office of his. He
thought I was reserved. I thought he was
reserved. We got over that fast.”

“Out rolled the maps of Illinois as
we tried to-put together a balanced Board of

Directors—to see ‘who we know.’

(Actually; who Gaylord knew.) Work
plans on programs, fundraising, and com-
munications were hammered out. In those
first five years, things began to happen:
publication of the magazine, The Nature of
Illinois, fundraising visits, press recep-
tions, legislative receptions, seminars with
the Surveys, The Biodiversity in Illinois
exhibit, videos for Illinois schools on the
state’s natural resources.”

“Gaylord always knew exactly
what the Society should do—promote the
invaluable research of the Surveys and the
Hazardous Waste Center. But the name of
our organization, The Society for the
Illinois Scientific Surveys, drove him and
everyone else crazy. “SISS,’ Gaylord
would chuckle, “not much punch in that.’
We wrestled with that for five years.” (The
name was finally changed to The Nature
of Illinois Foundation in July 1990.)

“He was a unique man in a world
full of cynics and quid-pro-quos. He
always did the right thing...and he had fun
doing it. I will miss him so much.” Jane
Bolin, Executive Director, 1985-1990, The
Society for the Illinois Scientific Surveys

“LIFE SOMETIMES TAKES
peculiar turns. I first met Mr. Donnelley in
1982 while I was with the Department of
Energy and Natural Resources. I attended
a meeting with him in which the idea came
up of forming an organization (along the
lines of The Smithsonian) to raise public
awareness of the Surveys. Mr. Donnelley
agreed that such an organization was
needed and he became the founder and
chairman of what is now called The
Nature of Illinois Foundation. Eight years
after that meeting, I left state government
to become the organization’s second
executive director.” John Schmitt,
Executive Director, The Nature of
Illinois Foundation

“MEMORIES SPIN THROUGH
my mind. His generosity of spirit, for
example. He was always active physically
and mentally, but when he could no longer

10

The rehabilitation of the Gaylord building, the first major restoration project of the Illinois &
Michigan Canal Corridor, earned a special citation from former president Reagan in 1988.
(Courtesy of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Steve Stewart photographer)

hunt quail, he went by horse-drawn wagon
to observe his friends enjoy hunting quail
on his plantation. And when we went hunt-
ing at Ashepoo, South Carolina, Gaylord
always insisted on poling the boat to the
duck blind, rattling the blind to chase out
any cottonmouths, and:encouraging me to
take the first shot. Unquestionably,
Gaylord Donnelley was the finest person

I have ever known.” Frank Bellrose,
Principal Scientist Emeritus, INHS

“GAY WORKED DIRECTLY
with the Surveys encouraging their efforts
in so many ways. Above all, he was a
sincere human being, treating all he met
with respect. I feel honored to have shaken
his hand, to have shared time with him, and
to have enjoyed his wisdom. The Water
Survey has lost a friend, but we have
gained a lasting memorial to him in The
Foundation.” Richard G. Semonin, Chief
Emeritus, Illinois State Water Survey
(ISWS)

“HIS WISE COUNSEL AND
insightful comments on complex issues
will be difficult to replace.” Mark E.
Peden, Acting Chief, ISWS

“GAYLORD WAS A REAL
friend of the environment and natural
resources, and he was a good friend and
supporter of the Surveys and HWRIC.
His presence will be missed.” David
Thomas, Director, Hazardous Waste
Research and Information Center
(HWRIC)

“HE INSPIRED AND GAVE
new life to everyone he touched. He had a
rare passion for people and the quality of
our environment. His leadership will be
missed but his legacy will benefit all of
us well into the next century.” Gary D.
Miller, Assistant Director, HWRIC

“THOSE WHO WOULD
number themselves, or would be num-
bered by others; as friends of the natural
resources of Illinois are legion. Among
those, Gaylord Donnelley, has earned
our special attention and gratitude. He
devoted much of his life to active partici-
pation in outdoor activities, and he under-
stood that the future of such activities can
not be assured without everyone’s help.
He enthusiastically addressed developing
natural resource problems to benefit future

GAYLORD DONNELLEY (1910-1992)

generations. Gaylord’s relationship with
the Natural History Survey was unflagging

_ over the decades. His unfailing optimism,
wise counsel, generous support, and love
of nature have sustained the staff through
both good and challenging times. He will
be greatly missed.” Lorin I. Nevling,
Chief, INHS

“WE SHALL REMEMBER
Gaylord Donnelley for his deep interest in
and strong support for the Surveys. Our
common interest—to seek a better under-
standing of our natural resources—formed
a natural bond between us.”

“Through his efforts, The Nature
of Illinois Foundation has made significant
progress in helping to make the Scientific
Surveys better known among the public,
and in building recognition for the value of
scientific research in making intelligent
environmental policy decisions. Gaylord’s
unstinting support for The Foundation and
the Surveys has helped to create networks
to communicate the results of scientific
research and to foster cooperation between
the Surveys and various institutions
throughout the state. The work has ranged
from this informative and educational
magazine, to the Biodiversity in Illinois
exhibit which has traveled. throughout the
state, to helping develop and sponsor a
new traveling exhibit on Energy with the
Chicago Academy of Sciences in
Chicago.”

“His support has been crucial in
times of budget crises and other threats to
our existence as public service organiza-
tions dedicated to research and informa-
tion on Illinois’ natural resources.
Gaylord’s guidance at the helm of The
Foundation will be sorely missed. We owe
him an undying debt of gratitude for help-
ing the Scientific Surveys’ beacons of
excellence in research and service to shine
more brightly.” Morris W. Leighton, Chief,
Illinois State Geological Survey

Members of the Board
Members of the first Board of Directors
included Edmund Thornton. Their com-
mon bond as Yale alumni was reinforced
in the 60s when Donnelley was a member
of the Nature Preserves Commission of
which Thornton was chairman.

“GAYLORD WAS AN exem-
plary business executive and he carried
those skills over to his other interests. He
was very committed to the preservation of
the natural environment and had the great
vision of a society that would support
scientific work and protect the Surveys
from the shifting winds of legislative
change. Although he was direct, he was
the consummate gentleman, tactful and
modest. A true and loyal friend.” Edmund
B. Thornton, President, The Edmund B.
Thornton Foundation

“THREE WORDS PERSONIFY
Gaylord: generosity, sincerity, and
humility.” Walter Hanson, Founder
Hanson engineering

“GAYLORD DONNELLEY’S
lifelong dedication to his native state of
Illinois and, in particular, the conservation

The special service recognition award of the
Wildlife Society, usually reserved for profes-
sional wildlifers, went to Gaylord Donnelley in
1989. (Francis N. Saterlee photographer)

and protection of its natural resources
gave him a keen appreciation of the unique
role of the Surveys. More than others, he
understood that the basic research, to
which the Surveys’ distinguished scientists
were committed, was vital to an under-
standing of the resources—land, water,
and atmosphere—on which the present
and future of Illinois depends. During

the mid-1970s he became increasingly
concerned that the Surveys, while recog-
nized internationally for their expertise
and integrity, were underfunded by the
state government to which they rendered
such singular service.” Henry Barkhausen,

former Board Member and Director of

the Illinois Department of Conservation
1970-73

“WHENEVER YOU WENT TO
Gay with an idea, you got a hearing and if
the idea was creditable, you could count
on his support. And he was not just a pas-
sive supporter. He was involved. Last
year, even though his health was failing,
he came down to the Cache River dedica-
tion and he and Dot (Mrs. Donnelley) rode
around like hundreds of other visitors, in
a stuffy van, up and down bumpy roads
looking at all the places—Heron Pond and
Little Black Slough, the land dedicated to
the Bellrose Reserve—in which he had
been such a key player.” Al Pyott, Board
Member since 1987, and Executive
Director, The Illinois Nature Conservancy

There was a saying of Gaylord

Donnelley's of which I was particularly

fond. After reading an enlightening article

or hearing-an especially informative talk,
his eyes would sparkle and he would say,
with great satisfaction, “I have just
learned something I didn’t know before.”
Those of us who have had the pleasure

of knowing him and working with him
might paraphrase that. “We have learned
alot we would never have known without

him.” Jean Gray, Editor

peeed CURRENTS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

POSSE [Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS)

Biorhythms has been set aside until the fall issue in order to make
room for the tribute to Chairman Donnelley.

ISWS Acid Rain Measurement Adopted as World Standard

The method developed by the
Water Survey to measure the
components in acid rain has
been adopted by the Interna-
tional Union of Pure and
Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
“This 1s important because the
study of acid rain has global
rather than regional implica-
tions,” says Survey analytical
chemist Jane Rothert, “and
IUPAC recognition means that
standardized methods will now
be used worldwide. We will be
able to compare notes with
London, New Zealand, or
Upper Siberia and know that

Water Quality Information on Tap

Spurred by the typhoid
epidemics of the 1890s, Arthur
Palmer (the Water Survey’s
first chief) spearheaded the
scientific study of the quality
of drinking water in Illinois.
That study remains a major
focus of the Water Survey;
however, mineral content
surfaces as one of today’s top
concerns, not typhoid.

More than 750 water
samples were submitted for
analysis to the Public Service
Lab at the Water Survey last
year. An additional 850 inquir-
ies were handled by phone or
mail. About half of the requests
came from private citizens con-
cerned with household water
problems. The remainder came

we’re all doing our measure-
ments the same way.”

IUPAC is the third
standardization organization
to adopt the ISWS method for
use in acid rain monitoring.
Previous approvals were grant-
ed by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency and the
American Society for Testing
and Materials.

The method was devel-
oped by researchers Jane
Rothert, Sue Bachman, Brigita
Demir, and Mark Peden, and
published in Pure and Applied
Chemistry, June 1991.

from industry, well drillers and
engineers, farmers, university
and institutional administrators,
water treatment equipment
dealers, government and public
health officials, recreational
managers, doctors, dentists,
and veterinarians.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

How Was the Weather Last
The Water Survey’s month-
ly Water and Climate
Summary for Illinois has
been mailed to water
users and water monitors
across the state for the
past eight years.
Commodity traders and
farmers use the report’s precip-
itation and soil moisture data
to predict crop yields when
buying and selling crop
futures. Farmers with private
wells and managers of munici-
pal water systems use precipi-
tation figures to predict
groundwater levels. (Advance
planning can be valuable in
times of severe drought or
unprecedented high rainfall.)

A homemaker may bring
a sample of wash water that
has stained the laundry orange.
A farmer may bring a sample
of livestock water after noting
a high death rate among his
piglets. A doctor may submit
a sample of the tap water to
be used by a patient on a low-
sodium diet. Or a city official
may bring a sample from the
municipal water supply to have
the flouride content checked.

After water samples are
analyzed and the factors that
might have caused the problem
are evaluated, Survey chemists
submit a written report, includ-

Chemist Brian Kaiser tests a water
sample in the Water Survey's
Public Service Lab. (ISWS photo)

:

i

}

¢ \
.

Month?

Internally, Survey
scientists use rainfall distri-
bution figures to predict

lake and river levels a

month in advance and to

predict groundwater condi-
tions two to three months in

advance. In addition, ongoing
documentation of regional
weather change is a valuable
tool for researchers in the new
ISWS Global Climate Change
Program.

The Water and Climate
Summary is available through
the Office of Publications
Services, Illinois State Water
Survey, 2204 Griffith Drive,
Champaign, IL 61820,

(217) 333-8888.

ing suggestions for solutions.
Often the solutions are simple,
according to Brian Kaiser,
chemist with the Office of
Analytical & Water Treatment
Services. Other times additional
consultation and follow-up may
be required.

Water samples must be
taken using an ISWS collection
kit that is customized for the
water problem in question.
Because this is part of the
Water Survey’s Public Service
Program, there is no charge for
either the kit or the analysis.

A phone call to Kaiser
at (217) 333-9234 or 0802, is
the first step toward a solution
to public or private water
problems.

m= (SEOGRAMS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

gam illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS)

Isotope Lab Rates High Marks
The Survey’s Isotope
_ Geochemistry Laboratory is
exceptionally accurate when
it comes to radiocarbon dating
and lab supervisor Jack Liu
recently received news
to prove it.

Last year, the lab was one
of more than 100 radiocarbon-
dating facilities worldwide

invited to participate in radio-
carbon testing of five samples
supplied by the International
Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) in Vienna, Austria.
The Survey’s laboratory staff
was eager to participate in the
radiocarbon dating project “to
test how good our system is,”
said Liu, who scheduled the
IAEA samples into the labora-

tory’s regular workload over a
six-month period.

A comparison of results
found that two of the Survey’s
analyses were virtually identi-
cal with the corresponding
IAEA values and three were
within one standard deviation.
Only two other labs had all

of their results within one
standard deviation for all five
samples. Sixteen labs came
within three standard
deviations. The five samples
supplied by IAEA to each of
the 100 participating labs were
marble, freshwater shell, paper,
and two fossil woods.

Jack Liu, supervisor of the Isotope Geochemistry Lab

A Lifetime of Service Brings an Award

Dr. Keros Cartwright, a 30-year
veteran of the Geological
Survey, recently received the
Geological Society of
America’s George Burke
Maxey award for distinguished
service in hydrogeology.
Cartwright is principal geolo-

Keros Cartwright, head of the
Hydrology Research Lab

gist and head of the Special
Studies and Hydrogeology
Research Lab at the ISGS.

He originally joined the Survey
in 1961, rising in 1984 to the
senior position of Principal
Geologist and Head of the
General and Environmental
Group. Cartwright returned to
full time research at the ISGS
in 1988.

Over the years, Cartwright
was Visiting Associate
Professor of Geology at the
University of Waterloo,
Ontario, and Adjunct Professor
of Geology at Northern Illinois
University, DeKalb. He has
been Adjunct Professor of
Geology at the U. of I. Urbana
since 1985.

Cartwright is an active
member of the leading geologi-
cal and hydrological scientific
organizations, is on the
editorial boards of several
scientific journals, and serves
on technical committees for the
furtherance of earth sciences.
He has published more than
110 scientific papers and
reports. His principal areas of
study are groundwater and
related geological characteris-
tics of rocks.

George Burke Maxey, for
whom the award was named,
served the field of hydrogeolo-
gy for more than 35 years,
heading the Geological
Survey's groundwater section
from 1955 to 1961.

Gary Salmon injects an oil sample
into the mass spectrometer.

New Source of Old Oil

The discovery that a deep
source of oil exists in Illinois
has been documented by geo-
chemists at the ISGS who ana-
lyzed oil samples recovered in
the drilling of a 7,900-foot well.
Their analyses indicated that
the oil came from Ordovician
or Cambrian source rocks some
500 million years old.

This finding is important
because, for more than 30
years, major oil companies
have been looking for evidence
of a source of deeper oil. Until
now, the only proven oil source
in the Illinois Basin has been
from Devonian-age rocks locat-
ed at depths between 2,500 and
5,500 feet, although prelimi-
nary work on some Ordovician-
age rocks has suggested they,
too, could be a source.

Although no commercial
quantities of oil have been
found below 5,500 feet, accord-
ing to Stephen T. Whitaker,
geologist in the Oil and Gas
Section, it is possible that
a commercial reservoir full of
hydrocarbons exists at unex-
plored depths in Illinois.

The challenge now 1s
to find the source rock itself
so that its occurrences can
be mapped.

(ISGS photos by Joel Dexter)

ah Soe TE

—_s—

CENTERING ON WASTE

Belersiles Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (HWRIC)

HWRIC Project Reduces Waste in Metal Coating Process

A new ultrafiltration process
developed by HWRIC for
manufacturers of metal
products reduces hazardous
waste, is highly cost effective,
and improves product, quality.
The problem faced by one
central Illinois manufacturer
of metal shelving—a problem
quite common among such
manufacturing facilities—was
that metal parts arrived at their
plant with a thin coating of oil
to prevent rusting and had tobe
immersed in an acidic bath in
order to degrease the surfaces
and coat them with an agent
that promotes paint adhesion.
Oil would build up during
the bathing process, and 5,000
gallons of hazardous waste
had to be disposed of three
times a year at a cost of $1.00
per gallon.
The UN Comes to Champaign
In January, United Nations
(UN) and U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (USEPA)
computer programmers came
to HWRIC from Bombay,
Paris, and Washington, D.C. to
work on an international pollu-
tion prevention program. This
project expands the Waste
Reduction Advisory System
(WRAS) bibliographic
database begun by HWRIC
more than six years ago in
cooperation with the USEPA.
The UN group agreed on
an extended case study format
which will include:
1. types of waste involved,

14

After going through
several lab and on-site stages,
HWRIC scientists found that »~
oil buildup in the bath could be
significantly reduced through
an ultrafiltration process. This
process involves pumping the
contaminated liquid, under low
pressure, through a cylinder
which contains a membrane
filter column. Small amounts
of clean material weep through
the membrane, leaving the
contaminants behind. The clean
fluid is returned to the bath
solution, while the contami-
nated fluid continues to
circulate and be cleaned, thus
becoming more concentrated.
On January 7, 1992, the new
process was put in place at the
manufacturer’s Bloomington
facility.

2. information on reduction of
waste volume and toxicity,
3. cost savings and impact on

product quality, and 4. who to
contact for detailed information.

The computer program,
designed by HWRIC, becomes
part of a worldwide network
that can be accessed by
modem—for the price of a
phone call— through the
USEPA or UN Central
Computer Program. Diskettes
are available for those who
wish to add the information to
their PC database, for those
who do not have access to
a modem, and for parts of the

Results to date indicate

that hazardous waste generation
can be reduced through ultrafil-
tration from 15,000 gallons to
approximately 30 gallons annu-
ally—a reduction of more than
99%. Furthermore, a decrease
in the amount of chemicals
needed to recharge the bath
solution means additional cost
savings. Payback from invest-
ment in this technology should
take less than a year.

As. an added bonus, the
product itself was improved, so
much so, that the manufactur-
er’s chemical vendor has

world where phone service
is unreliable.

“Although pollution
prevention goals overlap
worldwide, in the West we
come at it from a slightly
different perspective and use
different terminology,” says
Dr. Gary Miller, Assistant
Director and Pollution
Prevention Manager at
HWRIC. “The exciting part
of this program is that this
practical information is being
translated into non-Western,
internationally accepted terms,
making it accessible to devel-
oping countries.”

Ultrafiltration device
in HWRIC's pilot lab
(HWRIC photo)

brought other customers
involved in related types of
manufacturing to observe the
new ultrafiltration process.
Although this initially may
mean decreased sales of

-chemicals, the vendor believes

that, in the long run, customer ~
satisfaction will more than
make up for a temporary lower
volume of sales.

In April, Tim Lindsey,
HWRIC pollution prevention
technology engineer, traveled
to Washington to deliver a
paper on the project to leading
managers, engineers, consul-
tants, attorneys, legislators,
researchers, and regulators
across the country. Lindsey is
also preparing a publication
describing the new technology.

The publication, funded under ~

a grant from the EPA, will be
available through the HWRIC
Clearinghouse Library soon.

-HWRIC continues to
work with other states and the
National Roundtable of State
Pollution Prevention Programs
to coordinate case studies to
add to the database. USEPA
gathers case studies through
other federal agencies. The UN
is gathering case studies
through international groups.

The selection of WRAS as
the basis for this computer pro-
gram allows HWRIC early
access to case studies world-
wide and gives broad visibility
to the pollution prevention
accomplishments of Illinois
companies.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

~ BUILD AN EXHIBIT AND
THEY WILL COME

llinois is a complex mosaic of habitats,
each with a surprising variety of plants
@ and animals. Influenced by its glacial
heritage and underlying geology, the state
is a meeting ground for organisms from
widely divergent geographical areas: the
eastern deciduous forest, the western great
plains, the southern coastal plains, the
Ozark uplift, and the northern forests.
Biodiversity in Illinois, a

traveling exhibit developed by the three
Scientific Surveys—Natural History,
Geology, and Water—with the support
of The Nature of Illinois Foundation,
illustrates the diversity of organisms found
in Illinois and explains why they are here.
Included are explanations of how the
geology of Illinois contributed to an abun-
dant variety of organisms and how climate
interacted with landforms to create distinct
habitats that support species as diverse
as prickly pear cactus and native pine,
snapping turtles and wild turkeys.

An Exhibit on a Shoestring
A brown grain truck and a tan van pull up
to a loading zone and disgorge a variety of
makeshift boxes, pedestals, gray fabric
panels, and a mummified snapping turtle.
With the help of an electric screwdriver
and several pairs of hands, the exhibit
Biodiversity in Illinois soon materializes.
The idea for Biodiversity began
with Estie Karpman, then Assistant
Director of the Society for the Illinois
Scientific Surveys (now The Nature of
Illinois Foundation), and Dr. Michael
Jeffords, Public Relations and Education
Officer for the Natural History Survey.
“It began with the challenge of obtaining
a grant and matching funds,” says Estie.

by Susan L, Post

wag. Natural Habitat
' Vig — eee “ay

OF ees |

ey © teen
4 @
fe
*“g

Biodiversity in Illinois was on display at the Springfield Boys and Girls Club last February.
(Photo courtesy of the State Journal-Register, Rich Saal photographer)

“Although we didn’t get the grant, Marine
Bank donated the matching funds.”

“No one would believe we could
build something like this. Michael and I
were told to pursue the idea and if it
worked, fine, but don’t expect too much,”
says Estie.

Biodiversity in Illinois was
chosen as a subject that could involve all
three Surveys. Using a discarded pesticide
display, fabric donated by Weeks
Upholstering, Springfield, wood donated
from Handy Andy Home Improvement
Centers, Inc., Springfield, photographic
developing donated by Kodalux, and
the magic of the Natural History Survey’s
workshop, nine panels, three specimen
boxes, and four pedestals took shape. Each
survey was in charge of producing exhibit

materials for one of the large half-circle
panels. The common thread of the exhibit
was the-Natural Resources of Illinois,
a Natural History Survey Special
Publication, and the 14 natural divisions
of Illinois and the various factors that
helped mold them. A trifold brochure gave
visitors an overview of the exhibit.
Panels were filled with colorful
photographs of Illinois organisms and
habitats, maps depicting the natural
divisions of Illinois, and information on
geology and climate. Collections of
fossils, bats, birds, insects, mammals,
mussels, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes
were displayed as well as a great horned
owl, a wild turkey, and a mummified
snapping turtle. The turtle, a rust brown
color reminiscent of Ramses II, elicits the

15

most response from young and old alike,
with questions like: “What is it?”, “Where
is it from?”, “Will it bite?”’, and “Why is
it brown?”

On the Road
Biodiversity in Illinois. premiered at the
Marine Bank, Springfield, in October
1989. From there it traveled to branches of
Marine Bank in Champaign and Decatur.
Since then, the exhibit has toured 18
locations throughout the state—from
banks to nature centers, junior colleges to
shopping malls, and even the Illinois State
Fair where in excess of 100,000 visitors
had an opportunity to see it.

With each setup and takedown,
the crew became more efficient at packing
and new space was found on the truck;
other components were soon added to
the exhibit. A six-foot wooden praying
mantis now welcomes visitors; an
electronic question-and-answer board
tests their knowledge of the nature of the
state, using photographs of organisms and
habitats (the touch of a button provides
the correct answer); and two tables with
the newest and best nature books
(donated by the Chicago Public Library’s
NatureConnections project)
tempt children. to “learn more
about it.”

Planning a Visit

To aid schoolchildren who visit
the exhibit, teachers were
encouraged to use the
Biodiversity folder, packed
with information developed by
the three Surveys. Included
was a pamphlet, Winter Storms,
from the Water Survey; and
leaflets entitled Pleistocene
Glaciations in Illinois,

History of Pennsylvanian
Rocks, Landscape and Mineral
Resources of Illinois,
Geograms on Erratics, Ancient
Dust Storms, Trilobite, and

16

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Resources for teaching Geology, all from
the Geological Survey. Information on
the concept of biodiversity, classroom
activities, and a large coloring poster of
more than 60 Illinois species was provided
by the Natural History Survey.

By 1991, a new teacher packet,
Biodiversity in Illinois —A Teacher's -
Guide, had been developed by the Natural
History and Geological Surveys. This
guide allowed the instructor to preview
the exhibit before actually visiting it.
Concepts introduced on the panels were
further explained and reference material
was given. Discussion questions and
activities were suggested that would make
the trip more valuable for the students
and enable the instructor to integrate the
experience into the science curriculum.
Although the accompanying guide
requires the student to read and study
much of the exhibit, the activities are fun
and allow students to glean a tremendous
amount of information about the state’s
biology, geology, and climate.

An Exhibit for All
Not all activities were geared toward
schoolchildren. At a Grandparents Day

Girl meets owl, one of the specimens in the exhibit, during Earth Day Expo
in Champaign.

held in Decatur, children and their grand- —
parents visited, reminisced, and interacted
with the exhibit. One grandmother was -
overheard telling her granddaughter about
a woods she and her sisters had roamed as
girls, picking the abundant wildflowers

for the tables of an inn her parents had
operated. Sadly, she explained how both ~
the inn and the woods were now gone.

At several locations, evening
lectures were offered in conjunction with
the exhibit. These lectures, given by
scientists of the three Surveys, ranged in
topic from “Illinois Wilds” to “Impacts
of Weather on Social and Economic
Activities.” At Market Place Mall in
Champaign during Earth Day Expo 1990
and at the 1991 State Fair in Springfield,
Biodiversity was staffed by Survey
employees. :

Thousands of people, both young
and old, have explored Biodiversity in
Illinois. Even a seeing-eye dog at Carl
Sandburg College expressed interest in the
mounted birds. “Biodiversity in Illinois is
basically a public education effort,” said
Leo Welch, a Biology Instructor at
Belleville Area College. “It will increase
the understanding of what is remaining in ~
terms of plant and animal life
in Illinois.”

The success of
Biodiversity in Illinois can best
be summed up in the words of
one visitor: “I never knew the
state had so much. A truly
wonderful exhibit!”

Biodiversity in Illinois was
retired for renovation after its
visit to Rend Lake in southern
Illinois in April 1992. For
information on availability of
the exhibit next fall, write The
Nature of Illinois Foundation,
208 S. LaSalle Street,
Chicago, IL 60604, or call
(312) 201-0650.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

ILLINOIS DEER

A Not-So-Endangered Species

y the time the shot

comes, the afternoon

light is almost gone
from the brushy fields of
Shabbona Lake State Recreation
Area and the December cold has
long since penetrated the
Department of Conservation’s
(DOC) old Ford Bronco. “Let’s
do some ‘rasslin’,” says Bob.
Like the four other shivering
volunteers, he has been waiting
for an hour, watching dozens of
deer on the brushy fields—graz-
ing, running, eyeing the truck.

Suddenly sparks flash
across the field like an incipient
fireworks show. “Everybody
hanging on to something?” asks
Mike, the driver, and without
waiting for an answer he rams
the truck across the rutted dirt,
toward a cloud of smoke half a
mile away, visible even in this
gathering darkness.

The Roundup
Charlie and another man are
already there, huddled over the
dark forms barely distinguish-
able from the ground. This time Charlie
has trapped four deer in the rocket-pow-
ered net. One of them groans. The loud,
wrenching sound could come from a goat.
The volunteers hurry across the
dark cord mesh and over the slick of
shelled corn that drew the deer in.
Everyone finds an animal to hang on to.
Two of the deer are young antlerless bucks
that have been caught before and already
wear numbered white plastic tags on their
ears, so all that is needed is to let them go.

by Peter Friederici

Hungry deer will eat leaves, twigs, and sometimes even bark

It’s not so easy. Several people kneel
around the first deer and hold on to legs
and head while Charlie works each limb
free of the net, one at a time. The buck
strains against the net, against the hands
and arms; he stares wildly.

Charlie has to cut a few cords to
get the buck free. When he is done, all
four people around the deer let go and leap
backwards as one on Charlie’s count of
“One-two-three!”” Then Charlie yells and

the buck streaks off into the darkness.

The procedure is
repeated on another buck that
has not been caught before.
After working the legs free
Charlie measures a hind leg and
the chest girth with a tape
measure so caked with old mud
that he has to wipe it between
his gnarled fingers, over and
over again, while the knees of
the volunteers ache on the hard
dirt, frozen and pitted by the
hooves of dozens of deer. Then
he pierces both ears with a pair
of pliers that leaves behind two
large white plastic tags.

It is hard, grueling
work for deer and humans alike
Charlie Nixon is a wildlife
biologist with the Illinois
Natural History Survey (INHS),
and for the next few months
he will be watching these deer
roam the park and out into
the rest of DeKalb County,
recording where they wander
and how and when they die.
The data he gathers here and in
a twin study at Siloam Springs
State Park in western Illinois
will enable him to create computer models
that will predict the population demo
graphics of Illinois deer. It is the sort of
unsung, behind-the-scenes study that
results in mountains of statistics and
may help us to live better with the oth

animals that share the land

A Very Successful Comeback
Ninety years ago you would hi
trouble finding four \

Odocoileus virevuanu l i

Sore

An adult doe was captured with rocket nets at O'Hare Airport by INHS and released in Will County as part of a study to determine the survival of

translocated deer. (Photo by Jim Witham)

Decades of largely unregulated hunting had
extirpated this once-common animal from
much of the Midwest. By the time deer
hunting was outlawed in 1901, the animal
was probably entirely gone from Illinois.
Reintroduction programs brought
them back. Deer reproduce quickly in
favorable conditions, and they found
abundant food and shelter in the patchwork
of field and forest that covers much of
the state. The original predators that had
kept the deer population in check—wolves,
had been
wiped out, and in their absence the

cougars, Native Americans

deer thrived.

By the late 1950s firearm hunting
had once again been legalized in some
counties. Still, in many places deer
sightings remained a special occasion into
the 1980s. Steve Packard of The Nature
Conservancy remembers his first encoun-
ters with deer in Chicago-area forest pre-
serves in the 1970s: “It was wonderful to

see those first footprints. We thought it
was wonderful to have another bit of the
original fauna back.”

Fences are highly effective
at keeping deer out of
a yard—if the fences are
eight feet high.

= ols 2

By now he has had second
thoughts. The deer have returned with a
vengeance. There are probably between
one-third and one-half million in the state,
and their success has brought trouble:

« reports of collisions between deer and
motor vehicles on state highways doubled
between 1985 and 1990;

* deer on densely-populated Chicago-area

forest preserves show a high incidence

of malnutrition;

¢ biologists report increasing complaints of
deer depredation on row crops, nurseries,
orchards, and residential gardens;

* overgrazing by deer has put heavy pres-
sure on native plants and may have wiped
out rare species in some areas.

All these problems focus on one
question: How many deer is enough?
There is no one good answer. Scientists
can’t agree among themselves. To many
biologists, deer have been primarily a
game animal, a resource whose popula-
tions should remain high to satisfy hunters.
But some botanists feel that the high deer
populations game managers strive to main-
tain are ultimately destructive to the plant
life the deer feed upon.

Most studies suggest that some-
where between 10 and 30 deer per square
mile can sustain themselves in most of
Illinois without unduly damaging their
habitat. But “we don’t have a good handle

on what presettlement densities were like,”
says Brian Anderson, director of the
Illinois Nature Preserves Commission,
though he suggests that year-round hunting
may have kept deer populations at even
fewer than ten per square mile.

In the absence of historical data,
biologists must look instead at what makes
sense now. And in managing deer, biolo-
gists must also manage public opinion, for
deer represent different things to different
people: they are an aesthetic pleasure and a
symbol of the wild, a source of food and
recreation, a hooved pest.

Population Control

The primary means of controlling deer
populations has historically been hunting
with a firearm or bow and arrow. Public
sport hunting of deer is legal in 98 of
Illinois’ 102 counties. In the fall of 1991,
hunters reported bagging 81,550 deer, the
highest total ever. The statewide picture
may seem to show that sport hunters have
effectively taken the place of the wolves
and the Native Americans. Up close,
though, that’s not quite true.

Some critics feel that hunting
isn’t a very effective means of population
control. For one thing, many hunters prefer
bagging antlered bucks rather than does.
Deer are prolific breeders, and they are
polygamous, so a herd with many does can
multiply rapidly even if there are few
bucks. Last fall the DOC began issuing
special permits allowing hunters to bag
more deer—if they aim at animals without
antlers. It remains to be seen whether DOC
can fine-tune its permitting enough to
address local overpopulation problems.

Perhaps hunters can bag enough
does to balance the number of fawns born
each spring. But much of Illinois—includ-
ing many state parks—is off-limits to
hunters. In and near such refuges, it is the
motor vehicle that unintentionally becomes
the major predator. Statewide, 9,076 deer-
vehicle collisions were recorded by the
Illinois Department of Transportation on

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

state highways in 1990, up from 4,517 in
1985, and only a portion of the 14,012
recorded from all Illinois roads.

In 1990 more than
14,000 deer-vehicle
collisions were recorded
from Illinois roads.

Rock Cut State Park is a case in
point. For decades no hunting was allowed
in this 2,742-acre park on the outskirts of
the Rockford metropolitan area. Deer
flourished; by the late 1980s biologists
estimated that there were 500 deer in the
park, a density of 88 per square mile. They
typically spent nights in the park and fed
on nearby cornfields at dawn and dusk.
Farmers complained about crop depreda-
tion. And to get to the cornfields, deer had
to cross roads. By the fall of 1989, says
Rock Cut park ranger Kelly Nelson,
“You'd have two deer hit a night. It wasn’t
a pretty sight, and it was unsafe.”

An adult buck is marked with cattle tags and

ear streamers for easy visual identification
(Photo by Jim Witham)

DOC officials responded by open-
ing, in the fall of 1989, the first-ever public
archery hunting season in the park. Archers
bagged just over 50 deer—a relatively
small impact on the population. Many of
the neighbors were outraged. “You don’t
want to see a deer with an arrow in it run-
ning through the park,” says Mary Ann
Aiello, a local county board member who
opposed the hunt. “And they were dressing
the meat right there, so you’d walk through
the park and see a pile of guts lying there.”

In the winter of 1990-91, the
DOC allowed another public archery hunt;
but later that winter it also organized a
team of volunteer sharpshooters who shot
deer at bait stations while the park was
closed. All told, 214 deer were killed. The
meat from the deer killed by sharpshooters
was donated to county food pantries.
Because public resistance to an open
hunting season at the park continues, the
controlled hunt may well become a yearly
ritual from now on.

As one manager of a large resi-
dential development in Jo Daviess County
puts it, “It’s the same as any other mainte-
nance item. You mow the lawns in the
summer, plow the streets and crop the deer
in the winter.”

Through the mid-1980s, Jim
Witham and Marty Jones conducted an
INHS project analyzing urban deer. They
found high deer densities at Busse Woods
in the Cook County Forest Preserve sys-
tem, Ryerson Conservation Area in Lake
County, and other areas. They also found a
high rate of malnutrition among those deer.

Busse Woods is a dedicated
Illinois Nature Preserve that was widely
considered the most biologically valuable
woodlot in northern Cook County. But by
1983, 26 species of spectacular springtime
wildflowers had vanished. What's more
trees and shrubs had a pronounced “browse
line” six feet high, showing that deer
eaten all the leaves, twigs, and sometit

j

even bark. Ground-nesting birds ar

animals disappeared with the plan

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Ninety years ago you would have had trouble finding four white-tailed deer in all of Illinois.
Today there are between one-third and one-half million in the state.

The INHS study culminated in an
experimental management program. Deer
at Busse Woods were shot by marksmen
or trapped and euthanized. The population
was reduced to 10 to 15 per square mile by
1987, and has been kept there by regular
winter cullings since then. Chris Anchor,
a wildlife biologist with the Cook County
Forest Preserve District, says the deer are
in better condition now. So are the plants.
Oak seedlings are back, and so are a few
of the spring wildflowers, though Anchor
says their regeneration is “painfully slow.”
The seeds of many woodland wildflowers
are not readily dispersed; even if they
were, there is no place near Busse Woods
for them to spread from. The Purple
Twayblade, Maple-leafed Goosefoot, and
other regionally rare species may be gone
for good.

These days Marty Jones manages
the DOC’s Urban Deer Project. It is his
job to field calls from suburban residents
who complain that deer are eating their
shrubs and flowers. He says the number of
complaints is on the rise, though he admits
that may be due to increased public aware-
ness of his position.

When Jones gets a complaint, he
gives landowners a number of options.

20

Fences are highly effective at keeping deer
out of a yard—if they’re eight feet high.
Burlap or plastic tubing around tender
plants can keep the deer away, though they
may rob a suburban yard of that woodsy
look. The chemical repellents you can
spray on shrubs to make them taste’ bad
work, sometimes—but when deer are
hungry, they'll eat just about anything.

It is on the larger properties
within Jones’s purview—such as the
Chicago Botanic Garden, or other lands
owned by county forest preserve
districts—that he may consider more
drastic measures. Every year Jones grants
some permits that allow landowners to
use “lethal removal” techniques on deer
herds. In the winter of 1990-91 four
land-owning agencies in Cook, Lake,
and DuPage counties received permits
allowing them to kill 114 deer. The
venison from those deer was delivered
to local charities.

Lethal removal is controversial.
In 1988 a local citizens’ group opposed to
a culling program at Ryerson Conservation
Area in southern Lake County raised
over $50,000 to help live-trap 21 deer and
transport them to Wildlife Prairie Park

outside Peoria. Forest preserve officials

maintained that was not enough and
persisted—in the face of demonstrations,
fierce verbal battles, and even death
threats—in killing 39 more. Every winter
since, the Ryerson herd has been kept at a
small size by wintertime shooting.

Public opposition has quieted,
partly because of a vegetation monitoring
program that measures in great detail the
effects of grazing on forest-floor plants.
“People who oppose lethal removal will
second-guess you on everything,” says
Marty Jones. “Before anyone contemplates
a deer-herd reduction, they need complete
documentation.”

Monitoring has shown that the
showy white-flowered trillium—a favorite
of deer and human visitors alike, and a
good indicator of the health of all the
ground flora—is coming back.

Public opposition may also have
faded because the alternatives to lethal
removal are not easy ones. Trapping and
relocating is time-consuming and expen-
sive, but it is impractical mainly because
it’s hard to find a place to take the deer.
“There are so many deer that there’s no
place to put them anymore,” says Charlie
Nixon. Some researchers are working on
birth-control vaccines for wild animals,
but it will be a few more years at least
before they are effective and convenient.

And opposition may also have
lessened precisely because the Ryerson
control program, and others, got so much
media coverage. The very heat of the
controversy surrounding deer numbers
may have burned a greater understanding
of ecology into the public psyche. It taught
the lesson that there is no living without
dying, and that we, too, are part of the
natural web all around us. @

Peter Friederici is a freelance writer

and editor in Chicago. He specializes in
natural history and conservation and
writes a quarterly report for the Roger
Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE RACCOONS COME TO TOWN

by Margot Jerrard

na night in late April when most
people are asleep in bed, a city
dweller is making her rounds.

A female raccoon—easily identified by her
thick, ringed tail and the black mask across
her face—is hunting for food. She moves
slowly, deliberately through an empty park
and crosses the street, her head low to the
ground, her sharp, pointed muzzle sniffing for
acorns. Like all raccoons, she has excellent
night vision and a keen sense of hearing.

Suddenly a dog starts to bark.

The fur on her shoulders
the raccoon lopes to safety, her re
higher than her front. She crav
sewer. Her teeth are bared, her ears flat as she
waits to see if the dog will come to attack.

“Life is hard for raccoons,” says
Biologist Charles Nixon, of the Illinois
Natural History Survey (INHS) in
Champaign. “They don’t get a chance to
make many mistakes.”

In a few minutes the dog stops
barking. The night is quiet again except
for the sound of a far-away car, and the
raccoon emerges and resumes her slow,
flat-footed walk, looking for food. She had
given birth to a litter of four small cubs
earlier that month, and she is hungry.

When she became pregnant in
February, the raccoon had searched for

The domestic TER can is an important element in the urban raccoon’ s life

holes in trees or in the ground and had
settled on a space in an empty garage attic.
After a gestation of 63 days the blind
babies were born. They had neither the
black face mask nor the black rings on their
tails, only barely visible dark pigment on
their skin, which was covered with fuzz.
Now that they are three weeks old, they are
beginning to open their eyes and grow fur.
Originally woodland animals
living near streams or rivers, raccoons have
now also moved into cities and towns.
There they make their dens and raise their

young in holes in trees, in piles of brush or

lumber or rubbish, squirrels’ nests, even
attics. While the people who built the
city sleep, raccoons, who are nocturnal
animals, are out hunting for food. The
raccoon population has exploded since
the 1940s, says INHS principal scientist,
emeritus, Dr. Glen Sanderson. They are
one of the most abundant fur-bearing
mammals on the continent and live tn all
48 contiguous states

In the 1930s swamps and bos
were drained, nut-t
down, and dens were destroy I

ber of raccoons declined

Raccoon painting courtesy of Beverley Sanderson, Champaign, Illinois

But in 1943, the raccoon popula-
tion began to grow. Scientists cannot
explain why. Sanderson, who has pub-
lished almost 100 papers and has been edi-

tor of the Journal of Wildlife Management,

estimates that there are 15 to 20 times
more raccoons now. They have increased
not only in Illinois but throughout North
America and have moved where they had
not been earlier—prairies, deserts, and salt
marshes. They live as far south as Panama
and now have moved so far north into
Canada that the native Indians, who are
encountering them for the first time, had
no word in their language for this bright-
eyed, ring-tailed creature. The first record-
ed sighting of a raccoon in the Canadian
province of Manitoba was in 1947.

Whatever the reason, raccoons
have come into cities.

Sanderson says the raccoon,
which belongs to the Procyonidae family
and is related to the kinkajous and coatis
of Central and South America, is the most
intelligent native wild animal. It is also
inquisitive.

With its sensitive five-toed paws,
a raccoon can reach through a one-inch
wire mesh, pick up a needle or a nail, and
then turn and feel the object repeatedly,
palpating it with its paws as if to ascertain
what it is. However, the one thing that
most people “know” about raccoons is
wrong, says Sanderson. They do not wash
their food in water, even though their

i)
i)

Latin name (Procyon lotor) means “the
washer.” Only captive raccoons submerge
their food in water, not wild raccoons, and
even many captives just pick up their food
from the feeding dish and place it directly
in their mouths. He speculates that some
captive raccoons may douse their food
because the palms of their paws become
more sensitive when wet.

fs

The raccoon is the most
intelligent native wild
animal in North America.

ie

Biologist Nixon says that, in the
wild, raccoons fish by getting into the
water where they move their front paws
constantly, delicately, under the water
until they catch something. While they are
fishing their heads are up, as if they are
looking at the stars or admiring the night
sky. Nixon thinks that a caged raccoon
may hold its food under water as a substi-
tute for normal behavior, a way of going
through the motions of catching it first.

Raccoons are also found in state
parks where they have learned to flip up
latches and open coolers. Nixon and
University of Illinois veterinarian Laura
Hungerford are analyzing how the foods in

state parks, the same foods city raccoons
eat, affect their health. They do not yet
know the reason, but park-dwelling rac-
coons’ teeth and gums are much worse
than those of wild raccoons.

Although they are classified as
carnivorous, raccoons eat almost anything,
including frogs, birds, small mammals,
insects, corn and other grains, fruits, and
most foods prepared for humans or domes-
tic animals. In summer a raccoon fills up
on beetles and grasshoppers, and all year
round it eats garbage and carrion. In the
midwest, corn is the food eaten most
frequently. As many householders have
learned, a raccoon can take the lid off a
garbage can with its handlike paws and tip
the can over.

But in this city tonight the forag-
ing raccoon digs up some acorns buried by
a squirrel last fall and a few earthworms.
Soon she returns to her den and settles
down to nurse her hungry babies who make
a quiet “churring” sound of contentment.

In Illinois most conceptions occur
in mid-February, and in April, litters of
small blind, nearly furless cubs are born.
The female raccoon rears only one litter a
year, and the young stay with the mother
through the summer, fall, and winter.

When the young are ten weeks
old, the mother takes them outside. She
climbs from the garage to a nearby tree and
goes head first down the trunk. The little
ones follow and begin to travel with her.
She still feeds them with her milk until
they are about 15 or 16 weeks old, but they
are beginning to eat other food. They
forage in gardens, backyards, and dumps.
She shows them where to find insects to
eat and wild grapes, persimmons and poke-
berries, as well as birds and birds’ eggs.

If they are near water, she will show them
how to catch nesting waterfowl. One night
she climbs a garbage can and, perched on
the rim, reaches in for corn cobs, which she
throws down to her cubs who wait below.

Raccoons do not hibernate,
although, Charles Nixon says, they behave

as if they will. In the fall they begin to eat
a great deal and gain an immense amount
of weight, most of it fat. When the weather
turns cold they hole up and stay without
eating for days at a time, losing as much as
25% of their weight. But they need water
and come out of the den to eat snow or
lick ice.

Raccoons are solitary animals, not
social, but, in extreme cold, male and
female raccoons of all ages pile into the
same den to keep warm. Nixon has found
as many as a dozen raccoons in a hollow
tree, and larger groups in barns. Unlike
some wild animals, the mature male
raccoon, although territorial, is not a threat
to the young ones.

On good days, when the winter
sun shines and warms the air, the usually
nocturnal raccoons emerge from their
dens, stretch out in the sunshine, and doze,
their long, coarse fur soaking up heat.
Nixon once came upon a raccoon sun-
bathing on top of an old squirrel’s nest.
When Nixon swung a grapevine attached
to the tree, the raccoon woke with a start,
jumped 30 feet down to the ground, and
disappeared into the woods.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

In February, the mating season,
the sexually active males hunt for receptive
females, marking trees with their scent. By
then the young are on their own and must
fend for themselves. Females do not go as
far to search for a home, but a young male
may travel as far as 30 or 40 miles before
he finds a place where he will not be
chased away by the male who dominates
that territory. The dominant male has a
range of several miles in which he has first
choice of food and females, and he does
not welcome adolescent males.

All young raccoons are vulnera-
ble. Hunters, trappers (in fall and winter
only), and cars cause the greatest number
of deaths, and small raccoons are in danger
from rural dogs as well as from great
horned owls who can swoop soundlessly
down and catch a plump youngster in their
talons.

The water-loving raccoons thrive
in bottomland forests, along streams, in
hardwood swamps and marshes and around
reservoirs. Now they are thriving in the
middle of cities. Where there is no river or
lake, raccoons find birdbaths, swimming
pools, and irrigation and drainage ditches.

A chain-link fence is no deterrent to the wily raccoon.

Scientists who study raccoons
agree that they are intelligent. Veterinarian
Laura Hungerford has observed a family of
raccoons who stayed hidden so well that
they were invisible until one of the people
who had given them food came along.
Then, recognizing the generous human, the
raccoons emerged from their dens to beg.

Sanderson estimates that the
average life span of a wild raccoon is
seven years, but some captives have lived
as long as 12 or 15. Although the average
weight is 12.3 pounds, he has found two
males weighing more than 25 pounds.

Raccoons in the north are heavier
and have longer, darker, and denser fur, as
well as shorter tails and smaller ears.
Sanderson says that raccoons seem able to
fight off many kinds of injuries. He has
seen a raccoon that lived with a piece of
wire embedded in its body.

Sanderson does not advise keep-
ing a raccoon as a pet. They can transmit
diseases to humans and to domestic pets,
and they are wild animals that can turn
vicious with no warning. (In most states,
including Illinois, it is illegal to keep a
wild-caught raccoon in captivity.)

Raccoons are clever creatures
and stories of their ingenuity abound.

An Illinois couple came downstairs one
morning to find their pet cat agitated and
acting as if he were starved. Noticing the
screen door was open, they decided to
keep watch. They found that each night a
raccoon walked up to the screen door,
worked the handle until the door opened,
came into the kitchen, and ate up the cat’s
food. Then the raccoon loped outside to
drink at their swimming pool before

continuing on its rounds. &

Margot Jerrard is an Urbana-based writer

who worked for twelve years as an editor

for the University of Illinois before leavir
last year to spend full time writing. He
garage was home to a mother ra n and
three cubs one recent spi

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Top Award Goes to Wildlife Scientist

“Dr. Sanderson has made
enormous contributions to the wildlife
profession and done a remarkable job
as Director of the Center for Wildlife
Ecology. He has been a top-notch
administrator as well as a colleague,
role-model, and friend to his staff. He is
never too busy to help but takes little
credit. He is the ‘silent soldier’ behind
the accomplishments of the Survey
wildlife programs.”

Stephen P. Havera, Director,

Forbes Biological Station
Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)

r. Sanderson received the Aldo

Leopold Award for distinguished

service to wildlife conservation
at the 57th North American Wildlife and
Natural Resources Conference, April 1,
1992. The Aldo Leopold Award is the
highest honor bestowed by The Wildlife
Society and the ultimate recognition of a
wildlife professional.

Dr. Sanderson’s award places the
Survey in the unique position of being the
only institution that has had more than one
Aldo Leopold Award winner. Waterfowl
biologist Frank Bellrose received the
award in 1985 (See “Dean of the Ducks,”
The Nature of Illinois, Fall 1991). Tom
Scott, head of the Survey’s wildlife
research section until 1963, won the
award in 1982.

Dr. Sanderson, probably the
world’s leading authority on the biology
and ecology of the raccoon, is also a
highly respected waterfowl biologist
and was a leader in efforts to preserve
remnant flocks of critically endangered
native [Illinois prairie chickens. He has
published extensively, been a prodigious
editor, and been active in professional
activities at local, state, national, and
international levels.

Award Winner Glen C. Sanderson

Speaking of Raccoons

Although officially retired, Sanderson
still maintains an office at the INHS and
coutinues to work with and inspire his
colleagues. He plans to pursue his career-
long interest in raccoons and says:

“We do not know what factors are
responsible for the decline of the raccoon
in the early 1940s, or for its subsequent
dramatic turnaround. Conventional
wisdom says that cutting den and mast
(food source) bearing trees, increased
human populations, and over-harvest by
hunters and trappers were responsible,
but these explanations fall short when you
realize that today we have fewer trees,
urbanization is more widespread, and
hunters and trappers take many more
raccoons now than they did 60 years ago.”

“In 1947, after I returned from
World War II, I started research on the
raccoon for my Master’s degree at the
University of Missouri. Raccoon numbers
had already shown dramatic increases
starting with the 1943 breeding season.

I believed numbers would increase for a
few years, perhaps remain high for a few
years more, and then decline. Now, some
40 years later, I am still waiting for the

co SS ane

2
s+ > q

decline and trying to learn why the
increase occurred and why the numbers
remained high for so many years.”

“Now that I’m retired, I hope
to look at the data and get some insights
into why animal populations fluctuate.
Animals other than the raccoon—for
example, the coyote—have increased in
abundance and expanded their range
without any deliberate help from man.
The white-tailed deer population, on the
other hand, is the product of a too-success-
ful program of reintroduction.”

“Why do we study these
abundant animals? One reason is that they
are economically important to Illinois.
Raccoons are hunted for food and for their
pelts, and, in some states, they are hunted
by many more people than hunt quail or
waterfowl. And deer hunting is a multimil-
lion dollar business, not to mention the
pleasure we have viewing this graceful
animal in the wild.”

“But primarily, we study them
because it helps us understand the biology
of wild animals. All knowledge is useful.
You never know when you're going to use
something you've learned.” @

The Nature of Illinois Foundation

Printed on Simpson Evergreen
recycled paper with soy ink

69) [PRINTED WITH ae
SI lsovink), w

Board of Directors

Gaylord Donnelley

Chairman, Nature of Illinois

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Edmund B. Thornton
Vice-Chairman, Nature of Illinois
Ottawa Silica Company
Foundation, Ottawa

Bruce Callow

Treasurer, Nature of Illinois
The Northern Trust Company
Wheaton

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth and Wylie,
Bloomington

Janice D. Florin

Amoco Chemical Company,
Chicago

Kenneth W. Gorden

Kenway Farm, Inc., Blue Mound
Ralph D. Grotelueschen
Deere & Company, Moline
Walter E. Hanson

Hanson Engineers, Inc.,
Springfield

Timothy M. Lyons

Chicago Board of Trade,

Lake Forest

Douglas B. Mains, M.D.

The Conservation Foundation of
DuPage County, Wheaton
James D. Nowlan

Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois,
Springfield

George J. Oberlick

Turris Coal Company, Elkhart
Albert Pyott

Illinois Nature Conservancy,
Winnetka

William L. Rutherford
Forest Park Foundation, Peoria
Harvey Sheldon

McDernott, Will & Emery,
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company,
Chicago

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Roy L. Taylor, Ph.D.
Chicago Horticultural Society,
Glencoe

Donald A. Wallgren

Waste Management of North
America, Inc., Oak Brook
Charles W. Wells

Illinois Power Company, Decatur
Michael Witte

R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company,
Chicago

Staff

John D. Schmitt
Executive Director
Jean Gray
Associate Director

Barbara Hicks
Membership Secretary

Illinois Scientific Surveys

Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois Geological Survey
Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey
Mark E. Peden, Acting Chief
Illinois Water Survey

David Thomas, Director
Hazardous Waste Research and
Information Center

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Amoco Foundation; The Gaylord
Donnelley 1983 Gift Trust;
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Foundation.

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The Ackermann Family; Archer
Daniels Midland Company;
Commonwealth Edison; The
Nature Conservancy; Prince
Charitable Trusts-Frederick Henry
Prince Testamentary Trust; Waste
Management of North America,
Inc.

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Cache; Helene Curtis, Inc.; Deere
& Company; Deluxe Corporation
Foundation; R.R. Donnelley &
Sons Co.; Environmental

. Development Corporation; Globe

Foundation; Hyatt Regency

Chicago; Illinois Power Company;

Marine Bank of Springfield;

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Charitable Trust; Rand McNally &
Company; Sahara Coal Company;
J.R. Short Milling Company;
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Sponsor ($500 to $999)

Chicago Title & Trust; Consumers
Illinois Water Company; Elizabeth
Cheney Foundation; Draper &
Kramer Foundation; Farnsworth &
Wylie; Forest Fund; The Harris
Foundation; Illinois Bell; Illinois
Farm Bureau; Illinois Mine
Subsidence Insurance Fund;
Illinois Soybean Program
Operating Board; Lester B. Knight
& Associates; James McHugh
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Corporation; Shell Oil Company
Foundation; States Land
Improvement Corporation;
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Wings, Inc.

Patron ($250 to $499)

Andrews Environmental
Engineering, Inc.; Baxter &
Woodman, Inc.; Carlson
Environmental Inc.; Cellular One
of LaSalle; David E. Connor &
Associates; Dell Engineering Inc.;
James & Nina Donnelley
Foundation; Downen Enterprises;
GE Plastics; Robert Hamilton
Consulting Engineers; Hanson
Engineers, Inc.; Harza Engineering
Company; Henry, Meisenheimer
& Gende, Inc.; Hey & Associates,
Inc.; Claude Hurley Company;
Illinois Coal Association; Johnson-
Downs Construction Company;
Ezra Levin Foundation; Lincoln
Capitol Management Company;
Monterey Coal Company; Pratt
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Coal Company; Winnebago
Reclamation Service, Inc.
Institutions

The Chicago Academy of
Sciences; Chicago Public Library
Foundation; Friends of Midlothian
Library; McHenry County

Conservation District; National
Park Service; Illinois Department
of Commerce & Community
Affairs; Illinois Department of
Conservation; Illinois Department
of Energy & Natural Resources;
Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency; Secretary of State,
George Ryan; Vermillions County
Conservation District.

Individual Supporters*
Gerald W. Adelmann; Howard J.
Adelmann; James R. Anderson;
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Donnelley; Laura Donnelley;
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Thomas E. Donnelley II; Clayton
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J. Trees; Fred L. Turner; Donald
A. Wallgren; Mr. & Mrs.
Morrison Waud; Mrs. Leo
Whalen; Paula Wolff & Wayne
Whalen; Henry P. Wheeler.

*Contributions of $200 or more

ILLINOIS

BUREA -y ' 6/9

al tat Me,
Chicagos IL 606t 4":

4
+
a

Fall 1992 — Illinois Underground

From the Foundation

Having studied geology in college and having spent the greater
part of my life in the mining industry, I take great pleasure in
welcoming you to this issue of The Nature of Illinois.

The study of geology has always fascinated me—first,
because it helps me imagine the Illinois that existed eons before
man first set foot upon the earth, and next, because it explains
the world in which we live today. Fascinating to me, too, is the
unfolding of knowledge about the wealth of mineral resources
that helped build our cities and roads, and the plentiful water
resources, coal, and oil that fuel our economy.

The articles in this issue uncover such topics as the
history of oil exploration in Illinois; the drama of cliffs in
limestone and sandstone that guard our major river systems;
the fertile soils that overlay our flat plains and rolling hills; and
the plain-looking geodes that conceal sparkling, multi-colored
interiors.

It is the aim of this publication to relate something
important, interesting, and perhaps even surprising about your
home state, and also to let you in on some good news about
Illinois. In this issue, we cover educational projects that prepare
our youth for the future, and conservation efforts that are
succeeding in bringing the majestic symbol of our nation back to
Illinois’ river shores. But it is our special intent to keep you
informed about the work and research activities of the Illinois
Scientific Surveys (Natural History, Water, Geological) and the
Hazardous Waste Research & Information Center (HWRIC).
Their work is vital to our health, our environment, and our
economy, and their public service programs benefit us all.

We thank you for your readership and hope you will
help support our efforts and the efforts of the Surveys and
HWRIC by becoming a member of The Foundation if you have
not already done so—or by renewing your membership if it
has expired.

Cordially,

oe hell fo

Edmund B. Thornton
President, Board of Directors

THE NATURE OF

ILLINOIS

The Nature of Illinois is published by The Nature of Illinois
Foundation in support of the Illinois Scientific Surveys (Natural
History, Water, and Geological) and the Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center. These four agencies span the state’s
natural resources and have a 150-year history of data collection,
research, and service. Their activities encompass hundreds of vital
research projects; educational outreach; and technical assistance

to private citizens, government, business, and industry.

Table of Contents

Crude Quest: The Search for Oil in the Illinois Basin 1
Booms have come and gone since oil was discovered in

Illinois in 1853. The Geological Survey and independent oil
producers say it’s not over yet.

Illinois Bald Eagles 6
Thousands of enthusiasts celebrate the return from near-
extinction of America’s majestic symbol during Bald Egle
Appreciation Days.

Surveying Illinois 9
Biorhythms, Currents, Geograms, Centering on Waste

Teaching the New 3-Rs 13
Illinois children are learning skills to take them into the
21st century.

River Researchers 15
A hands-on science project is a hands-down favorite

with high school students, teachers, and the Natural

History Survey.

Exploring the Landscape with a Master Storyteller 17
Pere Marquette State Park rests at the center of a cultural,
recreational, and geological treasure.

The Gems of Hancock County 22
Plain on the outside, fancy on the inside, geodes “grow”
ina garden in west-central Illinois.

About the Cover
Hancock County geodes. Photo by Joel Dexter

Volume VII, Number I :

Editorial Staff
Jean Gray Editor
Michael Jeffords Photographer

Design
Mobium Corporation, Chicago
Stay In Touch

Name and address changes and membership information should be sent to
The Nature of Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle, Suite 1666, Chicago, IL 60604,
(312) 201-0650. Master Card and Visa accepted.

Copyright 1992 by The Nature of Illinois Foundation. All rights reserved

RUDE QUEST: THE SEARCH FOR O7F

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

veers veewNw™

OCT i 5 1992

IN THE ILLINOIS BASIN

he history of oil exploration in

Illinois is not unlike the great

whale hunts in the South Seas a
century and a half ago. Here in the prairie
state, independent oil producers—like
those seagoing adventurers who chased
the leviathan from New Bedford to New
Zealand, filling their cargo holds with
precious whale oil—roam the Illinois
Basin searching for oil, “harpooning” the
landscape in hopes of raising a spout of
another sort: a gusher.

Crude oil is as whale oil was—a
finite resource. In the first decade of this
century, the United States was the leading
oil-producer in the world and Illinois
ranked third in the nation for petroleum
production. Today, however, the U.S. pro-
duces 20% of the world’s oil, and Illinois
is 15th among the oil-producing states.

What happened?
The hundred-year history of petroleum
production in Illinois has been dramatic.
Booms have come and gone, and fortunes
have been won and lost. But over most of
the last three decades, oil production in the
state has steadily declined. The major oil
companies have pulled up stakes from the
drilled-out Illinois oil fields, moving their
derricks to richer, more profitable oil beds
in Siberia, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Not everyone has given up on the
Illinois Basin, however. Tenacious inde-
pendent oil producers have inherited the
oil fields. Together with geologists from
the Illinois State Geological Survey
(ISGS), they are working to find new and
undeveloped deposits in the state. And
Survey geologists are today exploring
technologies that will revolutionize the

future of oil recovery throughout the basin.

by William Furry

A flare caused by burning off excess gas in a Salem oil field

Thar she blows!
In 1880 oil was accidentally discovered

in Litchfield, after drillers sunk a 150-foot
bore rod into the floor of a 500-foot coal
shaft. According to eyewitness accounts,
oil rose and covered the floor of the mine
“to the astonishment of all.” For several
years, crude petroleum was skimmed off
the top of the oil pool and sold locally as a
natural lubricant. Within a decade, a pai
of entrepreneurs from Buffalo, New
York—the Van Veck brothers

upon Montgomery County, sank several

descended

oil wells, and set up the first petroleum
production company in the state. The Van

Veck brothers sold their crude oil for

twelve-and-a-half cents a gallon, about
five dollars a barrel

A few years later in Clark County,
oil was found in sufficient quantily to
warrant renaming a settlement “Oilfield
But drilling technology was very primitive
in the early days of oil exploration
Although several holes were sunk, we

cores were not lined

and the i1ts
prone to flooding

The co I pl
petroleum produc \

become }

“The average person has but little knowl-
edge of the many uses to which crude
petroleum is put or the variety of products
made from it in the great refineries. The
most important and best known of these
products is, of course, the illuminating oil
known as kerosene, or ‘coal oil’. This oil
has become one of the greatest adjuncts of
modern civilization; in fact, such a necessi-
ty to daily life that millions of inhabitants
of this and other lands would find it diffi-
cult to do without.” By the turn of the cen-
tury, coal oil had replaced whale oil in the
lamps illuminating the world.

There have been three distinct oil
booms in Illinois. The first took place in
the shallow oil fields of southeastern
Illinois along the LaSalle anticline between
1905 and 1910. There in the Casey oil
pool, petroleum production rose to 34 mil-
lion barrels in 1908, and Illinois rose to a
ranking of third in the nation among the
oil-producing states. The industry grew so
rapidly in Illinois and regulation was so
lax, the ISGS issued a warning to investors
in the Illinois oil fields to be wary of fake
oil companies. “The highway robber who
takes the money of his victim at the point
of a gun,” the Survey wrote, “is an honest
man in comparison with some of these
barefaced scoundrels who fleece victims of
high and low degree with the glittering
advertising sheets and stock certificates of
their mushroom oil companies.”

Oil production began to taper off
after 1910, however, and Illinois fell to
14th among oil producers in the nation. In
1936 fewer than five million barrels of oil
(42 gallons to a barrel) were pumped from
the southeastern Ilinois oil fields.

In 1937 the state’s second boom
began when oil was discovered in deeper
regions of the Illinois Basin in Centralia,
Clay City, and Louden. Discovery of oil in
Salem in 1938 helped propel Illinois out of
the petroleum cellar. In 1940 the state’s oil
production figures were a staggering
147,647,000 barrels—nearly five times the

production of any single year in the 1980s.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

In the post-war years production
in the deep basin pools began to decline.
By 1965 primary methods of oil produc-
tion in the state accounted for only 20 mil-
lion barrels annually.

Unlike the state’s first two
booms, the third significant oil-production
period was brought about solely through
advancement in technology. During the
1940s the state began experimenting with
secondary oil-recovery technology: water-
flooding. Primary oil-producing technolo-
gy—pumping—recovers only 10-30% of
the oil in the ground. Waterflooding, an
extraction method whereby water is
pumped into oil-bearing rocks, forces as
much as 50% of the remaining oil into
recovery wells, where it can then be
pumped by conventional means. By the
mid-1980s waterflooding accounted for
more than 40% of Illinois’ oil harvest.

Vanishing Elephants
Nearly everywhere you drive in the south-
ern half of the state, you see the pumps of

ISGS geologists Donald Oltz and Dennis
Haggerty check the porosity of a sandstone

outcrop in Southern Illinois in their search
for oil in the Illinois Basin.

crude oil wells. Like giant insects they
stand in the cornfields, valleys, and river-
bottoms of the Illinois Basin, wingless
mantids bobbing ceaselessly for food.

In the petroleum industry, Illinois
is known as a stripper basin; most oil wells
in the state strip fewer than ten barrels of
oil a day out of the ground. Although some
produce a great deal more, the typical
Illinois well averages only a couple of bar-
rels daily. While some ew drillings may
pump in excess of 500 barrels a day, pro-
duction tends to drop off sharply after the
first year or two. By comparison, oil pro-
duction in Illinois is a far cry from that of
Saudi Arabia, where a single well can pro-
duce tens of thousands of barrels each day.

In 1990 there were 1,850 oil com-
panies doing business in Illinois. Although
most oil producers in the state maintain
fewer than five wells, 70% of the state’s
56,000 wells are owned by large, indepen-
dent or major oil companies. But according
to a recent study published by the Illinois
Department of Mines and Minerals, a regu-
latory agency for the state, *|T]he most sig-
nificant trend to develop in the state’s oil
fields is the increase in the transfer of own-
ership of wells.” More than 8,900 of the
state’s 42,000* oil production wells
changed hands in 1990, the study reported,
adding this postscript: “Especially notewor-
thy...was the transfer of large oil properties,
previously operated by major oil compa-
nies, to independent oil operators.”

In the last 20 years, several of the
larger oil companies operating in the
state— Exxon and Texaco in particular—
have packed their derricks, sold their
leases, and said farewell to the Illinois
Basin. Newer, more lucrative oil fields in
Siberia and off the coasts of China,

*Refers to the number of wells actually in production.

Opposite: Roughnecks, so-called because of
the rigorous demands of their job, add a section
of pipe to sink the drill deeper into the earth.
Roughnecks work 12-hour shifts around the
clock until their job is done. Then they move on.

Indonesia, Thailand, and Australia, have
lured them away from domestic oil reser-
voirs, where, in the parlance of the
petroleum industry, “the elephants” have
all been hunted down. The industry giants,
never known to be the biggest risk takers,
drill one or two wells in the whole state
and, if they don’t find oil, they move on.

Not everyone, however, including
the U.S. Department of Energy, the ISGS,
and most of the independent oil producers,
believes all the elephants have been
tracked down in Illinois.

The Department of Energy esti-
mates there are 1.5 billion barrels of oil in
Illinois reserves recoverable through con-
ventional oil technology (waterflooding),
and another 4.5 billion barrels in the
ground that could be recovered using more
sophisticated technology.

“There are six billion barrels of
oil in known Illinois fields. But how do
you get at it, how do you find it, and how
do you extract it?” Dr. Donald Oltz, head
of the Survey's Oil and Gas Section, asked
geologists at a seminar in New Harmony,

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Indiana, last May. The answer, Oltz said,
“is dependent upon our understanding

of reservoir architecture.” Using a series
of computer-generated slides, Oltz and his
colleague, Stephen Whitaker, explained
how the Survey is mapping the Illinois
Basin, using core samples and well logs to
discern subterranean topography, identify
untapped oil reservoirs, and find new ways
to recover existing oil deposits.

The oil industry in Illinois is
dependent upon technology, Oltz said, and
the ISGS can be of enormous help to inde-
pendent operators in identifying and test-
ing new applications, and in developing
new technologies specifically for Illinois
oil producers.

Some of that new technology is
in the hands of Survey geologists today.
Working at Silicon Graphics computer
workstations in the ISGS lab, geologists
are now able to manipulate data on the
lithology and porosity of rock strata in the
basin, and, by using a three-dimensional
grid, identify potential oil reservoirs.
Another new apparatus that will make a

ik

— VE SEER

difference in oil recovery in the basin is the
PVT (pressure, volume, temperature).
Under laboratory conditions, the PVT
duplicates the pressurized conditions inside
an oil reservoir. According to a recent
Survey bulletin, “When oil is brought to
the surface, a change of pressure, volume,
and temperature causes some oil loss in the
form of gas. The ISGS can help oil produc-
ers calculate this loss with PVT equipment,
which measures the decrease in the volume
of oil as it comes to the surface and the
amount of gas released to the surface.”

Talking to his audience at New
Harmony, Oltz said the key to making oil
recovery efforts in Illinois pay off is two-
fold: “First we must understand the internal
architecture of the Illinois reservoirs, and
then we must develop an effective program
to manage them.” After the studies are
completed, the technology must be trans-
fered to the oil producers.

Although the economics of oil
recovery in the state haven't been encour-
aging, oil producers still have an insatiable
hunger for knowledge about the basin. Last

Lightning over the Mattoon oil fields. One of Illinois’ older oil fields, Mattoon was among the leaders in oil production during World War II

November when the Survey conducted the
first of its technology-transfer sessions,
more than 150 southern Illinois indepen-
dents came to Mount Vernon to find out
what the ISGS could tell them about their
oil fields. Chief among their concerns
were the immediate results of a two-year
Survey field study in the basin, an inten-
sive research effort funded by the U.S.
Department of Energy and the state of
Illinois. The study enabled the Survey to
stratigraphically map 15 distinct Illinois
oil fields, amassing an enormous amount
of data on the oil-bearing strata in the
Cypress and Aux Vases formations.

But expensive studies and high-
tech oil recovery schemes make many
independents skittish, and convincing
them to change the way they think about
oil production in the Illinois Basin won't
be easy. As more than one observer in the
industry has noted, “They aren’t called
independents for nothing.”

Future Soundings

On Whitaker's office wall in the Oil
and Gas Section of the Illinois State
Geological Survey, the following words
are posted: “We're not running out of
oil—we’re running out of ideas.”
Fortunately for the state’s oil industry,
Whitaker is full of ideas on where and
how to look for petroleum in the state.

One thing is certain, Whitaker
told fellow scientists at the petroleum sem-
inar in New Harmony last May, no matter
what happens in the Illinois oil fields, the
demand for cheap, environmentally safe
fuel is unlikely to diminish over the next
50 years. “There’s going to be a big
demand for oil,” Whitaker said, “and it’s
going to come most economically from
domestic sources.”

Oil reserves in Illinois and the
nation are dwindling, however. While the
United States has more oil wells in pro-
duction than any other nation, these wells
produce the least petroleum, a scenario
that Whitaker said helped chase the major

A towering drill rig holds the enormous drill

shaft in a vertical position so it can penetrate
deep into the earth.

oil companies out of the Illinois Basin.
They needn’t have fled. According to
Whitaker, they needed to dig a little deeper.

“There's still a lot of good oil-pro-
ducing potential in the Illinois Basin, and
it is up to us to take advantage of it,”
Whitaker said, sounding a bit more upbeat.
“But,” he quickly qualified, “we can’t keep
looking in mature areas using old technolo-
gies, old ideas. All the easy oil has been
found.”

One key to solving the oil puzzle
in Illinois is new technology. The other is
new thinking. Typically, when seeking out
new drill sites, oil producers have looked
for certain landmarks in the subsurface
topography, usually anticlines, the domed
structures called “hickeys” in the field. But
the days of finding a hickey and drilling it
are pretty much gone, Whitaker says.
“Petroleum geologists should be looking at
older strata, studying the basin stratigraphy
to determine where to look for isolated
pools of oil. “A paleovalley network
stretches across the entire basin.” Whitaker
says. “There’s no reason that isolated sand-
stone reservoirs couldn’t exist somewhere
in these valleys. They do not need to be on
structural highs.”

Oil producers need to be encour-
aged to drill deeper into the basin. Whitaker

says, “The deepest production well in the

state is about 5,200 feet. That's incredibly
shallow. In most places people are drilling
to depths of 19,000 and 20,000 feet. If
there are to be any dinosaurs or elephants
found in Illinois, that’s where they're
going to have to be.”

Most of the oil production in
Illinois has been pumped from the
Pennsylvanian and Mississippian strata,
primarily limestone and sandstone beds
above a depth of about 3,000 feet. No
deposits have been discovered below the
Trenton-Ordovician strata, leading some to
believe there is little oil to be found below
5,000.* In the mid-sixties, Texaco sank
two exploratory wells in the Illinois Basin
to depths of 13,000, but in neither case
was oil found below 4,000 feet.

But that shouldn't be discourag-
ing, says Whitaker, a man who sees the
basin as two-thirds full when others see it
as two-thirds empty. “We need to find
ways to encourage more drilling to these
deeper horizons. The deepest well in the
state is only 15,000 feet, and that leaves
8,000 feet of rock we’ve never seen with a
drill bit.”

Whitaker’s optimism perpetuates
a long-standing tradition at the Survey. In
1906, one of his Survey predecessors put it
this way: “It is not safe for anyone to say
with emphasis that neither gas nor oil will
be found in any locality simply because a
few shallow bores have proven barren. In
Illinois, where oil and gas occur in isolated
pools and in several different rock forma-
tions, no man can say with certainty what
the drill will reveal.” =

New evidence may suggest otherwise. The ISGS
recently analyzed oil samples recovered in the

drilling of a 7,900-foot well. See The Nature of

Illinois, Spring/Summer 1992, p

wirip

William Furry is a regular ce
The Nature of Illinois an
editor of The Illinois Tir

Photos by Joel Dex

n the winter when the northern waters

freeze over and the Mississippi seems

the only moving thing in a colorless
landscape of ice and snow and frozen mud,
the eagles come south to fish in the glissad-
ing river and roost in the big cottonwoods
that line the shore. From a mile away you
can see their white heads and tails gleam-
ing in the sun—a flawless white that some
settlers called “balde,” several centuries
ago, all the brighter for its juxtaposition
with the somber, dark brown body feathers.

“| Want to See Eagles”

And this is exactly what has brought a
crowd of people outside on this sunny,
mild February weekend. There’s an eagle
perched upstream in a tree on Credit Island,
just below the last buildings of the Quad
Cities. There’s another one to the south
where the Rock River flows into the
Mississippi. Here on the concrete boat
landing at Sunset Park, there are about 15
humans for every eagle.

They stare through spotting
scopes and binoculars. Adults point the
eagles out to children. They take pictures in
which the eagles will be visible only as tiny
specks. Some have driven for hours to get
here. Some are residents of the Quad Cities
who have just never paid much attention to
the eagles before. Some watch the nearby
mallards squabbling for bread crumbs. And
some don’t.

6

Adult bald eagle in flight (Photo © by Richard Day)

“T pointed out the ducks to one
woman,” says Laura Jackson, one of the
interpreters for the Quad City event, “and
she said, ‘I didn’t drive all this way to see
ducks. I want to see eagles!’”

The big birds are the big draw
during the seventh annual Bald Eagle
Appreciation Days here in Rock Island,
and Jackson has a constant stream of visi-
tors to talk to. All day long she will be
describing scenes like this: “In your
mind’s eye, you expect to see them come
up with trout-size fish. So you watch them
with their talons in the water, but instead
of coming out with a big fish, they catch
these little gizzard shad, and they just flip
their talons toward their beaks and eat
them on the wing.”

The bald eagle exists
not alone, but rather as
the keystone of an entire

ecosystem.

ele

e

With a wingspan of up to seven
feet, bald eagles are hard to miss. Hundreds
of them winter along the big river every

year between Minneapolis and St. Louis.

Their abundance is overlooked by most
Illinoisans, but it is one of the great
success stories of the modern conservation
movement, since eagles were in danger of
being wiped out in the lower 48 states only
a few decades ago.

To ornithologists, the bald eagle
is Haliaeetus leucocephalus, or “white-
headed sea eagle,” but the hallmark white
plumage on head and tail is acquired only
after four to five years in dark brown juve-
nile plumage. To Americans, the eagle is
the national emblem, the symbol of all that
is proud and free. (Ben Franklin pointed
out—in lobbying to make the wild turkey
the nation’s symbol—that the bald eagle
often earns its food by robbing other birds
or eating carrion, and he speculated on
what such a symbol might say about the
national character. We have, for the most
part, wisely given up moralizing about the
habits of wild animals.)

The eagles that winter along the
Mississippi, nest along lakes and rivers
from Wisconsin to Ontario and Minnesota.
They migrate south to find open water and
abundant fish. This past winter, there were
close to two thousand eagles on the Illinois
and Mississippi rivers between the
Wisconsin line and southern Illinois, along
with a few more on lakes and reseryvoirs—
the greatest concentration in the continen-
tal United States.

Bald eagles benefitted when the
Army Corps of Engineers corralled the
Mississippi with a series of dams early in
this century, since the water immediately
downstream of the dams is turbulent
enough to remain open in even the coldest
winter. The churning stuns small fish,
which rise to the surface to be picked up
by low-flying eagles.

Some eagles fish directly from
the ice shelves that extend over the
water—and though some, like Franklin,
might think this is a sign of laziness, it is
really an indication that the eagles are ona
tight energy budget. They need all the
calories they can get in order to stay warm
through the freezing nights. Hence they are
highly susceptible to human disturbance.
Eagles do not like humans nearby, and if
they are bothered too much during cold
weather, they will not survive. They like to
roost in big old trees, and need large tracts
of riverside forest in which to find shelter
both from people and from cold winds.

Learning About the Big Birds
Educating the public about eagles has
become a growth industry along the
Mississippi. For the last seven years, the
Army Corps of Engineers, Illinois
Department of Conservation, and lowa
Department of Natural Resources have

Immature bald eagle (Photo © by Richard Day)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

sponsored Bald Eagle Appreciation Days
festivals in the Quad Cities and several
other locations.

The Quad Cities event took place
on the weekend of February | and 2 this
year in Rock Island. More than 12,000 vis-
itors came to see the indoor environmental
fair and wildlife art show that comple-
mented the real-life views at the riverside
viewing sites.

The activities were varied. There
was a very popular slide show and lecture
featuring live eagles and a peregrine fal-
con. The Army Corps of Engineers was
there, passing out free copies of “Our
National Bird: The American Eagle
Coloring and Fun Book.” The Modern
Woodmen of America painted eagle heads
and Mutant Ninja Turtles on children’s
faces. The Iowa-Illinois Gas and Electric
Company showed off a natural-gas-pow-
ered service truck. The Illinois Department
of Conservation (DOC) promoted its
Natural Heritage Program, which protects
unspoiled areas. Message: The bald eagle
exists not alone, but rather as the keystone
of an entire ecosystem.

“The bald eagle is one of the
most majestic, and one of the largest, of
Illinois’ threatened and endangered bird
species,” says Patti Malmborg, an Illinois
Natural History Survey (INHS) ornitholo-
gist who has done fieldwork on eagles.
“Because the bald eagle is the national
symbol, it effectively dramatizes a success
story where man has intervened to save a
species from the brink of extinction.”

Bald Eagle Appreciation Days
like the Illinois and lowa nongame
wildlife programs promoted here—is dedi
cated to the proposition that even an ani
mal for which humans can find no practi
cal economic use is worth protecting.
(Ironically, interest in eagles is great
enough that the birds have become part
of the Quad Cities’ economy. Mark
Beorkrem, executive director of the Quad
Cities Conservation Alliance, which oper

ates the convention hall where the expo

Adult bald eagle (Photo by Karl Emendorfer)

took place, estimates that more than 20%
of expo visitors are from out-of-town,
bringing their tourist dollars to local
motels, restaurants, and stores. The money
raised at the expo itself was donated to the
reintroduction of endangered peregrine

falcons in the Quad Cities this year.)

Protecting our National Symbol

Bald eagles would not be seen in Rock
Island were it not for the efforts of conser
vationists. Until the 1940s, the greatest
threats to the big predators came from
habitat destruction—the big waterside trees
that eagles like to roost and nest in, for
example, were coveted by lumber compa
nies in many areas—and from shooting
A 1940 federal law,

harm the national symbol, was require

making ita cr

before widespread shooting py
Other, mor

lowed, as documented by IN

count Wildlif bic

Fishing on the Mississippi (Photo by Karl Emendorfer)

Mississippi rivers since the late 1940s.
In 1957 he began counting eagles.

Bellrose’s work, along with the
annual counts conducted by amateur birder
Elton Fawks of East Moline, revealed
low percentages of immature birds.

That was alarming, because it seemed to
indicate that the eagles were having
trouble reproducing.

Researchers eventually figured
out that bald eagles, as well as several
other raptor species, were receiving large
doses of the insecticide DDT. The chemi-
cal was sprayed on fields, and when it ran
off, it ended up in the bodies of fish eaten
by birds of prey. The chemical thinned
the eggshells, causing them to break
before the young could successfully hatch.
The population database established by
INHS and Fawks helped lead to the
nationwide ban on DDT in 1972. (The
pesticide is still made in the U.S. for sale
in other countries. )

But Bellrose found that DDT
wasnt the only threat. In the 1950s he
conducted a comprehensive study showing
the devastating effects of lead poisoning
on waterfowl. Millions of ducks and geese
died every year after they were wounded,
but not killed outright, with lead shotgun
pellets, or after they ingested spent pellets
while feeding. Eagles that ate the water-
fowl died, too.

Bellrose’s work led to a long and
tortuous national campaign against the use
of lead shot; the 1991-92 hunting season
was the first in which lead shot was

banned nationwide in waterfowl hunting
areas—which shows how long it can take
for compelling scientific research to yield
practical results.

The recovery of the bald eagle
from poisoning can be traced in INHS
statistics, which have shown a steady rise
in the number of eagles wintering in
Illinois. A comfortable 30% or so are
immatures, indicating successful breeding.

Best of all, eagles are nesting in
Illinois again. “We think there are 11 nests
being used by breeding birds this year,”
says Sue Lauzon, executive director of the
Illinois Endangered Species Protection
Board—up from none in the 1960s and
1970s. “It’s going up steadily. It seems that
every year we learn of a new nest.”

The bans on chemical threats,
along with public education and habitat
protection, may result in the eagle's down-
listing from federally “endangered” to
“threatened” in a few years. In Illinois, the
DOC and private groups such as The
Nature Conservancy have bought and pro-
tected a number of favored winter daytime
and nighttime roosting areas, notably near
the Quad Cities and Keokuk, Iowa, where
the greatest concentrations of wintering
eagles are found. INHS has also worked
on a mitigation project to replace a bald
eagle daytime roost that was destroyed by
highway construction. Malmborg says
eagles can be observed roosting from
October through March on modified tele-
phone poles that the Departments of
Transportation and Conservation installed

near a Mississippi River bridge between
Keokuk and Hamilton, Illinois.

One of the most important roosts
is just upstream from the Quad Cities and
south of Lock and Dam 14. The Elton E.
Fawks Bald Eagle Refuge was dedicated as
an Illinois Nature Preserve in 1989; its 173
acres of forested ravines shelter up to 120
eagles on some winter nights.

In the late afternoon, after spend-
ing the day at the expo, I went for a walk
in the blufftop park next to the refuge.
Sunshine slanted through the leafless oaks.
Chickadees buzzed and I heard the distine-
tive loud churring of red-bellied woodpeck-
ers. I crunched through dry leaves until I
stood looking east over a steep ravine. And
there, to my left, I saw a large bird perched
high in an oak. It was an adult eagle, less
than a hundred yards away.

One of the prime eagle facts
taught at the environmental fair was: Stay
away! Eagles do not like human company.
I had blundered closer than I should have.

The eagle stayed put. So did I. But
I could not resist the temptation to see it in
greater detail. I lifted my binoculars, and
just as I brought the lenses up, the eagle
flew. It took off and headed south past me
into the ravine. It looked oddly symmetri-
cal, with dark body and wings, white head
and tail, bright yellow bill and legs. It
flapped past on huge wings, not gliding at
all, but unhurried, “gazing, calm and slow,”
as the pioneer ornithologist Alexander
Wilson had described the flight of eagles.
And when it was out of sight, the woods
seemed quiet but also full of hidden life. m

For information on dates for Bald Eagle
Appreciation Days in 1993, call the
Department of Conservation’ s Division of
Natural Heritage at (217) 785-8774

Peter Friederici watches for eagles from
his home near Chicago, where he works as
a freelance writer and editor specializing
in natural history and conservation.

BIORHYTHMS

Gypsy moth

Legacy of a Pest

This popular middle school
science guide—with the
formidable title Legacy of a
Pest: A Science, Technology,
and Society Curriculum Guide
for Understanding and Dealing
with Biological Problems—
explores a biological problem
and its impact on society and
the environment. Legacy intro-
duces the fascinating world of
entomology, demonstrates why
and how one insect, the gypsy
moth, can have a profound
effect on the urban and natural
forest environment, and
suggests how the effects of the
gypsy moth can be minimized
through sound management
practices. The principles of

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)

A SURVEY OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

thoughtful decision-making
stressed are applicable to a
wide range of environmental,
economic, and social problems.
The curriculum guide
includes more than 50
activities suitable for nature
centers, park districts, and
other settings that offer formal
and informal environmental
and science education. The
guide and a poster of the life
cycle of the gypsy moth
are $5.00. Teacher workshops
on these and other materials
may be scheduled by calling
Dr. Michael R. Jeffords at
(217) 333-5986. Materials are
provided free of charge to
workshop participants.

Revamped Survey Reports
This long-time publication of
the INHS comes out six times
a year. It has doubled in size
and, in addition to summaries
of Survey research, includes
two new features: “Species
Spotlight,” highlights of

a particularly interesting or
important Illinois organism,
and “The Naturalist’s
Apprentice,” classroom activi-
ties concerning the biological
resources of Illinois for middle
school science teachers.

Posters—wWith a Difference
¢A 17" x 22" Biodiversity
poster illustrating more than 60
plants and animals native to
Illinois is available for 15 cents;
classroom sets of 30 (with an
identification key) are $3.50.

¢ A new 22" x 24" poster,
Illinois’ Living Alphabet,
depicts 26 organisms native to
Illinois, from the Alligator
snapping turtle to the Zebra
swallowtail. It is accompanied
by a teacher workbook with
descriptions of the organisms
pictured and suggestions for
related classroom activities.
Posters with a workbook are 50
cents; classroom sets of 30 with
one workbook are $10.00.

* A set of six black-and-white
11" x 17" posters include: Trees
of Illinois, Illinois Forests,

Making Tracks, Family Tree

of Insects, Illinois Wildflowers,
and //linois Fishes. Each set
comes with study questions
(and answers) designed to raise
student interest and lead toward
a better understanding of natural
processes. Individual sets are 25
cents; classroom sets of 30 are
$7.00.

All posters are suitable for
coloring and are appropriate

for elementary and junior

high science classes and such
other environment-oriented
groups as 4-H clubs, scouts,
and nature centers.

New Curriculum On the Way
Two new science curricula have been developed, Biodiversity
in Illinois: Activities for Young People, and Midwestern
Wetlands. Biodiversity has an optional slide set of 40 images,
designed to be used as an introduction to the materials and as
part of several of the exercises. The wetlands materials
includes a large coloring poster depicting a typical wetland
habitat as well as a slide set. Note: To order any of the above
materials, write to: Distribution Center, Natural History
Survey, 607 East Peabody Drive,

Champaign, IL 61820

CURRENTS

Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS)

ISWS Project Benefits Fish and Landowners

Urban streams are among our
most neglected natural
resources, according to Water
Survey researcher Don
Roseboom. Mushrooming
housing sites, industrial devel-
opment, and parking lots leave
increasingly less surface to
absorb floodwaters, threatening
basements, foundations, and
parks. Some communities have
constructed concrete stream
channels to move floodwater
faster downstream, but this
solution is not only unsightly
and expensive, it can cause
streambank erosion.

A Water Survey pilot pro-
ject funded by the Illinois
Department of Conservation
uses stream bioengineering to
reverse streambank erosion

and loss of habitat. Completed
in 1991, the project used
“Junkers” (bank cover con-
structed from oak planks) and
the planting of native vegeta-
tion at and beyond the stream
banks. The results were the
doubling of sport fish numbers
along a 300-foot stretch of
Franklin Creek near Dixon, the
stabilization of streambanks,
and the control of erosion over
a longer stretch of the creek.
Stream bioengineering has
been expanded to two urban
stream renovation projects in
the city parks of Waukegan and
in Glen Ellyn in DuPage
County. In Glen Ellyn, lunkers
made from recycled plastic

Lunkers act as
bank cover for
gamefish while
stabilizing the
eroding bank.

Groundwater Levels Up in Cook County

Groundwater levels have risen
phenomenally in portions of
Cook and Lake Counties that
have abandoned pumping and
switched to Lake Michigan for
their water supplies. Since the
last mass measurements were
taken in 1985, groundwater lev-
els have recovered an average
of 73.3 feet (12.2 feet per year).
Current measurements
were taken between October
1991 and March 1992. Survey

10

staff measured water levels in
558 municipal and industrial
supply wells in northeastern
Illinois.

Despite these encouraging
findings, there is still need for
concern about groundwater lev-
els, according to project coordi-
nator Adrian Visocky. “In 1860,
when groundwater pumping
first began in the area, the water
level was above ground level.
Now it’s 200 feet below sea

Before the installation of lunkers and the planting of native vegetation,
streambanks in Powell Park were severely eroded. (ISWS photo)

planks provide below-water
habitat for fish while stabilizing
the underwater segment of
eroding banks. Where the
lunkers meet the stream bank,
18" lengths of willows were
planted. Larger rooted stocks of
red twig dogwood were planted
along the bank above the wil-
lows, and grasses were planted
between the dogwood and the
surrounding lawns.

In wooded areas, stream-
sides were cleared of undesir-
able exotic species which
crowded out many of the native
species. Since the invaders have
very shallow root systems, the
stream channel undercut the
non-native species, washing
them downstream where they
would cause stream blockage.

The DuPage lunker project
cost $130,000 and was funded
by the DuPage County

level in some areas. That’s a
drop of nearly 1,000 feet.”
Mass measurements began
in 1959 when it became evident
that the regional aquifer was
being overpumped. Water levels
were dropping as much as 10 to
15 feet per year in the major
pumping centers of Cook, Will,
and DuPage counties.
Groundwater is still being
overpumped in many areas that
have not yet switched to Lake

Department of Environmental
Concerns. Extension of a con-
crete channel through the one-
mile reach covered by the
project would have cost over
one million dollars. And while
concrete channels may divert
floodwaters from surrounding
lands and building foundations,
they do not enhance property
values nor do they provide
habitat for fish.

The project has been
extended to Powell and
Washington parks where the
city of Waukegan, the Illinois
EPA, and Region V of the
USEPA have funded a pollu-
tion prevention program to
reduce the flow of urban pollu-
tants into Lake Michigan, pro-
tect park lands from increased
channel erosion, and provide
habitat for gamefish in the
Waukegan River.

Michigan water, and levels
continue to drop. The most
serious declines are occurring
in Will County near Joliet,
where current average water
levels are 48.3 feet below 1985
levels, an average drop of 8.0
feet per year. Because the
resource continues to be over-
pumped, the Water Survey will
continue monitoring.

=a GGEOGRAMS

Great Guides for Geology Buffs
Illinois is one of the best
regions in the world for collect-
ing fossils of plants that flour-
ished more than 280 million
years ago. A valuable handbook
for learning more about these
fossils 4s the Guide to
Pennsylvanian Fossil Plants of
Illinois, by James R. Jennings,
75p., $2.75. This pocket-sized
field guide contains more than
100 illustrated specimens of
what the amateur will discover
in the field and lists 50 places
where Pennsylvanian fossil
flora can be found. Also helpful
are the glossary and general
information on fossil collecting,
tools and equipment, and han-
dling and storing specimens.

Two other easy-to-follow
publications are the Guide for
Beginning Fossil Hunters,
and the Guide to Rocks and
Minerals of Illinois, $2.00
each. A good basic map of
Illinois is available for $3.00
from the ISGS. It is by H.B.
Willman et al, 1959, reprinted
1992; scale, 1:5000,000; overall
size: 40" x 56".

You may order publications
by mail from The Illinois State
Geological Survey, 615 East
Peabody Drive, Champaign, IL
61820 or phone (217) 333-
4747.

Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS)

Clean Energy from Coal a
Burning Issue at ISGS

Coal research programs are a
top priority at the Geological
Survey due, in part, to the 1990
Clean Air Act and acid-rain
reduction mandates that restrict
sulfur emissions. The threat of
unusable natural resources,
closed mines, and lost jobs—
coupled with the national goal
of decreasing dependency on
foreign energy sources— is
being met with a cluster of
ISGS programs that aim to
make economic sense out of the
50 billion tons of bituminous
high sulfur Illinois coal that has
great potential for development.

Through the Illinois Basin
Coal Sample Program, estab-
lished in 1983, the ISGS pro-
vides representative samples of
Illinois coals to scientists and
engineers worldwide in sizes
large enough to satisfy applied
research needs. This brings our
state the benefit of a wide range
of creative research on Illinois
coal and, because consistency
among coal samples provided
through this program is assured,
results can be compared with
confidence among laboratories
around the world.

A High Sulfur Area
(HSA) Hydrated Lime process
(patents pending) is an example
of strides being made in the
development of cost-effective
sorbents to clean up stack emis-
sions generated by the combus-
tion of high sulfur coals.
Second to none in nationwide
tests of dry scrubber systems,

HSA hydrated lime has
achieved superior results over
other hydrates tested (up to
90% removal of sulfur-dioxide
from stack gas).

Fine Coal Cleaning tech-
niques, developed by the ISGS,
provide improved methods for
cleaning and marketing coal
“fines” which are virtually
unusable because of their small
particle size. Techniques for
recovering fine coal—approxi-
mately 5% of the state’s annual
coal production—were tested
in the ISGS laboratories with
positive results and confirmed
in commercial tests with Kerr-
McGee Corporation and the
Deister Concentrator Company.
Success will not only decrease
the amount of waste coal which
is disposed of on the land, but
also extend coal resources and
improve the economics of coal
production.

The Illinois Department of
Energy and Natural Resources
and ISGS have been instrumen-
tal in initiating tests of
Gasification, a process which
uses the cleaned coal fines.
Gasification produces more
power with less waste and, as
an added benefit, the sulfur and
slag by-products can be mar-
keted commercially.

Another innovation,
Pelletization, improves the
marketability of cleaned fines
through particle enlargement.

Looking down into a column
floatation device

Two approaches have been
developed: one uses lime, both
as a binder and a sulfur
absorbent; the other uses waste
biological materials (municipal
waste or lignin from wood, corn,
or paper) as a binder and as a
renewable, low-sulfur addition
to the coal. This is a joint pro-
ject of the ISGS, the University
of Illinois Forestry Department,
the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, and the Tennessee
Valley Authority.

The ISGS is also examin-
ing: (1) the development of pre-
mium liquids from coal (which
has a potential to replace a por-
tion of imported petroleum
crude oil); (2) the development
of clean coal solids for use in
coal-fired Diesel engines and
gas turbines; and (3) the devel-
opment of carbon products that
will function as molecular
sieves and catalysts to purify the
air and water, aid in the decom-
position of toxic chemicals, and
produce new chemicals.

“These research and devel-
opment activities of the ISGS,”
emphasizes John Lytle, head of
the Minerals Engineering
Section of the ISGS, “continue
a long tradition of bringing
science and industry together
to create jobs in Hlinois.”

ISGS coal research programs
have been funded by the Illinois
Department of Energy and
Natural Resources through the
Illinois Coal Development
Board and the Center for
Research on Sulfur in Coal.

aba mex CENTERING ON WASTE
Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (HWRIC)

Helping Industry Go For the Green

Sound waste management is
more than a benefit to the envi-
ronment—it is cost-effective.

Pollution prevention is fast
becoming a number one priori-
ty of the USEPA and a way of
doing business for many for-
ward-looking companies. The
subject was explored at a work-
shop at the Chicagoland
Chamber of Commerce last
May, where three industry
spokespersons made strong
cases to local businesses for
“going green.”

This was an important
step, according to HWRIC
Director David Thomas, in pro-
moting pollution prevention to
Chicago area industries in
cooperation with the USEPA,
Illinois EPA, and Metropolitan
Water Reclamation District of
Greater Chicago. The purpose
of the gathering was to discuss
challenges, share success sto-
ries, and make the point that
sound waste management goes
beyond finding the shortest

route to a safe landfill. It was
also an opportunity to update
the status of government pollu-
tion prevention planning and
make companies more aware of
HWRIC’s services.

“Good experiences” were
presented by Mobil Oil, Abbott
Labs, and Caterpillar, Inc.
According to Pam Posster,
senior environmental engineer
at Mobil’s Joliet Refinery, her
company’s pollution program
began as a grass roots effort
that led to impressive reduc-
tions in both the quantity and
toxicity of waste in 1991.
“We’re recycling, reusing,
recovering—keeping waste out
of the landfills. We tackled the
easy-to-accomplish problems
first,” Posster says, “and now
we’re eyeing the more techni-
cally difficult ones.”

HWRIC’s Assistant
Director Gary Miller agreed
that some problems are so tech-
nically complex and the manu-
facturing process so fine-tuned

"It’s a good rule of
thumb that it’s 20 times
more efficient to prevent
waste than to dispose of
it afterward.” “Most
programs pay for them-
selves within a year and
sometimes there’s not
even a cost involved—
just creative thinking.”
Gary Miller, HWRIC
Assistant Director

”’Pollution must be
viewed in its total
impact upon air,
land, and water. A
singular attempt to
reduce pollution to
one medium, such
as water, usually
results in increased
levels of pollution
to either the land
or air—or both.”
David Thomas,
HWRIC Director

that it’s no trivial matter to re-
think and retool. “It is through
the combined efforts of us all
that solutions to difficult prob-
lems will evolve.”

The success stories—pol-
lution prevention techniques
and initiatives—will be pub-
lished by HWRIC, added to its
information clearinghouse, and
available to business and indus-
try around the state. The infor-
mation will also become part of
a worldwide computer network
being developed by HWRIC,
USEPA, and the United
Nations.

The goal for the Greater
Chicago Area project outlined
at the Chamber of Commerce
luncheon is to reach generators
of waste through the Water
Reclamation’s pretreatment
program and offer them techni-
cal assistance, training, and
guidance for voluntary plan-
ning. A fall workshop has been
scheduled for the electroplating
industry, and several other
Chicago area audiences will be
targeted, such as large compa-
nies that are out of compliance
with wastewater regulations;
the heavily industrialized
southeast Chicago area; and
toxic release emitters. (Since
1988, the USEPA has required
large generators to report emis-
sions of 300 listed chemicals;

64% of all Illinois emissions
are in the Chicago Metro-
politan area.)

“Pollution prevention
involves the flow of materials
through facilities and the
reduction of waste to all
media—land, air and water,”
says Thomas. It involves mak-
ing “cleaner” products, ones
that last longer and/or are easi-
er to recycle and reuse. The
concept of “green” products is
important and many companies
are finding a growing market
for environmentally friendly
products. To be effective, pol-
lution prevention should be
incorporated into business
practices from product design
through the manufacturing and
packaging processes.

The Illinois Manufacturers
Association (IMA) and the
Illinois State Chamber of
Commerce are investigating
the potential for pollution pre-
vention programs among their
memberships, and HWRIC is
surveying IMA members to
determine their needs for infor-
mation and technology.

For more information on
the Greater Chicago Pollution
Prevention Strategy, contact
HWRIC, One Hazelwood
Drive, Champaign, IL 61820,
(217) 333-8940.

SURVEYING EDUCATION

TEACHING THE NEw 3-RS

“I am proud of the way that A
ENR’s solid waste management
education program is helping
young people make a lifelong
commitment to reduce waste
and promote recycling. Our
activity packet for teachers and
other materials are providing
‘educators with resources that
increase student awareness of
landfill problems and the need
to adopt the ‘reduce, reuse,
recycle’ philosophy. We are
pleased with the reports we
have received that students are
applying what they learn both
at home and in their schools.”

John S. Moore, Director
Illinois Department of Energy
and Natural Resources (ENR)

rom Maplewood Elementary

School in McHenry County to

Alton Senior High School in down-
state Madison County, students throughout
Illinois are learning the three Rs of enyi-
ronmentally sound solid waste manage-
ment: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Pat Dieckhoff, recycling coordi-
nator for McHenry County, says that she
works with recycling coordinators in each
of her county’s 71 public and private
schools to create programs designed to
engage the interest of students. Students at
the Montessori school in Crystal Lake, for
example, compost their food waste. After
lunch each day, sixth-grade students col-
lect leftovers, such as uneaten sandwich
bread and apple cores, take them to the
compost pile, and turn the mix over to pro-
mote decomposition. “It’s just another
way of recycling,” says Dieckhoff.

Last February, Maplewood
Elementary School held a “no paper day,”
during which students avoided the use of

Bill Steinbacher-Kemp

a 2-4 g
SOURCE ;
| REDUCTION: Zrem WASTE REDUCTION (OF RECYCLE

ae NQUCATION

ENR Director Moore distributes information to students at the Ridgley
School in Springfield and talks to them about practicing sound waste
reduction and recycling methods. (ENR photo by Tom Hecht)

paper. Teachers used chalkboards and
overhead projectors, and some students
even used small chalkboards at their desks.
The event helped raise awareness of
wasteful habits, such as using only one
side of a page for scratch paper, according
to Diekhoff. Since “no paper day,” the
school has reduced its paper waste from
seven bags a day to three.

The object is not just to
recycle, but to decrease the
amount of waste generated

in the first place.

+t

District 200, in the McHenry
County community of Woodstock, has
developed one of the state’s most
advanced recycling programs, according to
Barbara Banker, the district's community
services coordinator, The district’s eight

schools recycle newspapers,
several grades of paper, card-
board, and Styrofoam. A grant
from the Illinois Department of
Energy and Natural Resources
(ENR) allowed the district to
purchase storage sheds to store
paper before it’s hauled away
and recycled. “Our recycling
efforts are in large part due to
the state grant,” Banker says.

The district is not
only recycling paper but also
reducing the amount of waste
it generates in the first place.
Most of the community's
schools use reusable trays and
silverware to reduce lunch-
room paper and plastic waste. In the two
schools that still use Styrofoam trays (they
lack kitchens to clean plates and silver-
ware) the trays are stacked, placed in plas-
tic bags, and recycled.

Twenty schools in Madison
County near St. Louis are participating ina
state solid waste pilot program, according
to Ann Linenfelser, recycling education
coordinator for the county’s solid waste
department. Another ENR grant enabled
these schools to.build storage sheds to
house recycled goods until they could be
hauled away to recycling centers.
Linenfelser also says schools purchased
collection carts and bathroom scales to
dramatize the fact that for every 120
pounds of paper collected, students save
the equivalent of one tree. “We are
promoting reuse and reduction as well as
recycling,” she says.

Linenfelser also travels to
Madison County classrooms to teach recy-
cling, individually tailoring lessons for
each grade—kindergarten through eighth.
She stresses a holistic approach to the solid
waste problem, making the connection

between the depletion of the earth’s valu-
able rainforests and the ecologically
unsound lifestyles of many Americans.

Last year, schools throughout the
state celebrated Illinois Recycling Day by
promoting waste-free lunch programs.

St. Louis Catholic School in Princeton, for
example, handed out “Caught You Being
Good” awards to students using waste-free
lunches, and many students are now buy-
ing reusable lunch bags made of nylon or
cotton. Schools in DuPage, Will, and
Clinton counties were among those partici-
pating in the “Great Balls of Foil” contest
last school year, and the makers of
Reynolds Wrap gave cash prizes to the
schools that recycled the most foil. In
another successful program in 1990, the
Illinois State Board of Education prevent-
ed districts from throwing away 32,000
excess textbooks by distributing them to
districts that needed them.

The Illinois General Assembly
has passed laws to promote recycling and
responsible solid waste management in
Illinois schools. The state currently calls
on public schools and school districts to
purchase recycled paper goods “whenever
economically and practically feasible,”
and requires that, by July 1992, the pur-

a

Students at the Kenwood School in Champaign
go through a step-by-step demonstration to
learn how old newspaper is recycled into ‘new
paper. The resulting paper product is a S"x 7"
sheet that youngsters can use for other school
projects. (Photo courtesy the Community
Recycling Center, Champaign, Illinois)

These 140 plastic milk jugs have-had three lives. First, obviously, to hold milk; second, to serve as
construction materials for an igloo for first graders studying Eskimo culture; and finally, off to the
recycle bin to begin life anew in some yet-to-be-determined form. (Photo courtesy Mary Kasten,
Eastwood Elementary School, East Alton, Illinois.)

chase of recycled paper and paper prod-
ucts must account for at least 10% of a
school’s paper budget.

1

The brown paper bag lunch
is no longer ecologically
correct. Many students are
using reusable lunch bags
made of nylon or cotton.

= ef we Met aR ane

The General Assembly also
passed legislation calling on ENR to
develop and distribute educational materi-
als on recycling and waste reduction for
instructional use. As a result, ENR is a
treasure trove of valuable information for
schools looking to institute or expand
recycling programs.

ENR’s “Solid Waste Activity
Packet” is crammed with resource materi-
als to help teachers and students under-
stand solid waste issues. Activities ideal
for younger students include making crafts
from trash, such as constructing bird feed-
ers from plastic milk jugs. “Recycle Our
Available Resources (R.O.A.R.),” a guide-
book written by Mount Zion Junior High

School teacher Donna Johnson, is
designed for grades four through eight
and includes songs, experiments, recycling
facts, and even a puppet-show script. ENR
also has dozens of helpful solid waste
videos, with titles such as “Down in the
Dumps,” and “The Rotten Truth.”
A teacher’s guide accompanies the videos.
For information on educational
materials from ENR, call the department's
information clearinghouse at 1-800-252-
8955. =

Bill Steinbacher-Kemp is a staff writer for
Illinois Times, Springfield’ s independent
weekly.

Notable Nature Books for Children

The Chicago Public Library’s
NatureConnections project has complied
a new list of nature books for children from
preschool to grade nine. Bears and bats and
dinosaurs, the desert and rainforest, geolo-
gy and the weather are some of the subjects
covered in the 18 recommended books—all
well-written, beautifully illustrated, and
scientifically sound. For an annotated book
list, send a self-addressed stamped enve-
lope to: 1991 Books, The Nature of Illinois
Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle St., Suite 1666,
Chicago, IL 60604.

SURVEYING EDUCATION

RIVER RESEARCHERS

na warm, bright spring day,

Glenbrook South High School

student Tania Aglikin, dressed in
gym shoes and jeans, flings four connected
polyvinyl chloride (PVC) zebra mussel
monitoring traps into the Des Plaines
River in Glenview. Aglikin and thousands
more students like her from high schools
in Illinois, lowa, Minnesota, and
Wisconsin are performing similar experi-
ments. And that could have a positive
impact on our state’s river environment,
according to Doug Blodgett, assistant
research biologist for the Illinois Natural
History Survey (INHS). “These students
are gaining a greater respect for Illinois
rivers,” he says, “and they are collecting
data that can, in many ways, add to our
knowledge of the river system.”

Aglikin is participating in the
Illinois’ Rivers Project, founded two years
ago at Southern Illinois University in
Edwardsville with eight pilot schools
along the Mississippi and lower Illinois

by Sheryl De Vore

rivers, Currently students from 108
schools from Little Falls, Minnesota to
Cairo, Illinois are monitoring the
Mississippi, the Illinois, and other major
rivers in Illinois. The project’s “River
Watch” network is tied together through
SOILED NET, a telecommunication sys-
tem located at Southern Illinois University
in Edwardsville. It involves high school
science, social science, and English teach-
ers in an integrated study of their local
river and community. The project, which
also publishes a student-authored book,
Meanderings, is directed by SIU professor
Dr. Robert Williams and Cindy Bidlack.
The results of student data-collec-
tion activities are stored in the SOILED
NET data base at SIU and are available to
the INHS, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,
and other river managers. “Tapping into
the Illinois’ Rivers Project is a cost-effec-
tive way to expand our data base and sam-
ple more sites more frequently. Blodgett is
quick to point out, however, that while this

Students from Alton Senior High sweep the river in their study of macrobenthic organisms
(Photo courtesy of The Illinois’ Rivers Project)

Tania Aglikin, Glenbrook South High School,
prepares to set a zebra mussel trap in the Des
Plaines River. (Photo by Sheryl De Vore)

information “adds to the picture” the infor-
mation collected by the students is entered
into the data base with the notation that it

has been collected by high school students.

Blodgett and INHS scientists are
specifically interested in reviewing data
the students gather on zebra mussels, non-
native species which are clogging Illinois
waterways.

The adult European zebra mussel
is a one- to two-inch long freshwater
mollusk that firmly attaches itself to solid
objects such as boats and makes its way
along Illinois waterways. Students are
monitoring for adults as well as larvae,
which can be microscopic and are there-
fore more difficult to detect.

Scientists believe the zebra
mussel came from its native Black and
Caspian seas to Europe and then to the
United States in the ballast water of a ship.
Within two years of its first positive iden-

15

—

Students from Alton Senior High conduct tests at Lock and Dam 26 on the Mississippi.

(Photo courtesy of The Illinois’ Rivers Project)

tification here in 1988, it had infiltrated the
Great Lakes and it is now found throughout
the Illinois river system. Zebra mussels are
prodigious multipliers and pose a multi-bil-
lion-dollar threat to industry and public
water supplies because they clog water
intake pipes, sink navigational aids, suffo-
cate native clams, and foul barge hulls.

When Blodgett met Bidlack and
Williams at a river conference two years
ago, they talked about working together not
only to gather additional information on the
spread of the zebra mussel but also to teach
students how scientists collect information.
INHS scientists had been installing moni-
toring traps in the rivers, then counting the
number of zebra mussels and larvae.
Blodgett showed Williams the monitoring
traps and, soon after, Williams began to
collect scrap PVC material and recycle it
into traps patterned after the INHS model.
Rivers Project students began placing the
traps in Illinois rivers last May.

Some of these data “may provide
insight into why the mussels are in one
place and not the other,” says Blodgett.
“Students are learning how fast an exotic
species can reproduce and about population
growth trends. There are lots of good ecol-
ogy lessons to be learned.”

“They've caused problems
already,” says Aglikin. “I read about one
nuclear electricity plant in Michigan where
zebra mussels got stuck in the water pipes
for cooling down the reactors. They had to
send divers down to scrape them off.

It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

16

“To know that what I’m doing
could affect science is exciting,” says
Aglikin, gingerly stepping down the Des
Plaines River bank, her arms full with the
monitoring device, a long cord, and an
empty gallon milk jug. The jug will float in
the water and help her locate the traps each
time she comes to see if any mussels or
their larvae have been attached.

fe sue

“The program instills in
them an understanding of
the importance—and the
vulnerability—of rivers.”

Doug Blodgett, INHS biologist

ir eeieae oe}. =

In addition to mussel collecting,
students have been collecting water sam-
ples from the river and testing for presence
of fecal coliforms, measuring dissolved
oxygen levels and ph, and performing
other water quality tests. “They are learn-
ing that accuracy counts and that things
constantly change on the river—there are
variables that may make, for instance, the
phosphate levels low one day and high the
next,” says Aglikin’s teacher, James
Shellard. “Students are beginning to
appreciate the volume of data needed to
gain some insight into a river system.”

“While the Illinois’ Rivers Project
may open doors for some students to get
into science careers, more importantly, it
gives them a better appreciation of the river
systems and how they work,” says Blodgett,
who works at the INHS Havana station on
a Long-Term Resource Monitoring
Program of the Upper Mississippi river
system. (See “River Watch,” The Nature of
Illinois, Winter 1992.) “Students learn how
man has impacted the river systems,” he
says. “The program instills in them an
understanding of the importance—and the
vulnerability—of rivers. Then they can
relay that understanding to others, such as
their parents and the community,” he says.
“And they will always be better citizens
and better friends of the environment.”

Bidlack can cite stories of how stu-
dents involved with the river project have
observed and minimized human impact on
Illinois waterways. For instance, students
at Jerseyville High School found unusually
high levels of fecal coliforms in a creek run-
ning through a small town nearby. They
learned that the town’s outdated sewage
system was contaminating the creek. They
talked to community members, wrote
letters to health departments and the EPA,
and attended town meetings. “They became
political activists, and the end result was
that within three years each homeowner
will be required to install a private sewage
system,” says Bidlack. “This was hands-on
science and hands-on government.”

“I know that coming to the river
will affect kids who will be doing the pro-
ject next year just as it has me,” says
Aglikin. Even though she graduated from
high school in June, she plans to teach other
budding scientists at Glenbrook South how
to perform water-quality tests and how to
examine the zebra mussel monitoring plates
she placed in the river last spring. @

Sheryl De Vore is a free-lance nature and
environment writer and a regular contribu-
tor to The Nature of Illinois.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

EXPLORING THE LANDSCAPE WITH
A MASTER STORYTELLER

Geological field-trip-
pers ignore the dis-
comforts of rain to
hunt for geodes at
Mill Creek in Pere
Marquette State
Park. (Photo by Jim

Imbrogno)

At the confluence of the Mississippi and
Illinois rivers, just southwest of the glacial
boundary in western Illinois, lies scenic
Pere Marquette State Park. Surface eleva-
tions in the area range from 419 to 892

feet above mean sea level. The spectacular

At Mill Creek (Photo by Jim Imbrogno)

by Patricia Cronin

Cap au Gres Faulted Flexure, crossing
the area from west to east, contributes to

the impressive topography. Along this

fault, horizontally deposited rock layers

were tilted upward by pressures within
the earth's crust in the geologic past.
The broad Mississippi and Illinois rivers

were formed by repeated torrents of water

carrying sediments released from the
melting Wisconsinan glaciers. Dramatic
limestone bluffs along the Great River
Road form the eastern and northern sides
of the river valleys and provide a rugged
vegetated setting. At Grafton, the ancient
Mississippi Valley, now occupied by

the Illinois River, meets the present-day
Mississippi Valley. Terraces are well
developed along the valleys, and thick
Wisconsinan loess (windblown dust laid

down within the last 20,000 years during

the last Great Ice Age) mantles the gently
rolling uplands in which today’s fertile
soils formed.

David Reinertsen, Educational Extension
Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS)

na recent geological field trip to

Pere Marquette State Park and

surrounding areas in parts of
Jersey County, Dave Reinertsen, ISGS
field trip leader for more than a quarter of
a century, explained to me how he goes
about planning the locations. (Since 1929
ISGS has conducted more than 300 fre

field trips to 194 Illinois location

“IT check geological pub
for locations of exposures of
rock formations. I mak« taint

can accommodate a lot of peo; in

I link potential stops together to give par-
ticipants a chance to explore and discuss
different geological phenomena.”

“T also figure out the story of the
land and give people a feel for the region—
why the land is the way it is, how people
have lived on the land throughout time, and
how they have made their living.”

The Story of the Land

I was surrounded on that October day by
acres of mown fields, two-lane highways
unfurling like ribbons on the rolling land-
scape, and the surge of determined rivers
between rocky outcrops.

Reinertsen told us that the gently
rolling uplands of Jersey County had devel-
oped on deposits left by two periods of
glaciation (the Illinoian and Wisconsinan)
which began 300,000 years ago and ended
about 12,000 years ago. That gentleness is
broken dramatically by scenic bluffs where
river erosion had exposed the bedrock that
underlies the area.

The handful of small towns that
dot the area have a unique blend of famil-
iarity and distinction: specialty stores and
antique shops, diners and small inns that

thrive on tourism and curiosity, and the
stores and services that form the backbone
of everyday, working communities. Today,

stone (limestone and dolomite) is the only
mineral resource produced in Jersey
County, but the river systems and the fertile
soils that had developed from the loess and

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

A stop atan
abandoned
quarry
(Photo by Jim
Imbrogno)

alluvial-filled stream valleys brought farm-
ing, livestock, orchards, fishing, and freight
to the area. Godfrey, Elsah, Grafton, and
Alton are towns whose histories and for-
tunes are a result of their success in work-
ing with the very land on which they sit.
There’s something to be said for walking,
if not in someone else’s shoes, then on
their home turf, especially with a master
storyteller. It amounts to a considerably
different view than the limited perspective
the window of a moving car provides.

Heading Out Over the Land

Our caravan of 40 cars left Pere Marquette
State Park, where 150 geological trekkers
had convened shortly after 8 a.m. We
ignored the heavy mist and intermittent
showers in order to hear Reinertsen’s tale
that day. The overview for the 36 miles we
were to cover that day would reveal the
influences of glaciers, ancient sea beds,
and pressures from inside the earth.

The hill at our first stop was near-
ly 100 feet above the surrounding area—
an excellent view of the countryside and
an opportunity to see similar hills to the
north. It’s the kind of scene I’ve noticed
before, but I had not fully understood that
the rolling hills had been sculpted by
glaciers within the last million years. They
are thought to be part of an old IIlinoian
end morraine, comprised of drift (rock
material transported by a glacier and left
behind when the glacier melted) and
blanketed by younger wind-blown
Wisconsinan loess.

r

The Importance of Land Literacy

resources.”

Geological Survey field trips began in 1929 to familiarize teachers with the local
landscape and its resources. The geologists hoped that teacher-interest would
produce a ripple effect, spreading to students and fellow teachers. In time,

the Survey invited rock and mineral clubs on the trips. In the early years, a 14-car
caravan was considered a phenomenal turnout; now the 50-car caravan is standard,
regardless of whether the weather is fine or foul.

“On a Galena trip some years ago,” recounts Reinertsen, “there were close
to 500 people. They arrived in 92 cars and five Trailway buses out of Chicago.

It was so doggone wet—just difficult to figure out. It must have been too wet to
paint or garden,” he muses, looking for a reason for such a surprising turnout.

Reinertsen has strong opinions about environmentalism and education.

He would like to see the schools teach more earth science.

“Students should have an understanding of earth science before being
turned out into the world so that, as voters and consumers, they can make better
judgments. Many schools use earth science as a course for students who are steered
away from physics, chemistry, or biology. Administrators need to understand what
earth science is, what is does, and what it can do. In fact, the field of study requires
knowledge of math, chemistry, physics, and biology.” He maintains that it should be
a “means by which young people learn about the earth, its finite and recyclable

The Pennsylvanian Colchester

Coal Member (315 million years old)

underlies the hill and immediate vicinity,
but it was eroded away to the west. The
erosion, we were told, probably occurred

long before the advance of the glaciers.

Hunting for Treasure

Hardhats, safety goggles, and hammers
came out at Mill Creek, and the trip’s
focus shifted from a spectator sport to one
of active participation. The activity in the

field stirred my senses. I heard the first

In the late 1600s Pere Marquette described the ri

Mississippi as “frightful for their height and lenge
if

sounds of loose gravel underfoot and then
picks and hammers hitting the roc
The smell of the wet land rose in the mist
Explorers maneuvered through the shallow
water and mud of Mill Creek, trying to
keep their balance along the steeply cut
eight-foot banks of the stream

Mill Creek, cutting through
Warsaw Shale Formation, is considered
good ground for finding geodes. These
plain, brownish, imperfect spheres are
unlikely treasures. Often the size of

ball or grapefruit, the most promising

er bluffs ali
Photo by Max Schnorf
geodes are surprisingly lightweight. Upon
being cracked open, their nearly hollow
centers reveal clusters of sparkling inwi
pointing crystals
The excitement of collecting

of Mill Cr

j
. IS ONLY OF

along the bank

reason for the popularity of these tu p

interest in the

andR

formation of the

inert prol

20

ee SS eee

Pere Marquette Lodge (Photo by Jim Imbrogno)

Pere Marquette State Park and Lodge

The centerpiece of Pere Marquette State Park is its historic lodge. Originally built
in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the lodge is a maSsive
study in stone and timber— locally quarried Limestone and western red cedar,
Douglas fir, and bald and pecky cyprus shipped in by rail from Oregon. This
impressive CCC project also included the planting of 280,000 trees and shrubs
about the lodge. The structure is an appropriate manmade balance to nature’s handi-
work; like the park, the chalet-style lodge is dramatic in its reflection of history and
in its scale, with its massive custom-made furniture, chandeliers that weigh a ton or
more, a towering 700-ton limestone fireplace, the “world’s largest chess set,” and
bronze fixtures made by a former employee of the Czar of Russia.

Located nearby is the Visitor’s Center, a two-story building converted
from a corn crib, which houses exhibits detailing the park’s history as well as a col-
lection of artifacts found on the park grounds: arrowheads and beads, hand-held
hoes, early Indian pottery, and scrapers used for processing animal hides.

Pere Marquette State Park is comprised of lush forest and striking lime-
stone bluffs along the Illinois River. Originally spanning 1,500 acres when first
acquired in 1932, the park now extends to nearly 8,000 acres.

Scott Isringhausen, Pere Marquette State Park interpreter, says, “It’s a dif-
ferent park with each season—not only in its appearance, but in the activities
offered.” Visitors can enjoy horseback riding on the park’s 14 miles of riding trails,
hiking on 12 miles of trails of varying length and degree of difficulty, forest game
hunting, and fishing. Innovative park interpretation programs are offered year-round
and include a winter eagle watch, a program on bats, and highlights of the three
kinds of bluebirds found in the park. A recent talk on edible plants found
Isringhausen gathering wild persimmon and baking homemade persimmon cookies
for a local Girl Scout troop.

The Pere Marquette Lodge and adjacent campground is situated within
one of the state’s most beautiful natural settings and close to neighboring towns.
This provides a generous array of activities for enthusiasts of all kinds. Collectors
can scout the many antique shops in hopes of picking up old treasures, enjoy the
various year-round activities within the park itself, or venture off to the Great River
Road, a popular trail for hiking and bicycling.

For information on Pere Marquette State Park programs call 618/786-3323.
To inquire about lodge accommodations, call 618/786-2331.

people comparing regions, reliving past
experiences, retelling anecdotes—all a part
of ISGS field trip history.

While most Illinois landforms
developed during periods of glaciation, the
southern and southwestern parts of the Pere
Marquette area fall outside of the glacial
boundary, which accounts for the variety
of landforms/topography. The outstanding
features of the park are as dramatic and
striking as the glaciated hills are pastoral.

At the McAdams Peak Shelter
House that overlooks the Illinois River and
peninsular Calhoun County, we had the
best view of the Cap au Gres Faulted
Flexure. Rising through the fog, it was vis-
ible as a sharp change in elevation along
the narrow ridge of sedimentary rock that
formed the far river bluffs. Sedimentary
rock underlies all of Illinois and is one of
nature’s finest examples of the recycling
process, since some of the rocks (shale and
sandstone) are derived from weathering
and erosion of pre-existing rocks. Other
rocks (limestone and dolomite) are formed
from thick accumulations of shell debris.
This debris was cemented by the mineral
calcite that was chemically precipitated
from sea water more than 330 million
years ago.

According to Janis Treworgy,
another ISGS geologist leading the trip,
the Cap au Grés is important because it is
exposed and we can see the relationship
of the different rock layers. Exposures of
faults help us reconstruct the history of the
continent, tell us the degree of stress on
certain regions, and document that point in
time when rocks folded and broke.

PERE MARQUETTE

“The continents and ocean floors
behave as rigid ‘plates’ that are constantly,
though imperceptibly, shifting and exert-
ing compressional or tensional stress on
each other. This stress causes rocks to fold
and/or break, resulting in features like the
faulted flexure,” says Treworgy.

The Cap au Grés Faulted
Flexure—which extends through parts of
Lincoln County, Missouri, and southern
Calhoun, Jersey, and Madison counties
in Illinois—affected the origin and devel-
opment of landforms in the area. Because
water follows the course of least resis-
tance, water drainage in this area devel-
oped channels along broken and weakened
rocks produced by the faulted flexure. This
process took several million years and
established the present-day course of the
Mississippi and Illinois rivers.

Closer to the center of the park, a
trail goes by a rather steeply dipping expo-
sure of limestone. This is the St. Louis
Limestone that was formed about 350 mil-
lion years ago in a shallow sea. The lime-
stone consists of rounded, broken fossil
fragments and whole small fossils. The St.
Louis and other older limestones and
dolomites make up the river bluffs, once
described by Pere Marquette as “frightful
for their height and length.”

Overlooking the Illinois River
and the Stump Lake Waterfowl
Management area (Photo by
Joel Dexter, ISGS)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

The park is a
magical place in
every season
(Photo by Jim
Imbrogno)

My last stop was at the Visitor's
Center—comfortably close to my car.
My legs ached from hiking the steep
inclines and my feet felt like something
left over from Precambrian times. Amidst
the tangle of bright fall trees, against a
backdrop of mist, I stepped a bit more
knowingly on the worn path.

I was reminded of a quote by
Thomas Carlyle, “The tragedy in life is not

what men suffer, but what they miss.”

I was cold and wet and the owner of two
soggy, rain-splattered notebooks. I had
learned a thing or two about the state of
Illinois, the state called “home’ and I knew
this for certain: I wouldn't have missed it

for the world.

Thanks to David L. Reinertsen and Janis
D. Treworgy for assistance in preparing
this article for publication. Their Guide to
the Geology of the Pere Marquette State
Park Area, Jersey County, is a fine
resource for a self-guided tour of the area
visited by author Patricia Cronin and her
photographer husband Jim Imbrogno

A list of field trips for 1992-93 may be
obtained from the Educational Extension
Unit, Illinois State Geological Survey, 615
Peabody Drive, Champaign, IL 61820
Telephone: 217/ 244-2407 or 333-7372

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

THE GEMS OF

HANCOCK COUNTY

he rocks lining Irene Schneider's

driveway look like those that line

thousands of driveways in Illinois,
but they are no ordinary Illinois limestone
or sandstone. Lined up in rows along her
driveway are Hancock County geodes,
world famous in geological circles.

For the past 25 years, Schneider
has been collecting geodes near her home
in the small town of Hamilton. The rows
of rounded stones lining both sides of her
driveway offer only a hint of what lies in
her backyard. There, you will find hun-
dreds of the crystal-filled rocks.

How Does Her Garden Grow?
Geodes are usually globular hollow stones
with an outer shell like a melon. In fact,
the word ‘“geode” derives from a Greek
word meaning “in the shape of the earth.”
Inside, they are lined with crystallized
minerals that have grown inward. As can
be seen from the Schneider’s garden, they
come in many shapes, colors, and sizes.
A small geode might be the size of a wal-
nut and a large one the size of a melon.
Besides crystals, geodes may also contain
sand, water, or even petroleum. “You
never know what you’ll find inside,” com-
ments Schneider. One of her rarest finds is
an oil-filled geode a couple of inches
across and broken in two halves. Even
though the oil has dried out, a black gooey
residue remains. “They are more common
south of here, but still rare,” she says.
“People in Keokuk (Iowa) call
them Keokuk geodes, but we call them
Hamilton geodes,” says Schneider with a
f local pride. Geodes can be found
all over the world. Here, in far western
Illinois, they formed hundreds of millions

of years ago on both sides of the

219)

by Bob Wathen

Mississippi River in limestone known as

the Warsaw Formation. Whether you call
them Keokuk or Hamilton or Hancock
geodes, in this area you will find not only
a remarkable abundance but also a wide
variety of geodes, including some that con-
tain very rare minerals.

“You'll hear stories about geodes
this big,” Schneider says as she stretches
her arms as wide as they will go. “Really,
the largest one found in this area is only 27

inches across. So there are some exaggera-

Scott Beaty holds a
monster of a geode
that has been cut in
half and carefully
pe lished to reveal
the clear quartz
crystals inside.

tions. It would take a fork lift to move a
geode that big,” she says, as again she
stretches her arms far apart.

Schneider is well-known locally
for her extensive collection of geodes. And
she proudly displays them in her backyard
geode garden. On this day though, about
75 of her best specimens are on display at
the Hamilton Public Library.

“T find them all over town. When
we moved here 25 years ago, that was a

farm field,” she says as she points down

the street. “I found them right up the street
where all those houses are today. Then,

I started looking around local rivers and
creeks. Stream beds around here are
practically paved with geodes. You can
find them within about a 70-mile radius.
They are really a nuisance in some places,
especially in farm fields.”

The little environment inside
this hard shell is very good
for mineral growth.

Scott Beaty, ISGS

°
oe
e

“You can tell they aren’t just
regular rocks by their shape and texture.
They're round and have a distinct coating.
They feel different than other rocks. It’s
something you learn with experience.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

“Here, try this,” she hands me a surpris-
ingly light round rock. “A solid rock
would weigh more than that. If the geode
has a thin coating of crystals, it'll weigh
less. If it has a thicker coat or is solid, it'll
weight more.”

“Sometimes I break them open.
Most of the time, I find them broken open,

but you hardly ever find the whole thing if

it’s already broken. Look inside,” she says

as she points to a broken geode. Inside

A typical geode sawed in half will disclose a sequence of layers from outside

in as follows: (1) a thin clay layer; (2) a layer of noncrystalline chalcedony

(3) crystals (usually quartz) projecting into the hollow interior

there are thousands, maybe millions, of
tiny, sparkling white crystals reflecting the
sunlight. “We call this kind a ‘snowball’
No two are alike.”

Looking around at her hundreds
of geodes, varying in size, color, and
shape, you would not doubt her. She has
geodes lined with a smooth blue and grey
quartz, called chalcedony. The blue chal-
cedony is valuable and used for jewelry
Some, like the snowballs, have tiny crys
tals; others have larger crystals in shades
of purple, blue, and yellow.

“The minerals vary according
to location,” she explains. “Railroad
Creek has more browns and yellows.
Chaney Creek has more whites. I collect
them because I like the way they look,”
she says, proudly pointing at her geodes
“T have all of these geodes, but I don’t

know the names of all the minerals.”

Cracking Open the Mystery
Scott Beaty, a geologist at the Illinois
State Geological Survey (ISGS) and a life
long rock and mineral collector, is familiar
with the minerals

“Most states have geodes, except
savs Beaty \

maybe Louisiana,”

one 1s about two inches across, thr

five 1s average, and this o1
he says, pointing to a t
had been cut in |

to reveal tl

B

eral t

found in Illinois) are formed when bubbles
of gas push molten basalt (lava) aside and

form a pocket—called a vesicle—that is

later filled with mineralized water. These
“geodes,” technically called amygdules,
may eventually form geodes—in a variety
of shapes other than round—when the sur-
rounding basalt erodes away.

“Limestone geodes, like the kind
we have in Illinois,” says Beaty, “don’t
form in the same way. There is disagree-
ment on exactly how the cavities do form.
They could be dissolved fossil cavities or
possibly dissolution cavities in the lime-
stone. In any case, mineral-rich water gets
into the cavity and, as the water evapo-
rates, a chalcedony (quartz) is formed
around the wall of the cavity, creating a
quartz shell. This “wall” is harder than the
limestone around it. That’s the reason why
geodes are often so easily found. They
‘weather out’ because the surrounding
limestone is much more easily eroded than
the quartz shell of the geode.”

After the shell forms, a thin clay
coating can also form around the quartz as
it reacts with the silica-rich water and sur-
rounding limestone. Water may still be
trapped inside the geode at this point,
allowing the deposition of other minerals.
More water may seep in over time, feeding
more elements to the crystals still “grow-
ing” in the geode. Changes in temperature
and pressure, as well as evaporation, cause
precipitation, the deposition of mineral
matter. Silica, the building block of quartz,
will precipitate first.

“The little environment inside
this hard shell is very good for mineral
growth,” says Beaty. “In the case of the
famous geodes in Hancock County, if cop-
per, iron, or other metals are in the trapped
solution, minerals like pyrite, chalcopyrite,
or tenorite will form. These are some of
the unique minerals found in the limestone
around the Keokuk/Hamilton area.
Possibly, the shale surrounding the lime-
stone has an abundance of these minerals.
We don ‘|

v exactly why.”

24

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

The Keokuk and Hancock County
area is famous in geological circles for
the variety and rarity of these minerals.

“T knew about them when I was a kid in
Texas and just starting to collect rocks,”
says Beaty. “About ten percent of the
geodes you find there will be of real inter-
est, maybe two percent will be of high
mineral specimen quality.”

“You can find geodes at Wildcat
Springs Park, along Chaney Creek, at the
lower level of the park,” says Irene
Schneider. “The Montibello access on
the Mississippi River is also a good place
to look. It is north of the bridge leading to
Keokuk on highway 136, although you
can’t go down there all year. It is closed

from December | to March | because of
the eagles that nest in the area. You'll find
geodes in all of the creeks around here.”

“Tourists love them,” she says.
“*Rock hounds’ come looking for good
spots to find them. A man ran into the
library once, shouting that he had found
diamonds. Of course, he had found some
sparkling quartz geodes.” @

Bob Wathen is a technical editor for the
ISGS and a free-lance science and nature

writer. He lives in Urbana.

Photos by Joel Dexter, ISGS Graphics and
Publications Unit

Irene
Schneider is
well-known
in Hancock
County for
her collection

of geodes.

Pera Donnelley (1910-1992)
Founder, The Nature of Illinois

| Fi oundation

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Vice-Chairman, Nature of Illinois

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Treasurer, Nature of Illinois
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ILLINOIS

AN MMU

Ii NATURE OF

LLINOIS

Winter 1993 — The Prairie State

From the Foundation

Every time I visit the research facilities of the three Illinois
Scientific Surveys and Hazardous Waste Research &
Information Center (HWRIC) in Champaign, I am struck
anew by the fact that, although their research and data
collection are of the very highest order, these four agencies
are no “ivory-tower” institutions.

Their work impacts us directly in a number of vital
areas: the quantity and quality of our drinking water; the health
of our streams, lakes, and rivers; the environmental impact of
agricultural fertilizers and pesticides; the effects of insect pests
on human health; the location and exploration of mineral
resources; the monitoring of our state’s air quality, flora, fauna,
and natural areas; the amassing of geological data for the siting
of major construction projects and landfills; and the management
of solid and hazardous wastes.

The articles in this issue of The Nature of Illinois high-
light not only the quality of their work but also their personal
commitment to the people of the state. The study of prairies
leads not only to habitat restoration but also to volunteer work
and curriculum development for our schools. Global climate-
change research leads to seminars for business, industry, and the
scientific community as well as to educational outreach to
schools. Their commitment is complete—as it should be—for,
without the transfer of knowledge, how can we prepare ourselves
and our children to understand and meet the challenges we face
today and in the future?

So as you rediscover the wonders of Illinois through the
pages of this magazine, take special note of the commitment and
the professionalism of the Surveys and HWRIC. Take note, too,
of the sound, scientific information that is available to policy-
makers, business, and industry—and to you, as private citizens—
because these four agencies are part of our Illinois heritage.

Cordially,

whole

Edmund B. Thornton
President, Board of Directors

The Nature of Illinois is published by The Nature of Illinois
Foundation in support of the Illinois Scientific Surveys (Natural
History, Water, and Geological) and the Hazardous Waste Research
and Information Center. These four agencies span the state’s
natural resources and have a 150-year history of data collection,
research, and service. Their activities encompass hundreds of vital
research projects; educational outreach; and technical assistance

to private citizens, government, business, and industry.

Table of Contents

Surveying the Illinois Prairie 1
Part One: A Vast Meadowland

Formed by the interaction of geology, climate, and fire,

prairies once covered nearly 22 million acres of Illinois.

Part Two: Serious About Prairies 6
There are prairies in our future—if the Natural History
Survey and dedicated groups around the state have their way.

Surveying Illinois Bi
Biorhythms, Currents, Geograms, Centering on Waste
Global Climate Change: Can We Get Ready For It? i

Named in 1991 as the state’s center for research on
global climate change, the Water Survey is serious about
helping us understand just what the heat is all about.

Northwest Adventure 17
Jo Daviess County has its ups and downs—and every one
of them is glorious and full of natural surprises.

Digging for Knowledge 22
The Illinois and US Geological Surveys team up to get to
the bottom of Champaign County.

A New Chief for the Water Survey 24
John T. O’Connor returns to Illinois to battle for budgets,
good science, and sound environmental policy.

About the Cover

A golden garden spider spins a web among wispy milkweed
seeds. Photo by Michael Jeffords

Volume VII, Number II

Editorial Staff

Jean Gray Editor

Kathleen Kuiper Assistant Editor
Design

Mobium Corporation, Chicago

Stay In Touch

Name and address changes and membership information should be sent to
The Nature of Illinois Foundation, 208 S. LaSalle, Suite 1666, Chicago, IL 60604,
(312) 201-0650. Master Card and Visa accepted.

Copyright 1993 by The Nature of Illinois Foundation. All rights reserved

SURVEYING THE ILLINOIS

» Susan L. Pastand Michael R. Jeffords

Part One: A Vast Meadowland

The golden hues of late summer prairie grasses

Looking towards the setting sun, there lay, At first, the early settlers avoided Today prairies are confined to
stretched out before my view, a vast living on the prairie because the treeless about 2,000 acres, less than .01% of their
expanse of level ground; unbroken, save grasslands were thought to be infertile. In original extent. Unfortunately, it is easier
by one thin line of trees, which scarcely addition, prairies did not provide much- to find examples of the prairie’s influence
amounted to a scratch upon the great needed building materials, fuel, running in the “prairie” state—Prairie Street,
blank .. . There it lay, a tranquil sea or water for livestock, or protection from the Prairie State Games, Prairie Farms Dairy,
lake without water. . . howling winter storms. The tough prairie Prairieview Estates, Prairie Rest
Riadeteieeiacaiasiaibin Looky sod presented an almost insurmountable Cemetery—than it is to find an actual
Glass Prairie, 1842 problem to early agriculturists. The thickly prairie. Prairie remnants persist, however,
interwoven roots of prairie grasses and along railroad lines, in pioneer cemeteries,
he first Europeans to see the forbs did not yield to the wooden plows even on the grounds of industrial complex-
Illinois country had crossed a vast developed for turning sod. Discovered only __ es, growing in a forgotten corner of some
ocean, snaked their way across a through trial and error, the most effective storage yard yet to be developed.
nearly impenetrable mountain range, and way to turn the prairie soil proved to be
forged a path through a thousand miles of both an art and a science. With a massive A Flat Land
dense, primeval forest. They did it with breaking-plow, usually 6-12 feet long and It is a matter of speculation to account for
indomitable spirit and by sheer force of pulled by several yokes of oxen, one-and-a- _ the formation of the prairies.
will. Yet when they reached the edge of the __ half to three acres could be broken in a Cciccal Neneh Flsioac Mirae coker
eastern deciduous forest, approximated sunup-to-sundown day. The sod had to be 1787
today by the Indiana-Illinois border, they turned late enough in the season to prevent
stopped in wonder. Here was a landscape regrowth, but early enough to allow time Because of the various subtleties of
so different that their language had no word for the vegetation to decay before autumn. topography, soils, and moisture, at least
for it. Later travelers, trying to describe the In 1836 John Deere invented the 23 different kinds of prairies developed
area, turned to the sea for self-scouring, steel-bladed plow that in Illinois. Add barrens, savannas, and
analogies, calling the area allowed the virgin prairie soil to be broken glades, and the list increases to more than
“a sea of grass” or “a vast on a large scale. The wild prairies became 30. These various prairies once occupied
ocean of meadow-land.” cropland at an astonishing rate—approxi- nearly 22 million acres of the state
In time this land- mately 3.3% per year. In the early 1830s Of the 102 counties in Illinois, all but the
scape came to be those who found the prairie habitable were southern nine counties contained large
known as prairie, — considered part of the lunatic fringe, but by expanses of prairie
a word derived the end of the decade more than 300,000 During the past two million years
from the French people had settled on the prairie. During Illinois has experienced several periods
word for meadow. — the 1850s and 1860s the establishment of when glaciers brought loads of rock debri
railroads solved the problem of crop trans- from the north and subjected old land sur
portation to market, and the prairies were faces to a relentless, grinding action
rapidly settled. By 1860 most of According to Dwain Berggren of the State

Illinois’ prairie had disappeared Geological Survey, “The co juence of

this glaciation was that

the terrain of Illinois,

which resembled the

rocky and hilly portions of

present-day southern Missouri

and Kentucky, was filled in

with glacial mud, sand, and

gravel. Think of the effects of the glaciers

as an avalanche, rather than a bulldozer.

The glaciers knead and grind the landscape.

This smearing, plastering, pushing, and

kneading produces a sandy, gravelly, peb-

bly mud with the odd boulder thrown in.”
The final two advances of the ice

sheets shaped the prairie region of Illinois.

Prairie shooting stars (Photo by Susan L. Post)

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Wood lily ae

At its maximum the Illinoian glaciation
covered nearly 90% of the state. The land-
scape left by the Illinoian glacier can be
compared to that of a dry lake plain; it was
flat. The later Wisconsinan glaciation
deposited its drift (debris) over the northern
quarter of the state. Here the glacier devel-
oped a succession of moraines, 50- to 100-
feet high and 50- to-100 miles long.
Berggren says,
“The land is flat in
places due to the
moraines. Moraines
confined water for
long periods of
time, and the
lakebeds developed
a flat bottom due to
the settling of sand
and mud. These
lakes gradually
eroded through the
moraines and were

eventually drained.”

iaihelis AN

mA NG A

Big bluestem, &
symbol of ‘
the tallgrass
prairie

Betwixt and Between

The Season has been

very hot and dry; there

has scarcely been any

rain since I have been here, but as the soil
is very deep a drouth does not do the dam-

age that it does in Maine.

Ebenezer Welch, Monmouth, Illinois, 1841

As the final glacier retreated, it left a moist
land that was soon dominated by deciduous
forests. Beginning about 11,000 years ago,
most of the world entered a hot, dry period
called the Hypsithermal Interval. Regularly
occurring droughts parched the land, and
massive, periodic fires raged across much
of the American Midwest. As the land
dried, the forests declined. Prairie began to
replace the deciduous forests in southern
Illinois and soon occupied much of the
state during this period. Following the
Hypsithermal, the climate became cooler
and moister, but prairie had stabilized
throughout much of the state. Although

Blazing star and
rose hips

Background illustration by Bobbie
Lively-Diebold originally printed
by the Kropp Company

Illinois has been a battleground of forest
and prairie for the last 5,000 years (the cli-
mate appears to have been more favorable
for the development of forests than for the
maintenance of grassland), the prairie
landscape persisted.

“Tllinois is part of a grassland
peninsula that sticks out from the
Rockies,” says Wayne Wendland of the
State Water Survey. “It is an area that is
covered by a Pacific air mass for six
months or more and dry air for the rest of
the period. Being on the leeward side of
the Rockies, where there is less precipita-
tion, also has aided in the development of
grasses. It was too dry to support forest,
too cold to support tropic vegetation, and
too warm for boreal forests. Illinois was an

area betwixt and between. Botanists pro-

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

claim that prairies

ultimately developed and were

sustained by fire, but these fires were a
function of a climate that featured dry late
summers, dry autumns, and frequent, large
scale droughts.”

Ashes to Ashes

The last 12 miles we travelled after sun-
down and by fire light over the Prairie, it
being on fire. This was the grandest scene I
ever saw, the wind blew a gale all day, the
grass was dry... we had in view at one
time from one to 5 miles of fire in a streak,
burning from 2 to 6 feet high. In high grass

it sometimes burns 30 feet high.

Alfred Brunson, Bureau County, 1835

Whether set by Native Americans or occur-
ring from natural causes, the relatively flat
ground, more than occasional drought,
accumulation of dry litter, and high winds
at certain seasons of the year all combined
to foster fires. Prairie plants are better

adapted to being burned than most woody

NATURAL HISTORY SURVE
FEB 10 1995

LIBRARY

Cardinal
flower

plants, and the annual growth habit of the
grasses and forbs helps protect them from
fire. Each fall these species die back to
underground organs (roots), leaving only
dead material above ground. Prairie fires
can move very quickly and become very
hot above the ground and on the surface of
the soil. Fortunately, though, soil is a good
insulator so little heat penetrates to harm
buried root stocks.

William McClain, Illinois
Department of Conservation, has studied
pioneer diaries and letters for the historic
occurrence of fires. He was able to docu
ment 90 occurrences of fire on the Illinois
prairies between 1679 and 1879; over 90%

occurred during the fall. His conclusions

The edges of compass-
Fy plant leaves line upon
a north-south axis so

that theirhuge flafsur-

faees can rotate to fol-
low-the rays of the ris-
ing and setting sun.
The taproot of an old
compass plant juay

reach as deep as 14 feet

into the prairie earth,

are that Native Americans used fire in their
annual hunts, usually a ring fire. These
annual hunts took place during Indian sum-
mer, a period of mild dry weather that usu-
ally occurs at the end of October and into
early November. During times of drought,
the fires often “got out of hand” and were
more extensive.

“To reduce the hazards of prairie
wildfires in the fall, European settlers
began to use prescribed burns during the
spring and summer,” says McClain. “The
spring burning of the prairie appears to be
an introduction of European man. As early
as 1807, laws were on the books against
setting the prairie on fire and carried fines
of $5 to $100; these laws were not
enforced. Not until Smokey the Bear’s
appearance did fire suppression begin.”

Dust to Dust

The soil of this district embraces almost
every description, from poor sand to rich
clay of strong texture. It is of all colours,
and generally of superior quality. . . The
black sand, of which the prairies are partly
composed, seems of a penetrating nature

and adheres to the skin like soot.

k Shirreff, Sangamon County, 1833
Prairi: p, mostly well-aerated,

rich, an irie community,

about two-thirds of the plant mass is

beneath the surface of the soil in the form
of rhizomes, bulbs, corms, and other plant
parts. The roots of big bluestem may reach
a depth of five to seven feet, while those
of the compass plant can extend to depths
of nine to 14 feet. When these below-
ground portions die, they decay in place to
greatly enrich the soil with organic matter.
The rich and productive soils of most of
the Midwest cornbelt had their genesis
under prairies. Once the European settlers
learned of the fertility of the prairie soil,
had a plow that could effectively turn the
sod, and found a way to transport their
crops to distant markets, the prairies of
Illinois were doomed to quickly disappear.
The dark brown or even black
prairie soils, reflecting their high organic
content, developed in a relatively short
period of time, about 14,000 years, after
the last glacier melted away. The parent
material for the rich soil in most of Illinois
was windblown silt deposited during peri-
ods of glacial retreat. When the glaciers
melted during the warm seasons, tremen-
dous floods of meltwater poured down

major river valleys and deposited massive

amounts of sediment on
floodplains. During the dry,
arctic-like winters these sedi-
ments dried out. “Strong
winds blowing across the
bottomlands blew the
dust out of the valleys.
This wind-blown dust,
known as loess, accu-
mulated in deposits of
varying thicknesses,”
says Berggren. “Some
areas have as much as 50
feet of loess on the surface.”

An Ocean of Grasses and Flowers

In May and June the prairie was an ocean
of flowers of every possible hue, glittering
and blazing in the sunlight.

Henry Blevins, Macoupin County,
around 1830

To early settlers the grasses formed a
seemingly impenetrable barrier

an ever-
shifting panorama of big bluestem, Indian
grass, cord grass, and others—that some-
times reached heights of ten feet or more.
Although grasses formed the bulk of the
prairie vegetation (90% of the foliage),
they usually constituted less than 20% of
the species. Multi-hued wildflowers
provided a welcome relief to the infinite
shades of green. More than 200 different
species of plants, belonging to 45 different
families, are known from Illinois prairies.
Most of these species grow on the rela-
tively flat or slightly rolling moist prairies,
in soils with good drainage. Although
each species of prairie plant tends to grow
in a particular type of prairie, very few
are restricted to prairies, and nearly all
prairie species occur in habitats other
than prairies and in areas other than the
prairie region.

Not all prairie plants are notice-
able at any given time; rather, there is a
progression of species through the grow-
ing season. Only a few species—low

herbs such as prairie violet and blue-eyed

grass—flower very early in the spring. In
late spring to early summer, a rainbow of
colors appears—shooting stars, wild
hyacinth, bird’s foot violet, downy phlox,
and hoary puccoon. These, too, are rela-
tively short plants, seldom exceeding one-
to-two feet in height. During the summer a
large part of the prairie is in flower, each
succeeding forb increasing in height as the
summer progresses to keep pace with the
lengthening grasses. By midsummer, the
rich beauty of the prairie fully surfaces; the
tall grasses bloom and the colors of the
forbs diversify with dozens of species
blooming in a single day. By late summer
and early fall, the yellows and browns are
in control with legions of goldenrod and
sunflowers. Yet flashes of the brilliant pink
and vermillion of blazing stars, false drag-
onhead, and New England aster break the
amber dominance. The last plants to flower
are the gentians and ladies’ tresses orchids,
which mimick the habit of diminutive early
spring species, growing in the shadow of
the towering grasses.

An Ark Full of Birds and Mammals

Many other kinds of animals are found in
these vast plains... stags, deer, beaver,
and otter are common there, geese, swans,
turtles, poules d’inde, parrots, partridges,
and many other birds swarm there, the
fishery is very abundant, and the fertility

of the soil is extraordinary.
Louis Hennepin, Kankakee Valley, 1679

Even though native Illinois prairies have
been essentially gone since the turn of the
century, most of the prairie animals have
been able to survive because of their ability
to adapt and utilize hayfields, pasturelands,
and roadside meadows. The only prairie
mammal known to be extirpated from
Illinois is the bison. Bison were the largest

mammals on the prairie, and an acre of

tallgrass prairie could support one bison for

two months. Other species of prairie mam-

mals have suffered less. Although prairie

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

conditions have been drastically altered,
certain species like the plains pocket
gopher, meadow vole, and western harvest
mouse have actually extended their ranges.
Others, such as the coyote, 13-lined
ground squirrel, and eastern cottontail have
increased in abundance.

A number of prairie bird species,
with the exception of the sharp-tailed
grouse, which was soon extirpated, initial-
ly benefitted from the conversion of prairie
to farmland. Those that benefitted most
include the horned lark, vesper sparrow,
and the greater prairie chicken. By the
1860s the prairie chicken had its highest
population in the state (ten million birds).
The timberlands
had been cleared,
and portions of the
prairie sod had
been broken and
planted in grain.
This interspersion
of cropland and
unbroken prairie
provided ideal con-
ditions for the
prairie chicken.
Soon after reaching
their peak, though,
the birds began to
decline with the
demise of the
remaining prairie.

Bottle gentian

Currently, fewer
than 50 bird species survive in the state.
Along with the greater prairie chicken,
populations of several other birds declined
with the destruction of the prairies. Today
the loggerhead shrike, Henslow’s sparrow,
Swainson’s hawk, and short-eared owl are
all listed on the Illinois Threatened and

Endangered Species list.

Remnants
What a pity that some of it could not have
been preserved, so that those born later

might enjoy its beauty also.

Dr. A. W. Herre, 1890

The prairie, formed by the interaction of
geology, climate, and fire, supported a
diversity of life forms. In today’s world,
prairies survive in infinitesimally small
parcels. A goodly number, more than 75,
are protected as Illinois Nature Preserves.
To experience an Illinois prairie requires
diligence, knowledge, and a good map.
Prairies do persist and can provide a
glimpse into the state’s biological past;
they can be found mainly in isolated pio-
neer cemeteries and along railroad rights-
of-way. It is difficult, though, for individu-
als today to grasp or even imagine the
significance of a landscape that currently

occupies only .01% of our state. m

A Directory of

Illinois Nature
Preserves, pub-

lished by the

Illinois Department

of Conservation, is

an excellent resource
for locating prairies

as well as other natural
areas in the state
Currently out-of-print,
it can be found in public
libraries and universities

throughout Illinois

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Part Two: Serious About Prairies

All morning, as they worked, the area was
silent. The only noise was the rustling of
grass in the ever-present wind and the
occasional shouted instructions passed
between the diligent workers erecting a
sign—Bonnie’s Prairie: A Sand Pond and
Sand Prairie Dedicated to Bonnie Peters.
At 2:00 PM whistles roared as another
parcel of Illinois prairie was preserved.

It didn’t matter that the celebratory noise
was from a passing train; the 85 partici-
pants, representing friends of the prairie
and friends of the late Bonnie Peters (on
whose land the prairie stands), were
pleased. Young and old enjoyed the day
and, with the help of an Illinois Natural
History Survey (INHS) botanist, tours
were conducted, plants were identified,
and a mild controversy regarding the sci-

entific name of horsemint was resolved.

y the time the Illinois State

Laboratory of Natural History

(now the Illinois Natural History
Survey) was established in 1877, the large
expanses of prairie were nearly gone.
Despite the decline of prairie habitat, three
studies were published in the early 1900s,
The Illinois Sand Prairies, Ecological
Surveys of Prairie Vegetation, and The
Automobile and Prairie Wildlife. During
the late 50s and early 60s two publications
significant to prairies appeared—The Hill
Prairies of Illinois and A Comparative
Study of Bird Populations in Illinois. In
the latter, two Survey ornithologists,
Richard and Jean Graber, repeated bird
censuses from the turn of the century and
documented population changes for sever-
al species. Recently, during the 20th
anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, the
Survey hosted a symposium entitled Our
Living Heritage: The Biological Resources
of Illinois. Various experts from across
Illinois presented their views and data on
the present status of forests, wetlands,

streams and caves, and, of course, prairies.

Erecting the sign for Bonnie’s Prairie

Thus, even though—or, perhaps,
because—almost no prairie is left in the
state, the INHS continues its efforts in the
areas of research, education, reconstruc-
tion, surveillance, and preservation.

A Blur of Color—Corridors for Tomorrow
Illinois’ interstate highway system is the
third largest in the nation, with about
1,900 miles of corridors, 370 interchanges,
and 31 open or proposed rest areas. One
hundred and thirty-five thousand acres of
land are associated with this system. For
two years Kenneth Robertson, an INHS
botanist, has headed a team of specialists
working on a project called Corridors for
Tomorrow. “We rank 49th among the
States in original prairie, forest, savannah,
and wetlands that have survived; only
Iowa is lower.” says Robertson. “This loss
of habitat has been responsible not only
for the extinction of some species, but also
for a drastic reduction in the abundance of
most native species.” The initial focus of
the Corridors for Tomorrow project will

be to use native species to revegetate the

interstate highway system. The interstates
are areas of highest priority because they
are the most heavily used state roads and
their corridors are in state ownership and
thus subject to less pressure from econom-
ic and ownership changes than most land
in the state. The project proposes revege-
tating with native Illinois plants. Although
Robertson is the first to admit that a com-
plete restoration cannot be achieved, each
unit of the interstate highway system—
corridors, interchanges, and rest areas—
will provide opportunities for the effective
use of native plant communities. Along the
corridors, instead of 120 species mixed
together, the prairie ecosystem will be dis-
sected. Its components, presented in mass
plantings of showy species at intervals
along the corridors, will be much easier to
see and appreciate at 65 miles per hour!
Interchanges, due to the their relative iso-
lation and large size, will allow for a more
comprehensive prairie development. At
rest areas, educational interpretations are
planned along with more complete prairie

reconstructions.

By providing the potential for
more than 130,000 acres of right-of-way
for native vegetation, the corridor project
could insure a future for many of our
native organisms. The prairie corridors
will provide habitat to native grassland
birds, wintering ground for upland game-
birds, and a food source, not only for
migrating birds, but also for insects and
small mammals. Revegetation will
increase the average size of our habitat
fragments, decrease habitat isolation by
providing connecting corridors, and con-
tribute to the scenic beauty of Illinois.

The Prairie Chicken

The prairie chicken has been a subject of
Survey research efforts since its founder,
Stephen A. Forbes, began studying it in

1912. Substitute prairies of hay, pasture, or

grass seed meadows provided some habitat
for prairie chickens displaced when prairie
habitat was destroyed during the last cen-
tury. But when the acreage of substitute
prairie also declined, so, inevitably, did
the prairie chicken. Like the bison and

the sharp-tailed grouse, prairie chickens
appeared to be on the verge of extirpation
from Illinois.

During the 1960s the INHS,
along with the Prairie Chicken Foundation
of Illinois, the Prairie Grouse Committee
of The Nature Conservancy, the Illinois
Department of Conservation, the Nature

Wild lupines

How to Start a Prairie Patch

Incorporating native prairie plants into the landscape can be as simple or as elaborate

a project as one cares to make it. In essence, all that is needed is a sunny location, a

plot of tilled ground—preferably with sod removed, or in an area that is relatively

weed-free—prairie seeds or prairie seedlings, and loving care. Future activities may

include hand-weeding, watering during periods of low rainfall until the plants

become established, and regular burning (if the plot is large enough). Aim for a

pleasing mix of grasses and forbs. Remember, only 20% of the species are grasses,
but these make up about 90% of the foliage in a native prairie. Thus, if you want to
achieve “the look of a native prairie” you may want to take these percentages into

consideration.

The National Wildflower Research Center is an excellent source for infor-

mation on landscaping with native plants. For a complete introductory packet write
to them at 2600 FM 973 North, Austin, Texas 78725. There is a $2 charge for non-

members.

Preserves Commission, and interested
individuals (including Gaylord Donnelley,
founder of The Nature of Illinois
Foundation) began to acquire land for

sanctuaries. Annual counts of prairie

chickens on their booming (mating)
grounds were also started. “The prairie
chicken would be long gone from the state
if not for the two sanctuaries,” says Glen
Sanderson, retired Survey wildlife biolo-
gist. Both Illinois prairie chicken sanctuar-

ies are now dedicated Nature Preserves

Survey Prairie Restoration

During an Economic Entomology staft
meeting in December 1982, William
Luckmann, the Center’s director, men
tioned the call for proposals for the use
of agricultural land on the University of
Illinois South Farms. John Bousemat

Survey entomologist, remembers quickl

Prairie burns at South Farm in Champaign often bring out a worried fire department.

drafting a proposal requesting land on
which to establish a plot of native prairie
vegetation. Once it was established,
Bouseman pointed out, Survey scientists
would use the plot for investigations of
native plants and their insect associates.
He thought a South Farm location would
be ideal because of its proximity to the
Survey. “Luckmann told me that this pro-
posal was a great idea,” says Bouseman,
“although he doubted that the UI College
of Agriculture would think so.”
Nonetheless, in March, Dr. Luckmann
received a letter from the Assistant to the
Director of the Agriculture Experiment
Station approving the plan and in June,
1984 a 1.5 acre plot was planted with
prairie grasses and forbs. Bouseman feared
the project might be doomed when it
didn’t rain for six weeks after planting, yet
the seeds did germinate, and soon a
respectable plot of prairie vegetation
began to develop.

Following several yearly burns
(that have brought out a worried fire
department on occasion) and supplemental
plantings, the Survey prairie is established
and today is a valuable educational tool.
Early each school year, area teachers con-
tact Michael Jeffords, INHS Public
Relations and Education Officer, to
arrange field trips for their third grade
classes—the culmination of a Champaign

school prairie unit, based on curriculum

developed in cooperation with Survey
staff. The visit, led by volunteer Survey
scientists, 1s hands-on as students take
soil cores and identify plants. Touching,
smelling, feeling, and even tasting are
encouraged, and if the groups are lucky—
and quiet—a ground hog, fox, gold finch,
or even a deer may appear! Each student
gets a chance to use an insect sweep net
and collect a few stems of big bluestem or
Indian grass so the experience can be
shared at home. For most, this is their first
experience in a prairie. Cashundra, a third
grader from Champaign, wrote, “I really
enjoyed the field trip. Thank you for letting
us run through the grass and letting us take
some with us. That was my first time ever
being on the prairie and I learned a lot.”

After Hours

Survey botanist John Taft says that study-
ing prairies is just part of the job (he does
botanical surveys where highway projects
threaten natural sites, searches for threat-
ened and endangered plants, and evaluates
natural quality vegetation) and that you
won't find him in a prairie on the week-
end. Nothing could be further from the
truth. Taft helped erect the Bonnie’s
Prairie sign and led field trips on a Sunday,
and he is steward of Prospect Cemetery
Prairie. Being steward involves weekend
brush cuttings, burning, and other manage-

ment activities.

Survey employees are also
involved in various organizations, includ-
ing the Illinois Native Plant Society and
Grand Prairie Friends (GPF), a prairie
preservation based in Champaign County.
Survey scientists serve on the governing
board of GPF (Joyce Hofmann, a mammal-
ogist, is president this year), are on the
scientific advisory board, and regularly
participate in workdays. Marilyn Morris
is leading an effort with the Champaign
County Forest Preserve District to restore
a savanna along the Middle Fork of the
Vermilion River. Scott Simon is a leader
in The Nature Conservancy's Volunteer
Stewardship Network. Morris and Simon
are both wetlands biologists with the
Natural History Survey.

For the Future

Whether working on revegetating highway
corridors, saving the last of the state’s
prairie chickens, restoring remnant pieces
of habitat, or taking time to lead prairie
field trips, Survey employees are intimately
involved with our prairie heritage. Stephen
A. Forbes thought it was important that
“the children must be drawn towards and
not away from the woods and fields and
waters and must be led to see more clear-
ly.” A letter from David (a third grader)
sums it up best: “I like the big bluestem.
Thank you for letting us run through the
grass and letting us catch grasshoppers and
have some of the past.” Forbes would be

pleased. @

Susan L. Post is an assistant research biol-
ogist at the Natural History Survey in the
Center for Economic Entomology and
Michael Jeffords is an associate scientist in
the Center for Economic Entomology and
the Survey's liaison for public relations
and education. Their front yard prairie

patch is in its third year and flourishing.

All Photos by Michael Jeffords except

where indicated

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

BIORHYTHMS
Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)

Insect Info and Help for Growers
Six University of Illinois

Prairie Fires and Prairie

include pesticide applicator and _— Insects

extension entomologists,
who are also members of the
Natural History Survey, pro-
vide up-to-date information on
the management of insect pests
of field and forest and on the
control of mosquitoes in urban
settings. In addition they offer
guidance designed to decrease
pesticide contamination of
surface and groundwater and
reduce environmental and
health hazards associated with
the use of insecticides. Three
newsletters, The Home, Yard,
& Garden Pest Newsletter,
The Pest Management & Crop
Development Bulletin, and
The Illinois Spray Report are
mailed to more than 4,000
Illinoisans and reach many
additional thousands.

More than 100 educational
programs, led each year by
extension entomologists,

seed clinics; master gardener
and greenhouse courses; fruit,
vegetable, and Christmas tree
grower conferences; science
teacher workshops; and native
plant and environmental health
conferences. Five additional
educational conferences,
attended each year by more
than 1,500 Illinois citizens, are
devoted to topics as diverse as
pest identification and environ-
mental issues. The proceedings
of two of them—the Crop
Protection Workshop and the
Agricultural Pesticides
Conference—are published
annually and are highly regard-
ed by members of the agricul-
tural community. For further
information on these publica-
tions and programs, contact the
Entomology Extension Office,
(217) 333-6652.

Most prairie burns are designed
to manage for plant diversity.
Unfortunately, not much is
known about the effects of
burning on prairie animals,
insects in particular. In fact, the
potential vulnerability of prairie
insects is increasingly being
used as an argument to reduce
or eliminate fire from native
grasslands. A new Survey pro-
ject will experiment with differ-
ent fire management strategies
(burning at different seasons

Land Cover Mapping

Land cover information
describing the vegetation and
man-made features of the land-
scape is vital baseline data for
many kinds of environmental
research. It is also information
that is costly to produce using
traditional techniques and tends
to become quickly outdated.
The most recent comprehen-
sive land cover mapping of
Illinois, completed by the US
Geological Survey from aerial
photographs in the mid to late
1970s, is now in need of update
and expansion.

A project is now under
way at the Natural History
Survey to map Illinois land
cover using Landsat Thematic
Mapper (TM) satellite imagery.
Cloud-free data (collected in
the spring and early summer,
from May 26, 1988, to June 4,
1991) have been purchased to

and with varied frequency) to
help resolve the issue of how
fire management affects native
prairie insects. The study will
target different insect groups,
such as certain rare moths and
prairie-inhabiting leafhoppers,
that are thought to be particular-
ly vulnerable to fire.

cover the entire state. The satel-
lite imagery is being converted
to usable land cover information
using the sophisticated comput-
er technology of the Illinois
Geographic Information
System.

The US Environmental
Protection Agency is assisting
the Survey with development of
the satellite data and will use
the completed land cover infor-
mation for their environmental
assessment programs. Land
cover classes that will be
mapped include high- and low-
density urban areas; cropland;
grassland; deciduous, evergreen,
and mixed forest and shrub
areas; exposed land; and several
classes of wetlands and open
water. Mapping resolution will
be approximately 0.5 hectares,
many times more powerful than
was previously available.

™ CURRENTS

New Scholarship Fund
Established

The family of the late William

C. Ackermann announces the
establishment of an honorary
stipend for undergraduate
students who plan to focus
on water resource issues in
the department of Civil
Engineering at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. The scholarship
replaces the William C.
Ackermann Distinguished
Lecture Series in Water
Resources which was estab-
lished in 1990 to honor and
extend the scholarship and
contributions of William C.
Ackermann. Ackermann was
Chief of the Illinois State
Water Survey and Professor
of Civil Engineering at the
University of Illinois from
1956 to 1979. The fund will
be administered jointly by
The Nature of Illinois
Foundation and the Water
Survey. For further informa-
tion or to make donations to
the Ackermann Endowment,
contact The Nature of Illinois
Foundation, 208 S. La Salle
Street, Chicago, IL 60604;
(312) 201-0650.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS)

Just because it’s called the ‘“Water” Survey
don’t overlook the fact that weather and
climate—the atmospheric sciences—are a
vital part of the ISWS mandate.

Understanding the Issues “By Degrees”

The Global Climate Change
Program has published a series
of fact sheets entitled “By
Degrees.” These one-pagers
clarify such topics as “What is
the Greenhouse Effect?”, “What

Climate Change Literacy for Kids

Stephen Vermette, Assistant
Director of the Global Climate
Change Program, leads work-
shops for teachers interested in
developing a global climate
change curriculum. He also vis-
its classrooms, as his schedule
allows, and has a story to illus-
trate every concept and demon-
strations to help youngsters
grasp complicated ideas. “The
kids ask thought-provoking
questions,” he said. “One day

Are the Greenhouse Gases?”,
“What Can We Do About
Global Warming?”, and “Past
Climates of Illinois.” “By
Degrees” is currently used in
Washington D.C. to educate
legislators about global climate
change issues. It is used closer
to home as well, in schools and
by the general public, helping to
demystify this “hot” topic. For
those desiring a slightly more
comprehensive explanation of
the climate change issue in one
document, the Program has
developed “Global Climate
Change and Illinois.”
Publications are available free-
of-charge from the Ilinois State
Water Survey, 2204 Griffith
Drive, Champaign, IL 61820.

when I finished explaining to a
group of fourth graders that
trees help us by absorbing CO,,
one girl asked me if the CO,
leaked out if there were holes
in the trees. That’s a different
kind of question than I usually
field at professional seminars.
It shows these youngsters are
taking nothing for granted.”
For information on teacher
and student workshops, call
Vermette at (217) 333-7128.

Porter J. Womeldorff, Illinois
Power Company Vice-President:
“The greatest challenge is to look
beyond the near-term impacts and
costs and to plan for the future.”

How’s the Climate for
Business and Industry?
More than 75 public officials;
representatives from business,
industry, agriculture, and
forestry; and the media attend-
ed an all-day conference last
October entitled Global
Climate Change: Focus on
Illinois, An Economic and
Business Perspective. The
conference, sponsored by the
Illinois State Water Survey
and Illinois Power Company,
focused specifically on Illinois,
recognizing that the effects of
global climate change as well
as adaptation and mitigation
responses will be felt and
implemented at the local level.
Speakers addressed Illinois
climate trends, potential effects
on the state’s natural resources,
and probable impacts on busi-
ness and agricultural interests.
The conference represents an
opportunity for researchers,
business, and policymakers to
better understand and address
climate change issues as they
affect Illinois, and, in turn,
to understand how Illinois—a
source of greenhouse gases—
may affect the climate of
the world.

GEOGRAMS

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

Zgeag illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS)

ISGS Helps Engineers Ride
Out the Great Chicago Flood
The Geological Survey played
a key role in helping to bail out
Chicago last April after the
Chicago River burst through a
weakened tunnel wall beneath
the Merchandise Mart, pouring
more than 250 million gallons
of water, silt, fish, and debris
into underground freight
tunnels and basements at the
Board of Trade, Merchandise
Mart, Tribune Tower, and
nearly 200 other downtown
buildings.

Charged with helping
with the clean-up, Harza
Engineering contacted the
ISGS for geologic and hydro-
logic information in order to
devise a sound dewatering
plan. Harza’s goal was to pump
out the water as rapidly as
possible without triggering a
further catastrophe by causing
the walls of the tunnels and
basements to collapse from a
too-rapid release of water
pressure. Armed with informa-
tion rushed from the ISGS
archives in Champaign on the
geologic materials underlying
the Chicago area, and with the
consultation of ISGS geolo-
gists, Harza Engineering was
reassured that the predominant-
ly clay materials would permit
them to proceed with their
plan to dewater the tunnels as
rapidly as possible.

Take a Geological Field Trip!
The first geological field trip
of spring will be Saturday,
April 17 in the Harrisburg area
of Saline County in southeast-
ern Illinois. The trip will cover
gently rolling bedrock hills,
thinly mantled by glacial
deposits, as well as the more
rugged, unglaciated section
known as the “Illinois Ozarks.”
Underlying much of the field
trip route is Pennsylvanian-age
bedrock that was deposited
nearly 310 million years ago
and is now an important source
of coal. Older rocks of
Mississippian age (some

330 million years old),
underlying the
Pennsylvanian strata

in the northern half of
the county, produce

oil. Fossils can be
collected from some
Mississippian rocks
where they are exposed
along the Shawneetown
Fault Zone.

Lewistown

Harrisburg

The Lewistown-Spoon
River area, site of the May 22
trip, is located in central west-
ern Illinois in the Galesburg
Plain, formed by glaciers about
200,000 years ago.

Blanketing the surface is
eight to 25 feet of windblown
silt (loess) of Illinoian and
younger Wisconsinan age
(approximately 150,000 to
12,000 years old). Spoon River,
immortalized in both Indian
lore and modern literature, has
eroded down through the
glacial deposits and exposed
Pennsylvanian and

Mississippian
bedrock in its val-
ley walls. At sever-
al places along the
top of the steep val-
ley walls, the view
of the picturesque
river valley below

is breathtaking.
Rocks, minerals, and
fossils can be collected

Energy Exhibit Continues at Chicago Museum

“Energy: Choosing Our
Future” runs through April 25,
1993, at the Chicago Academy
of Sciences, 2001 North Clark
Street, Chicago. This exhibit
looks at coal, oil, and natural
gas as well as alternative fuels
such as nuclear energy, solar
energy, and wind power. A
resource section is loaded with
energy-saving suggestions, and
an interactive computer system

challenges visitors to make
individual choices about their
use of energy. At the end of the
exhibit, a computer terminal
shows them how their choices
would affect their family bud-

Old Stone Face overlooks the
lower topography surrounding
Harrisburg. The large flat areas
near the town were once the bot-
tom of an extensive, but short-
lived, glacial meltwater lake.

from glacial gravels. Fossils
are abundant in some bedrock
strata.

Open to all, these free
expeditions provide frequent
stops for exploration, discus-
sion, and rock and fossil
collection. The field trips are
especially helpful to teachers
planning earth science, geogra-
phy, and history units.

For additional information
on times, suggested clothing,
and meeting places, write
the ISGS, 615 E. Peabody,
Champaign, IL 61820, or call
(217) 333-4747. The hearing
impaired should call TDD
(217) 785-0211.

get and the local, national,

and global environment and
economies. A major goal of the
exhibit is to help people make
informed personal choices
about their own energy use.
The Geological and Water
Surveys served as consultants
to the exhibit designers. (See
“The Future of Our Energy
Resources,” The Nature of
Illinois, Spring/Summer 1992.)

te

Pollution Prevention Awards
In December, eight Illinois
businesses, industries, and trade
and community organizations
received top awards for their
hazardous and solid waste
reduction programs in the sixth
annual Governor’s Pollution
Prevention Awards competition.
An additional 16 companies and
groups were awarded certifi-
cates of merit.

Two facilities singled out
for their broad-based pollution
programs were Navistar
International Transportation
Corporation (Melrose Park)
and Chrysler Corporation
(Belvidere).

Examples of other award-
winning innovative programs
are as follows:

The Chicagoland
Processing Corporation (Mt.
Prospect) developed and patent-
eda system to reclaim silver
from film. Contrary to standard
industry practice, no cyanide is
used in their improved recovery
process. The silver recovered is

Paint Disposal Study Presented
HWRIC’s Research Program
Manager Jacqueline Peden
described current disposal
practices of Illinois paint man-
ufacturers and users at a
Hazardous Waste Conference
for Southern States last fall.
The conference was held in
Biloxi, Mississippi. The infor-
mation presented was based

on a comprehensive study pre-
pared by the Research Triangle
Institute, Research Associates

12

CENTERING ON WASTE
Hazardous Waste Research and Information Center (HWRIC)

used to mint commemorative
sports coins (they are licensed
by the NBA, NHL, NCAA, and
Major League Baseball) and the
remaining film components are
shipped to Eastman Kodak for
reuse in new film.

Justrite Manufacturing
(Mattoon) achieved 100% reduc-
tion in paint-associated waste
and VOC (volatile organic com-
pounds) emissions by replacing
their solvent-based spray paint

_ line with a solvent-free powder-

coated product. This new prod-
uct eliminates toxic emission to
the air and allows oversprays to
be recovered for re-use. Not
only has Justrite achieved a
higher quality paint finish, but
worker safety is much improved.
The waste prevention team
at Hevi-Duty Electric (Mt.
Vernon) reduced the amount of
PCB-contaminated debris from
the remanufacture and decom-
missioning of electrical distribu-
tion equipment. They also
established a waste-tracking

and HWRIC to meet the man-
date of the Governor and the
Illinois General Assembly. The
Executive Summary of Paint
Waste Reduction and Disposal
Options is available through
HWRIC, One East Hazelwood
Drive, Champaign, IL 61820.

Lieutenant Governor Bob Kustra presents the Governor's Pollution
Prevention Award to Richard Zielinski and Dan Wenstrup of the
Chemical Industry Council of Illinois. (HWRIC photo by Laurie Case)

system for measuring the actual
waste reduction achieved
during varied processing times
and under different conditions.
In 1991 a $3,200 investment
reduced plant waste by one-half.

The Interlakes
Companies, Inc. (Pontiac)
reduced plant disposal costs by
$189,000 (79%) by working
with their paint supplier to elim-
inate heavy metal (lead and
chrome) from their paint, while
maintaining their high-quality
finish. Improved housekeeping
practices, the replacement of
chlorinated solvents with non-
hazardous cleaners, and
employee training programs
resulted in a high degree of
cooperation and increased
worker safety.

The Chemical Industry
Council of Illinois promotes
pollution prevention through its

117-member trade association
by conducting educational pro-
grams for industry, students, and
teachers; by actively supporting
USEPA’s 33/50 Program and
IEPA’s Partners in Prevention
Program; and by promoting their
own Responsible Care programs.

Applications for the awards
were reviewed by HWRIC, a
division of the Illinois
Department of Energy and
Natural Resources. The Illinois
Environmental Protection
Agency does a compliance
review and the finalists are then
approved by the Office of the
Governor. HWRIC, a non-regu-
latory agency, works closely
with Illinois industries, small
businesses and manufacturers,
and community groups to help
them implement pollution pre-
vention programs and solve
waste problems.

HWRIC Director Elected to Head Advisory Board

Last fall HWRIC’s Director
David L. Thomas was elected
Chairman of the Advisory
Board of the National
Roundtable of State Pollution
Prevention Programs. Thomas
has been a member of the
Roundtable advisory board
since it was first established
in 1990.

The Roundtable is a
national forum the purpose of
which is to promote the devel-

opment, implementation, and
evaluation of efforts to avoid,
eliminate, or reduce waste gen-
eration. It is the only organiza-
tion devoted strictly to this
topic. The Roundtable Board
was expanded in 1992 and now
has representation from each of
the ten EPA Regions and at
least 44 states. Consultants and
industry representatives can
join the Board as non-voting
members.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

It’s the year 2050, and the weather in
Illinois isn’t what it used to be. The wind
blows harder and it doesn’t rain as
much—bad news for Illinois farmers, who
are harvesting less corn and sorghum.
The average temperature is 90°F or
hotter on two out of three summer days.
In Chicago, the ozone levels are higher
and more people are suffering from
heat-related illnesses. The beaches along
Lake Michigan are huge, and some of
the harbors have turned into dry docks.
No wonder: the water level in the lake is
nine feet lower than it was in 1990.

his forecast of the future is one of

several possible outcomes—and

probably the most extreme—
according to scientists in the Illinois State
Water Survey’s Global Climate Change
program. The program’s director, Stanley
Changnon, and his colleagues are studying
what might happen to the level and sup-
plies of water in Illinois and the Great
Lakes if global warming occurs. Global

Stanley Changnon

Can We Get Ready for It?

by Carolyn Arden Bresler

Regional Contributions to the Enhanced Greenhouse Warming

India (4.0%)

Rest of the World (36.0%)

Where do the green-
house gases come from?
The USA accounts for
the largest piece of the
greenhouse-gas pie
except for “the rest of
the world.” Illinois
contributes about 1%
of the world total.

Brazil (4.0%)

measurements indicate that atmospheric
concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO,) will
double by the middle of the next century.
That could cause the average global tem-
perature to rise as much as 9°F. If this hap-
pens, the climate of Illinois could become
more like that of Texas and Oklahoma:

hot and dry. Such a drastic change would
wreak havoc on our water resources by
increasing evaporation, reducing stream
flow, and drying up water supplies.

As Changnon says, “Global
climate change represents the single
greatest environmental threat that humans
have created.”

Why should the citizens of
Illinois be concerned about global climate
change? For two reasons: Because our
agricultural and natural resources may be
significantly altered by a change in the
climate, and because laws designed to
control global warming—such as limiting
the release of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere—may greatly affect the
Illinois economy, local industries, and
the daily lives of those who live and
work here.

Illinois (1.0%)

Former USSR (14.0%)

EEC (14.0%)

China (7.0%)

Rest of the USA (20.0%)

In 1991 the Illinois General
Assembly designated the Water Survey as
the state’s center for scientific research
and information related to global climate
change. Under its mandate “to monitor and
study the atmospheric and water resources
of Illinois,” the Water Survey has collect-
ed more than 100 years of weather
records. Its database is among the best-
documented in the world—which makes
the Water Survey an ideal place for cli-
mate change research. The purpose of the
Global Climate Change program is three-
fold: to study climate change and its poten-
tial effects (natural, social, and economic);
to monitor climate-related environmental
changes; and to disseminate information
about global climate change and its
research to the public, scientists, planners,
and government officials.

“The problem with the word
‘global’ is that most people don’t think
it’s something they have to worry about
here at home,” says Stephen Vermette,
Assistant Director of the Global Climate
Change program. “But the fact is, you
can’t escape it. ‘Global’ includes Illinois

13

We live ina

ide and other gases produced by
industry and other man-made
and natural sources accumulate
in the atmosphere. These gases
act like the glass panes of a
greenhouse, letting in the sun’s
warming rays (1) and trapping
the infrared energy that
is radiated from the
warming (2). As, 3s

a result the air is Poa
heated (3). %

and if the citizens of Illinois are going to
make wise decisions about the climate
change issue, then they must have high-
quality scientific and technical information
about the subject.”

Tracking the Climate

Monitoring the daily weather and climate
conditions is important to the Water
Survey’s work. “We continually track con-
ditions—such as temperature and precipita-
tion—to detect deviations from a baseline
and see how change is developing now so
that intelligent remedies can be invoked as
necessary,” says Illinois State
Climatologist Wayne Wendland.

To date, historical data shows that
Illinois has previously experienced shifts in
its average annual temperature. From about
1887 to 1930, there was a warming of
2.5°F, followed by a cooling of about 1.5°F
up until 1980. Since 1980 warming has
resumed, but it is too soon yet to tell if this
is a continuing trend or just a brief fluctua-
tion. Detecting a true shift in the climate of
Illinois is very difficult because of the ran-
dom fluctuations in our climate that last
from five years to several decades, accord-
ing to Changnon.

While the Water Survey’s written
records go back 100 years, scientists can
estimate past climate conditions using nat-
ural records. Measuring the width of tree
rings can tell a lot about the temperature,
precipitation, and flood history of an area.

14

+O
Greenhouse. Carbon diox- Ege Ry

But, as Wendland points out, “only a few
trees in Illinois are older than 200 years.”
To get into the more distant past, scientists
can study the sediments that settle each
year in bogs or lakes. Bog cores in Illinois
preserve pollen, which can reveal the vege-
tation record as far back as 12,000 years.
Geologic records allow us to estimate the
climate as far back as 200,000 years.

“The problem with the word
‘global’ is that most people
don’t think it’s something

they have to worry about
here at home.”

Stephen Vermette, Assistant Director of the
Global Climate Change Program.

The Greenhouse Effect
The earth’s climate is always changing.
When dinosaurs lived here, the global tem-
perature was a steamy 27°F warmer than it
is now. And when northern Illinois was
buried in ice 12,000 years ago, it was
about 9°F colder.

Scientists don’t completely
understand how various factors interact
to cause major climate shifts; however,
recent evidence suggests the importance

of shifts in cloud-cover, changes in the
orbit of the earth around the sun, and vol-
canic eruptions. (Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption in
1991 led to a much cooler summer in 1992
than was expected.) Some human activities
may also have a global impact—for exam-
ple, by releasing CO, and other trace gases
into the atmosphere. This last phenomenon
is acomponent of global warming, or the
greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is really a
natural process that has been going on for
millions of years. It involves certain trace
gases in the atmosphere which help keep
the earth’s temperature at a “livable” level.
These gases act somewhat like the glass
panes of a greenhouse, letting the sun’s
warming rays pass through to the earth and
trapping some of the infrared energy that is
radiated back upward. As a result, the earth
is kept 45-54°F warmer than it would be if
no “greenhouse gases” were present.

“Without the greenhouse effect,
we couldn’t survive,” says Vermette. “It
would be too cold.” He explains that global
warming is really an enhanced greenhouse
effect caused by human activities. Over the
last century, the atmospheric concentration
of CO, has increased 25%—largely due to
the burning of coal and oil for energy.
Other greenhouse gases produced by civi-
lization include methane generated by rice
growing, feed lots, and landfills; nitrous
oxide emitted from autos, trucks, and
chemical fertilizers; and chloroflurocarbons

(CFCs), used as refrigerants. The United
States contributes 21% of the world’s green-
house gases to the atmosphere and about
1% of the global total comes from Illinois.

Common sense tells us that adding
more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere
will cause the atmosphere to heat up. But,
as Vermette explains, we don’t yet know
how this will impact the global climate or,
equally important, the regional climate.
“What we’re concerned about, of course,
is the amount of change in temperature,
rainfall, storms, and all other weather
conditions, as well as just how rapidly
conditions will change.”

Changnon asks key parallel
questions: “How well can environmentally
sensitive species and other physical condi-
tions adjust to the likely changes? And can
our society adapt to these changes—or will
we need to reduce gas emissions to mini-
mize the negative effects?”

Working Together to Study a Global Issue
To find the answers to these questions, the
Water Survey is soliciting input from spe-
cialists around the country. “Our major
objective is to pull together our scientists
and those in other disciplines to tackle an
environmental issue that involves water,
weather, biology, agriculture, politics,
industry, and more,” says Changnon.
Several of the research projects
are designed to study the impact of climate
change on a regional scale. One of these is
the development of future climate scenarios
for the Great Lakes region. In collaborative
efforts with the Great Lakes Environmental
Research Laboratory of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA), Water Survey scientists are using
a computerized hydrologic model of the
Great Lakes to see how different climates
might affect the level and supply of water
in the lakes. To test the effects of a warmer,

Greenhouse gases are on the rise. Over the
last century, the atmospheric concentration of
CO, has increased 25%, largely due to the
burning of coal and oil for energy.

SURVEYING ILLINOIS

“Global climate change
represents the single greatest
environmental threat that
humans have created.”

Stanley Changnon, Director of the ISWS
Global Climate Change Program

a

wetter climate, they are using 40 years

of weather data from Alabama and
Mississippi—and plugging them into the
Great Lakes hydrologic model. To test a
warmer, drier climate, they are using data
from Kansas and Oklahoma.

So far this project is exploring
only the physical effects of climate change.
But Changnon wants to look at the social
and economic impacts as well. “We have
to take the next step,” he says. “If the
climate changes, what will happen to lake
transportation and shipping? What will
happen to shoreline interests around the
lake—the harbors and private properties?
How should owners and our government
respond? This is the kind of research we
hope to launch in the future.”

Some of the current Water Survey
research is focusing on the causes of local-

ized climate change. Human activities have
already created notable local and regional
changes in climate. For example, one
project is looking at how a major heat-gen-
erating city like Chicago affects its local
climate. Another project is analyzing the
effect of jet contrails on cloudiness and
atmospheric temperature. (Evidence
strongly suggests that jet contrails along
the east-west flight corridor across the
Midwest have caused a 20% increase in
cloudiness over the last 20 years.) This fac-
tor could reduce surface temperature by
deflecting some of the sun’s radiation
before it reaches the earth. Other projects
consider the agricultural, economic, and
social impacts of climate change: how corn
yields are affected by changes in the water
supply; how urban governments in the
Great Lakes region have historically
responded to climate fluctuations; and how
we can develop an Illinois action plan for
greenhouse gas emissions.

Projecting the economic impact
on large cities is a vital part of global cli-
mate change research, says Changnon.
“Seventy-five percent of our populace
lives in major metropolitan areas. We need
to provide good evidence of what a change
could mean to people. Would it mean
poorer or better health? What would warm-
ing cost each person? $5 or $10 per year?

Atmospheric CO, increase in the past 250 years

360
350 |
340
330
320
310
Determined from air
300 trapped in ice cores
290
280

270 |
1700

Determined from direct
measurements

Year

1900 2000

Illinois Temperature (5-Year Mean Values) 1840-1990

Annual Temperature, F°

54 |
2a)
52 |
51 |
50

49 |

SR ried Sage as a eed

48 |. pine Seah:
1840 1860 1880 1900
If you can’t estimate the economic impact,
then you cannot provide the policymakers
with enough incentive to take action.” With
this in mind, Changnon, a group of scien-
tists, and Chicago and state officials are
currently planning a major research project
to study how changes in climate might
affect the Chicago urban area. They will
also be looking at what actions, such as
energy conservation, might help minimize

the growing greenhouse effect.

Educating the Public

In addition to conducting research and
monitoring climate change in Illinois, the
Water Survey is charged with “disseminat-
ing information” about the issue to a broad
audience, including scientists, policy mak-
ers, and the general public. Heading up the
Information Team is Vermette, who lec-
tures on climate change to people of all
ages and backgrounds.

Last fall he spoke at a meeting of
the Illinois Science Teachers Association.
“Science teachers are interested in the glob-
al climate change issue because it touches
every discipline,” says Vermette. He tries
to help teachers explain the greenhouse
effect and other climate concepts to chil-
dren using simple analogies and stories. For
example, the enhanced greenhouse effect is
like getting into your car on a hot summer
day when all the windows are shut, or like
wrapping blankets around the earth. The
more blankets (pollutants) that we add to
the earth’s atmosphere, the warmer it gets.

16

1920

|
fears

é 1960

1940 ~ 4980-2000

To teach children how important
our atmosphere and the greenhouse gases
are to life on earth, Vermette uses a story
he calls “The Tale of Three Planets.”

It’s sort of a take-off on the classic
“Goldilocks,” with three different planets—
Mercury, Venus, and Earth—replacing the
three bowls of porridge. Mercury has no
atmosphere to hold the temperature con-
stant, so when the sun goes down, it’s “too
cold.” Venus, with an atmosphere com-
posed of as much as 90% CO,, is way “too
hot.” (It’s an example of global climate
change gone wild.) Earth, with its atmo-
sphere of oxygen, nitrogen, and just a little
CO, and other greenhouse gases, is “just
right” at a comfortable average of 60°F.

“In not too many years, these chil-
dren will be adults,” he says. “And it will
be just about the time when bills will be
introduced in Congress and global agree-
ments will be starting. They will be
informed—from a very early age—about
climate change and its possible impacts,
so that they can make informed decisions
about the necessary laws.”

As part of its public and technical
information efforts, the Water Survey pub-
lishes scientific papers and sponsors confer-
ences designed to create a multidisciplinary
forum for discussion. Global climate
change researchers are already working
with scientists from the Environmental
Protection Agency, the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, the
Illinois Department of Energy and Natural

How has climate changed in Illinois? From
about 1887 to 1930, there was a warming of
2.5°F followed by a cooling of about 1.5°F
until 1980. Since 1980 warming has resumed,
but it is too soon yet to tell if this is a continu-
ing trend. The temperature trends for Illinois
hold true for North America and the Northern
hemisphere as well.

Resources, and several universities. The
Survey is also reaching out to the business
community. A Global Climate Change
conference held in late October provided
an “economic and business perspective”
on the global climate change issue. (See
“Currents” on page 12.)

“We hope that, by providing
these forums, there will be more dialogue;
more research, more information, and,
ultimately, a better understanding of the
issue,” says Vermette.

ede 2

The Water Survey has
a database that is among the
best-documented in the
world, making it an ideal place
for climate change research.

arog fe ~

“The future climate, even without
the enhanced greenhouse effect, is certain
to be somewhat different than it has been
in the last 20 to 50 years, due to natural
fluctuations,” says Changnon. “We have
developed a lifestyle within the constraints
of climate. When climate fluctuates just a
bit, even today, there are losses. We must
get ready so we can develop sound strate-
gies for the future.” =

Carolyn Arden Bresler is a science writer
and director of media relations and
publications for The Chicago Academy
of Sciences.

|

ar

Northwest Illinois makes myth of the notion that the entire state is flat.

he whole world is empty except
for the biker gliding downhill
ahead of you. A mist locked in low

pockets of the hollows contrasts with the
sweet and brilliant sunlight that is sharp
and warm on your face. Following the dots
on the highway fills you with a strange
and foolish joy. This is the biking you

came for.

Geology: A Visceral Experience
Northwest Illinois makes myth of the
notion that this state is all flat. Pleistocene
glaciers, which invaded and produced a
smooth landscape almost everywhere else
in the Midwest, left this area untouched.
The resulting topography and abundant
flora and fauna make biking, hiking, and
flower and bird watching unique.

This “driftless region,” which
escaped the many glaciers rumbling
through the region, extends north along the
Mississippi to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, south
to Savanna, Illinois, a few miles into lowa,
and to the east side of Jo Daviess County.

Geology is more than a big word

when you hike or bike here. It’s a visceral

experience—the ache of your calves as
you climb a steep hill, the sweat on your
brow cooled by a river breeze, the
exhilaration of a long coast downhill,
punctuated by frequent braking to stay
within the speed limit. Here you live the
geology.

Years ago when my spouse,
Frank, and I first passed through the area,
we decided its dips and climbs would be a
vigorous workout for avid bikers. We are
past our “avid” years, but a weekend here
suits our slower style as well. Hiking in
the Apple River Canyon, Mississippi
Palisades State Park, and Galena Territory,
and biking along the Mississippi River, we
find nature easy to enjoy.

In May, we follow the Primrose
Trail of the Apple River Canyon and climb
an ancient cliff whose walls, from the
Ordovician age, are 400 million years old.
Hundreds of feet below, near the chuck-
ling river, the tiny bird’s eye primrose, a
relic of prehistoric times, dots the canyon
ledges with delicate pink flowers.

Further west, in the Galena

Territory, eastern bluebirds nest in trail

boxes erected by the Eagle Ridge Inn.
The blue flash of color on the male bird in
flight takes our breath away.

At the southern edge of the
driftless region, in the Mississippi
Palisades Park, delicate shooting stars and
Dutchman’s breeches, and larger Virginia
bluebells and trillium carpet the hills along
the Sentinel Trail. Fifty feet away, across
a deep chasm, rock climbers test their
strength and nerve on dolomite towers
formed aeons ago.

Yes, the terrain here is special.
Dr. John Bouseman, an entomologist at
the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS)
and resident of the area, describes one of
his favorite landscapes. “West of Elizabeth
on Route 20, the terrain creates an optical
illusion, as if the hills are sloping in
towards you. You're on a ridge, but it feels
like you're in the middle of a saucer.”

Elsewhere, in fields, giant
boulders seem to be slowly slidins
downhill. Jim Quick, a nature enthusiast
says, “That’s exactly what they're doing
Caprock of dolomite sits on top of the

more easily eroded Maquoket hale.”

Galena

AREA ENLARGED

A map of Jo Daviess County

As the shale, covered by soil and grasses,
weathers apart, the caprock becomes
unsupported and breaks off. Then, taking
thousands of years, it creeps down the
hillside. Everything here goes a pace
slower.

Steep Hills, Winding Roads

This land, where the horizon is just a hill

away, is great for hearty bikers. But it can
be enjoyed as well by hikers, and “casual

cyclers,” who go a little slower and see a

lot more.

Biking out of Galena on
Blackjack Road, which parallels the
Mississippi River to Hanover, we see a
road sign, “Be Alert. Winding road next
14 miles.” It doesn’t exaggerate.

In May, traffic is light. (October,
with its fall colors, is the busiest month.)
This “sheep in the meadow, cows in the
corn,” kind of scenery conjures up images
of the headless horseman, Ichabod Crane,
galloping through spooky hollows. Two
miles down the road, near Chestnut
Mountain, Sugar Camp Hill rises
relentlessly—proof that glaciers did not
level the area. We walk our bikes up the
hill, stopping often to rest and take
pictures.

For the next six miles the road
follows a gently contoured ridge. Bucolic

scenes of pasture and forest are visually

CHESTNUT
MOUNTAIN

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

APPLE RIVER CANYON
STATE PARK

EAGLE RIDGE INN
(Galena Territory)

Elizabeth

Hanover

restful; physical rest comes as a long,
gradual descent leads into a valley.
Members of the “High Pointers
Club” bike to Charles Mound, located on a
crop field. At 1,235 feet, it has no distin-
guishing characteristics, but the club’s
goal is to bike to the highest point in as
many states as possible. Other cyclists
come to northwest Illinois individually and
in groups, from as close as Galena and as

A male eastern bluebird calls to his mate in a
fledging box at Eagle Ridge Inn. (Photo by
James Quick)

far away as Russia. They are all ages—
from 7 to 70—and come rarely or
regularly.

The Tour of the Mississippi River
Valley (TOMRYV) rides through Galena
every June, biking up one side of the
Mississippi and down the other. Another
favorite with hearty bikers is the
Stagecoach Road from Galena to Warren.
Those seeking less traffic try the Galena
Territory, where roads wind along golf
courses, and most return to the same point.

On the Bluebird Trail

In spring and fall, northwest Illinois is part
of a major flyway for migrating birds
following the Mississippi River. One bird
making a comeback in the area is the
eastern bluebird.

Barbara Siekowski and Jim Quick,
members of the Natural Area Guardians,
monitor a bluebird trail, a series of boxes
100 yards apart, at the Eagle Ridge Inn
near Galena. “One reason the bluebird
declined was lack of nesting sites,” says
Barbara. “A cavity nester, it built its nest
in rotted trees or wooden fenceposts.”
Many of these have been replaced with
steel fencing. “Also contributing to its
decline were chemicals sprayed on lawns
to reduce broad leaf weeds. The bird,
which is a ground feeder, ingested
chemical-covered insects.”

Barbara keeps a weekly log on the
bluebird trail. Installed in 1991, the boxes
fledged 22 birds their first year.

“This place is ideal for the birds,
who prefer a mixed habitat of mowed
lawns, longer grasses, and trees with open
branches for parents and fledglings to
perch,” says Jim. Fledglings may stay on
their first perch for a week or more.

Not to be confused with the noisy
blue jay, the male eastern bluebird has a
blue back and wings, and a red breast.
The blue on its back is an astonishing,
flamboyant, shouting blue. “It is electric,
like it’s plugged into a wall socket,” says
Jim. The bird has more than color to

A rainbow frames the countryside on Route 84 between Savannah and Hanover.

commend it. A smaller cousin of the robin,
seven inches to the robin’s nine, the blue-
bird is a thrush.

“These are familial birds. If one
parent is killed, the other will not abandon
the nest.” Bluebirds are capable of raising
two and three broods in a season, and first
fledglings often help raise the second
brood.

Before the bluebirds arrive, Jim
cleans ant nests out of the boxes and sees
that invasive species such as house spar-
rows, European birds introduced to North
America, haven’t nested in them. Later he
checks that cowbirds, also a European bird,
haven't laid eggs in the nests for the
bluebird to hatch and raise.

Barbara records the number of
bluebird eggs, keeps track of how many
become hatchlings, and how many fledge.
The birds are accepting of all this human
intervention. “I’ve heard of cases where the
person has to lift up the brooding female
to count her eggs,” says Jim.

Last week, the first box had

three eggs; today it has five. The female

generally starts to incubate when there are
five eggs.

A wren has beaten the bluebirds
to the next box and has started a nest. Jim
leaves the sticks untouched. Wrens, like
other native songbirds, are protected by
law. The box is not ideal for bluebirds
anyway. “This habitat is a little too bushy.
We left the box up so wrens and chicka-
dees wouldn’t compete for the better
bluebird boxes.”

Barbara says, “Chickadees have
about nine eggs; they make the most
beautiful cradle of moss.”

In the next box they find five two-
day-old bluebird hatchlings. “We leave a
window closed from 13 to 18 days after the
chicks hatch,” says Jim. “We don’t want to
disturb the feedings or startle the young.”
Chicks fledge at about 14 days. “In some
cases, on a first flight, they'll go as far as
700 yards. That’s like getting your driver’s
permit and heading out on the Kennedy
Expressway in Chicago!”

Dr. Scott Robinson, ornithologist
in the INHS Center for Wildlife Ecology,

says that most songbirds live for two to
four years. Their migration journeys are
arduous, and when they arrive in their
wintering grounds, they often find their
habitat has been destroyed.

“Bluebirds do not make long
flights deep into the tropics. They are
short distance migrants, usually traveling
between 100-150 miles. “Their wintering
grounds are mostly in the gulf coastal
grasslands and marshes, and in the last
few decades, that area has undergone a
dramatic conversion to rice, corn, and
soybeans. It is one of the most rapidly
disappearing habitats in the country.
Though they can live eight to ten years,
the average bluebird probably has only
one breeding season.”

“Increasingly, we’re coming to
recognize that a lot of birds in trouble in
the East are those that winter in what used
to be the coastal grasslands.” The coastal
grasslands areas include parts of East
Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, and maybe
a bit of Georgia, that once had extensive

areas of grassy shrubs, marshes, and

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

Soil and grass-covered Maquoketa shale erodes, exposing caprock of dolomite boulders.

(Photo by Diana Milesko-Pytel)

bayous. Perhaps that is why some blue-
birds winter in Jo Daviess County. But
even then, their fate is not secure. Ice
storms, bitter cold, and deep snow that
keeps the food supply covered kills many
bluebirds that try to winter up north.

It is evident that Barbara and Jim
enjoy talking about bluebirds. “It’s a way
to educate people to the value of creatures
that are part of our natural heritage,” says
Barbara.

Recently, Jim lent a curious
tourist his binoculars. “He was overjoyed.
As a child on Long Island he loved
bluebirds, but they disappeared from the
area. He hadn’t seen a bluebird in 30 years.
“People have these links to nature that are
deeply meaningful to them. They are more
than just childhood memories. They are

ties to something innocent in their lives.”

The Gaiena and Apple Rivers

Rivers are corridors of distribution, not just
for plants and animals, but for people as
well. Galena, a town whose name means
“lead sulfide,” sits along a river that
empties into the Mississippi. A hundred
years ago it was a busy river and mining
town. But the mines were shallow, and the

railroad stole away the river traffic.

20

Galena’s population shrank, and so did
the river.

Flowing at the foot of the
business district, the river once brimmed
with packet steamers and paddle wheel
boats. “Now it’s all you can do to turn a
rowboat around,” says Bouseman. Silt
from the surrounding farms choked the

river, and dams on the Mississippi bound
the streams. “The only time there’s much
movement of water is when there’s a lot of
rainfall. But even that’s not enough to
flush it out.”

Dr. Lawrence M. Page, director
of the INHS Center for Biodiversity,
recently completed an assessment of
biologically significant streams in Illinois,
including the Galena and Apple rivers in
the northwest part of the state. “You can
judge water quality by the diversity of
clams in the river bed. They are like the
canary in a mine. Many are intolerant of
silt. “Both the Galena and Apple rivers
suffer from siltation and barnyard
pollution.

“The Galena has not been
sampled for mussels, but it’s not in as
good shape as the Apple. There are three
documented species of fresh water mussels
in the Apple River. I suspect there are
more, but we need to go in and look
around. Surprisingly, there are some forms
of life in the Apple River that are not
found elsewhere. I'd like to see more of
the Apple preserved, and the Galena

Built on a hill with steep streets, much of the town of Galena has been restored. It is known for its

many antique shops, restaurants, inns, and B&Bs.

restored. The Sierra Club is working at the
state level on how to write legislation to

best protect our streams.”

Bird’s Eye Primrose

A tiny pink flower, the bird’s eye primrose,
grows on cliffs both in the Apple River
Canyon State Park and farther upstream,
outside the park boundary. “It prefers moist,
narrow shelves such as a river canyon wall,”
says John Taft, INHS staff scientist, who
specializes in flora. “Moisture from

the river saturates the limestone cliff face.”
The primrose distribution is from Labrador,
west. In Illinois it appears at the southern
edge of its range. Though delicate-looking,
it is a durable flower.

“Plants occurring in their southern-
most range in Illinois are often relics of
cooler Pleistocene climatic conditions.
Northern flora migrated south with the
advancing glaciers. As the glaciers
retreated, some plants found a niche, and
survive today. “After the Ice Age ended
about 10,000 years ago, the primrose
survived a period of hot, humid climate,
the Xerothermic Period, which ended
4,000 years ago.”

Remnant Prairie

When Barbara and Jim were asked by the
Eagle Ridge Inn resort to do an inventory
of wildflowers in the Galena Territory, they
expected to find perhaps 50 species; they
found more than 200. They also discovered
a remnant prairie, less than an acre in size.
“It’s not absolutely virgin, but it has prairie
plants and flowers,” says Jim. “It’s in its
glory in late summer and fall. In May it
looks like an unkempt lawn.” With roots
that go down ten to 16 feet, prairie can
survive drought; fire helps it by retarding
woody growth, shrubs, and trees.

A larger prairie near Chestnut
Mountain is being restored, ten acres at a
time, by the Natural Area Gardening Group.
The whole complex, donated by private in-
dividuals and the state, is about 1,000 acres.

When finished, 100 acres will be prairie.

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS |

Apple River Canyon State Park remains a natural, undeveloped area with primitive fac ilities

It is a paradox, perhaps, that this
area, which predates ancient glaciers, is
undergoing a kind of rebirth. Birds are
returning; prairies and rivers are being
restored; even the town of Galena is being
revitalized. And that is good. For the land
here is evocative of a simpler, more
innocent time. The landscape, birds, and
flowers have put our hectic, citified lives
in perspective.

When we leave, it is with a deep
sense of gratitude and rejuvenation. The
bluebirds and shooting stars, the hills we
biked and cliffs we climbed, have given us
a better appreciation of what Barbara
means when she says, “Nature is incred
ible. It’s a wonderful thing to study all

your life.”

Diana Milesko-Pytel sails, bikes, hikes,
and writes her way through the great out-
of-doors. A regular contributor to local
and national publications on health,
education, and the environment, she
teaches college students and gives
seminars on such topics as critical

thinking and communications.

For information on accommodations,
events, and natural areas in Jo Daviess
County, call the Galena-Jo Daviess
County Convention & Visitors Bureau
(S800) 747-9377.

Photos by Joel Dexter except where

indicated

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

DIGGING FOR KNOWLEDGE

by Jean Gray

“You do the best darned geology you can
and promote its application to meet human
needs.”

John P. Kempton, Senior Geologist and

Head of the ISGS Quaternary Framework
Studies Section

or nearly 40 years John Kempton

has been involved in doing some

pretty darned good geology at the
Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS).
Currently, Kempton and his ISGS team are
in the second year of a three-year coopera-
tive venture with the US Geological
Survey. They have just completed a
drilling and sampling program, building
on what has been learned in the past about
what lies beneath the ground in IIlinois.
Using up-to-date technology and computer
mapping techniques, they will refine what
is known about that section of Illinois
known as the Champaign 1:100,000
Quadrangle. When the job is completed,
the ISGS will produce maps that will tell a
story about a 1,900-square-mile area cov-

ered by glacial deposits averaging 250 feet
thick and about two million years old.

The Champaign Quadrangle
was selected as the pilot study area by Dr.
Kempton and Drs. Richard C. Berg (ISGS)
and David R. Soller (USGS) because its
geologic diversity makes it ideal for devel-
oping and evaluating techniques that will
help set future standards for state-of-the-
art three-dimensional Quaternary map-
ping. (Quaternary refers to the period since
the beginning of the last major geological
period, one to three million years ago, dur-

ing which continental glaciation was

extensive.) Quaternary materials laid down

Drilling near Foosland, one of four key locations in the Champaign

in Champaign County range in thickness : i :
oe : = 1:100,000 Quadrangle, produced cores from the surface of the earth down

to bedrock. “The idea,” says Kempton, “is to fill in the blanks of what we
know from well drillers’ logs, previously collected core samples from high-
way and other construction sites, and existing maps so we can describe the
nature and distribution of materials at and below the earth’s surface.”

Glacial till meets sand and gravel at a contact point in the core.

Preliminary interpretations, made in the field, help geologists know

what to expect in the next core drawn from the earth.

from 50 to 500 feet and range in composi-
tion from organic materials to thick glacial
pebbly clay (till) to sand and gravel (out-
wash). The area contains a major sand and
gravel aquifer as well as several less exten-
sive, but locally important, aquifers.

A serious gap exists in Illinois and
the nation in the availability of large-scale,
detailed geologic maps for solving every-
day earth-related problems. These maps are
needed to describe the nature and distribu-
tion of earth materials at and below the
earth’s surface. This pilot project of the
USGS and ISGS will eventually lead to a
state mapping program at a scale of one
inch equalling 2,000 feet (1:24,000). Less
than 20% of the nation and only about 3%
of the state have been mapped at this scale.

“We want to go as deep and learn

as much as we can,” says Kempton. These

basic geologic maps can be interpreted
for land uses such as: siting construction
projects; selecting sites for highways and
landfills for municipal and low-level
radioactive wastes; developing zoning
regulations; locating and protecting
groundwater resources; identifying areas
that might be sensitive to over-application
of agricultural chemicals; and locating
resources such as sand and gravel. The
ratio of benefits to costs has been quanti-
fied by the ISGS at about three-to-one
in a study of mapping in Boone and
Winnebago counties. (See “Geologic
Mapping Pays!” The Nature of Illinois,
Fall 1991, page 11.)

The Geologic Mapping Act,
signed by President Bush in 1992, calls for
a national geologic mapping program with

the USGS as lead federal agency working

Core samples are described, carefully
wrapped, labeled, and sent to the lab for
more detailed description, analysis, and
interpretation. The small tins contain rep-
resentative samples cut from the cores
and sealed for added protection. They will

be measured later for moisture content.

in association with the states and territo-
ries. Illinois has contributed $135,000 to
the current project, an amount matched

by the federal government. m

Photos by Joel Dexter, ISGS Graphics and

Publications Unit

Dr. Kempton and geologist
Myrna Killey explain field
notations to ISGS staff
members. ISGS team mem
bers in the field also take
time out to teach informa
geology lessons to

SCHOOL ¢

THE NATURE OF ILLINOIS

A New Chief for the Water Survey

John T. O’ Connor assumed his
new post as Chief of the Illinois
State Water Survey last
September and within a month
was addressing a standing-
room-only audience at the third
annual William C. Ackermann
Distinguished Lecture Series on
Water Resource Issues. His
topic: “The Water Survey: Its
Contributions to the State and
the Nation—Past, Present, and
To Come.”

Although he prefaced
his talk with the admonition that
he was “new on the job” and
would welcome those more
knowledgeable to teach him
about the Water Survey, there
was no question at lecture’s end
that the new chief knew exactly
where the Water Survey had
been, how it had developed over
the years, and where it should

direct its energies in the future.

Dr. O’Connor comes to the
Water Survey from the
University of Missouri at
Columbia (UMC), where he had
been a member of the research and teach-
ing faculty of the Department of Civil
Engineering since 1975. There he served
as professor and department chair, with
several appointments to the C.W. LaPierre
Professorship of Civil Engineering. His
most recent publications have focused on
the chemistry of drinking water and water
treatment.

You Can Go Home Again

Prior to his tenure at UMC, Dr. O’Connor
spent nearly 15 years on the civil engineer-
culty of the University of Illinois at

L Champaign, where he attained the
rank fessor.
24

Chief O’Connor: “
Survey, their tradition of excellence and strength of purpose. As for

even in the world.”

the laboratory facilities, they are some of the finest in the nation—

(ISWS photo by Linda Hascall)

Now, back in Illinois, O’Connor
intends to deal forthrightly with difficult
issues such how to assess and deal with
Atrazine (a chemical fertilizer which has
been a bounty to Illinois agriculture but a
growing factor in groundwater and stream
contamination) and developing method-
ologies to chart the best course for a
defensible low-level nuclear storage facili-
ty. Perhaps one of the most difficult issues
O’Connor will face is how to compete for
private, state, and federal grants to
enhance the Water Survey’s ability to con-
tinue to excel in the face of shrinking state
general revenue funds.

O’Connor recognizes that after
his 17-year absence from Illinois, he

= 30256 eb) |

I’m really impressed with the people at the Water

returns at a time when environ-
mental concerns appear to be at
odds with economic concerns:
“Tt shouldn’t be that way,” he
says. “Long term degradation of
the environment produces disec-
onomy. Conservation is not the
enemy of business—it makes the
delivery of goods and services
more efficient. Sound environ-
mental policy should be a hand-
maid of the economy, a helpmate
to enterprise.”

A New York native, Dr.
O’Connor holds a bachelor’s
degree in civil engineering from
The Cooper Union, New York; a
master’s degree in civil engineer-
ing from the New Jersey Institute
of Technology; and a doctorate in
engineering from The Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Dr. O’Connor has been
the recipient of a Fulbright
Fellowship and the Simon A.
Freese Award and Lectureship
from the American Society of
Civil Engineers. He is a Fellow
of the American Society of Civil
Engineers, a Life Member of the American
Water Works Association, and a Member
of the American Chemical Society, the
Water Pollution Control Federation, the
American Society of Limnology and
Oceanology, and the International
Association of Water Pollution Research.
He is a registered professional engineer in
Missouri, New York, and Illinois.

The new chief, the seventh in
the Water Survey’s 98-year history,
succeeds former Chief Richard G.
Semonin, who retired in December 1991,
and Acting Chief Mark E. Peden, who
served in the interim. @

Laurie Talkington
ISWS Publications Office

The Nature of Illinois Foundation

Gaylord Donnelley (1910-1992)
Founder, The Nature of Illinois
Foundation

Board of Directors

Edmund B. Thornton
President, Edmund B. Thornton
Foundation, Ottawa

Bruce Callow
The Northern Trust Company
Wheaton

James R. Anderson, Jr.
Chicago Extruded Metals
Company, Hinsdale

George Farnsworth, Jr.
Farnsworth & Wylie
Bloomington

Janice D. Florin

Amoco Chemical Company
Chicago

Kenneth W. Gorden

Kenway Farm, Inc.
Blue Mound

Ralph D. Grotelueschen
Deere & Company
Moline

Timothy M. Lyons
Chicago Board of Trade
Lake Forest

James D. Nowlan

Taxpayers’ Federation of Illinois
Springfield

George J. Oberlick

Turris Coal Company

Elkhart

Albert Pyott

Illinois Nature Conservancy
Winnetka

William L. Rutherford
Forest Park Foundation
Peoria

Harvey Sheldon
McDernott, Will & Emery
Wilmette

Jeffrey R. Short, Jr.

J.R. Short Milling Company
Chicago

Susan C. Stone

Urbana

Roy L. Taylor, Ph.D.
Chicago Horticultural Society
Glencoe

Donald A. Wallgren
Waste Management, Inc.
Oak Brook

Charles W. Wells
Illinois Power Company
Decatur

Staff

John D. Schmitt
Executive Director

Jean Gray
Associate Director

Illinois Scientific Surveys

Morris Leighton, Chief
Illinois State Geological Survey
Lorin I. Nevling, Chief
Illinois Natural History Survey
John T. O’Connor, Chief
Illinois State Water Survey
David Thomas, Director

Hazardous Waste Research and
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