Taking into consideration the next 100 years: the reversal of the Chicago River

Amy: 00:06

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast, where we explore the environment we see everyday. I'm your host, Amy Lefringhouse.

Abigail: 00:15

And I'm your cohost, Abigail Garofalo.

Amy: 00:18

And today, we are here with Phil Nicodemus. He is the research director at Urban Rivers, and I took a look at your picture, Phil, online, your profile pictures on the Urban Rivers website, and it looked like you had some stylish, maybe, chainsaw chaps on. And then maybe in other pictures, I saw you in, waders, so you must be all over the place. So

Abigail: 00:48

Yes. Welcome.

Phil: 00:50

Thank you. That is mostly just to try out these different accessories of field style and, you know, you gotta look good in any situation, and that's the first and foremost responsibility of this position. But yeah. Yes. We've got a couple of historic photos up there, and I tend to be the one operating a chainsaw.

Abigail: 01:12

Gotta keep up with the trends.

Phil: 01:13

That's right. That's right.

Amy: 01:14

That's awesome. Well, we are really glad that you're here, Phil, and we're really excited about kind of a, I don't know, different angle topic. Of course, our listeners know we are focusing in on water for this season of our everyday environment series, and, we're gonna look take a look at where history and our water resources kind of interact together. Right? So I guess to start us off, Phil, just tell us give us some background information before we dive into this history and natural resource, you know, I guess, intersection.

Amy: 01:56

Just tell us what you do at at Urban Rivers.

Phil: 01:59

Yeah. So, in Urban Rivers, we are really all about, taking some of these underutilized or abandoned spaces along urban waterways and kind of turning them into something that is much more usable for wildlife and people. It's an important connection because I think in a lot of times, you know, resources tend to go into, you know, national parks and, like, big wildlife refuges and things like that, and that's that's very important, and we're the bulk of the money that should go truly, when we have such finite resources to protect places and such finite time in which to protect them. But the urban environment, I think, has gotten really, you know, the short end of the stick here and that, there's been a lot of disinvestment. This is something that goes back and you feel it throughout history and you kind of see it in the ways that these cities get designed and carved up and things like this.

Phil: 03:06

And it's just an important position because this is where a lot of people live and a lot of people in these areas, don't get a whole lot of access to nature and opportunities to be in truly wild spaces. And even when it's, an area where it's got a park or something like that, it's all turf grass and maybe like an ornamental maple or something like that or oriented towards different people's needs, which is understandable. It's a big metropolis, but, you know, you have to take these opportunities where you can, and the waterways end up being a perfect, perfect example of something that you can really turn into a very vibrant and well connected space. And that that's important for wildlife, for already moving along this ecological corridor that, you know, even all the industry and all the buildings and all the gray infrastructure we built up and along any river system, you'll still find trees and plants trying to find a way and you're mind things scurrying along broken down seawalls and, you know, with our organization and our flagship project, the Wild Mile, that's kind of the biggest thing that we've really been focusing on is taking, this area that wildlife clearly desperately wants to be.

Phil: 04:26

And instead of just having them there by accident, making a deliberate space for wildlife and then also creating with a great amount of intention, opportunity for people to be able to experience that for free and accessible to everyone. Because those are the powers of urban environments, and I don't see a way as a as a human society, we get through kind of all these energy needs and climate change issues without living closer together and living together more efficiently. So, it's a small, small project in a very large field of great needs. And, you know, it's important for us to just play whatever part we can and and do our little bit and hopefully inspire more people to want to go and spend more money and resources and time and conserving this place and other places because, hopefully, it'll mean more to them at the end of everything.

Abigail: 05:23

Could you talk a little bit more about, like, what is the wild mile? Because it is such, like, a a novel project, I feel like, that people might wanna hear, you know, like, what is that? What does it do? What does it mean to have this space for wildlife and for humans? What does that look like?

Phil: 05:38

Yeah. So the wild mile I mean, we've been at this for quite a few years now. Truly a labor of love and grassroots effort, but built on a lot of other hard people's work and a long history of, you know, this is just something that the city was ready for. The Goose Island Canal, which is an artificial canal, makes Goose Island an island. It's in the north branch of the Chicago River, dug by the first mayor of Chicago.

Phil: 06:07

Very industrially centered area, adjacent to the infamous Cabrini Green Housing Complex, which were providing a lot of the workers for the peoples in these factories on Goose Island and things like this. But it goes back, you know, a century or more of just like grain shipping and timber and all this really, like, old industry that made Chicago what it is. This canal got dug to, I don't know, like, 18 feet deep. And where it is now, it's only, like, 5 or 6 feet deep, maybe 8 feet its deepest point. It's been really filled in.

Phil: 06:42

All the industries have moved out. It's an obsolete canal. The few barge users of huge larger ships that are going up the North Branch are going around the west side of the island rather than using this. So it ended up being great opportunity. And I think the city had kind of interest and started to do things.

Phil: 07:00

There were a couple other groups poking around, but ultimately, a couple of the cofounders and just a group of people started trying to push for this thing, which is a vision of using this space as a park space, as an open space that was truly natural and wild because there's something about being on the Chicago River in particular. You know, you're 6 feet, 8 feet, 10 feet down from the surface. And it's just it feels and it sounds like a different world down there. And then you see a great blue heron and then you see a kingfisher and then you see a beaver swimming around and muskrats, and you kind of it hits you all of a sudden that, oh, there's a lot of cool stuff going on, and people don't really get to realize it. So

Abigail: 07:43

All while driving by, Kedzi or something like Yeah.

Phil: 07:48

You're driving past what is gonna be the new casino and, you know, you're driving past the mega development and this old rail yard is now gonna be these big new condos and all this other stuff. Low and behold, you know, right under your feet, there's a massive snapping turtle that would take the world by storm. You know? So the wild mile is, yeah, just taking this underutilized canal and really trying to fit what we can into the space that we've got. And so, Chicago River level is controlled very tightly.

Phil: 08:19

It fluctuates, you know, anywhere drops maybe a foot when they expect rain or snow melt, and then they let it fill back up. And when they're trying to move water through the area, it can get, like, 6 or 8 feet higher and, you know, significant flashes in some points. And especially, again, climate change, storms more frequent and more violent. Anything that you do has to be able to handle these. Also have a need for the center of the river to be accessible by emergency boats or things like that.

Phil: 08:49

So the stuff that we could design in there had to fit within these certain parameters. We settled on the most effective solution that we could get done quickest, which would be floating, artificial wetlands, which are just basically floating structures where the roots of the plants are growing hydroponically out of the river water, and you get this kind of easy habitat pieces where you're just adding on bits of native plants here and there, and then everything you would expect to come from nice native diverse plant communities. You start to get a little bit in here. Root systems are dangling underneath. That's a lot of structure for fish and parafytin to grow and everything to hide behind and lay eggs on and all that good stuff.

Phil: 09:34

You have some pollution removal, based on the plant growth and other kind of microbial activity. You get a little diversification of the flow of the river. You get a little nooks and crannies here and there. It's just really easy pieces of habitat to add into this big empty box that is the, you know, the old canal. So, and then also taking that and adding a floating walkway alongside these floating wetlands so that not only do these things exist, but people get to get right up close to them.

Phil: 10:05

You get to see the monarch on the milkweed. You get to see the muskrat stealing our plants and running back to store them in the fridge on the other side of the river. You you get to see all these things up close that you don't normally get to. There's a lot of other cool places in Chicago that are really do nature within an urban environment very well, but this is very much a hybrid thing where there was just nothing there before. You're not gonna be able to break down the seawall.

Phil: 10:31

You're not gonna be able to do all this work. You'd like to be able to do in a river restoration, but you can create these really unique elements that also allow people a really unique opportunity within the city to just walk right up and see something really cool on your lunch break.

Abigail: 10:47

Awesome. We took the Cook County Master Naturalists to go see this site. We went kayaking. We got to be in the Chicago River. It is a really wonderful site.

Abigail: 10:56

I definitely encourage all of our listeners to check it out if you're ever kind of doing a little trip to the city or anything. It's it's so cool. It's free. It's publicly accessible. I wanted to make sure that project had to be able to be talked about because it's it's how I know you, Phil Yes.

Abigail: 11:09

Yes. As well. What we came here to talk about today is the history of the Chicago River, and why the heck would we would talk about the Chicago River in the first place? It's just one river in Illinois, not even the biggest river in Illinois, right, not even the biggest body of water in Illinois. And so why are we featuring this site?

Abigail: 11:29

And so to help us set the stage, I guess, where is the Chicago River, and what are the other bodies of water surrounding it that are part of the story of this river?

Phil: 11:39

Yes. And this is one of the most fascinating histories of just, like, a really specific time and and even kind of just exists in this really specific time of geological history where it's like everything is set up for this specific spot on the planet to be really, really interesting. And, yeah, the size of the river doesn't matter. It's about the flow. It's about the the, you know, under the undulations, and it's about the natural aesthetic.

Phil: 12:11

Yes. The the Chicago River system is super interesting. So, basically, the formation of the Great Lakes, the Great Lakes themselves are not really that old of systems. You know, 20,000 or 25,000 years old, that's a blink of an eye kinda geologically. So Chicago sits at the point in which there's a big melting of some of these glaciers, and there's a big dam that busts open an ice dam that ends up creating, like, the Moraine Hills State Park downstate a little bit.

Phil: 12:46

It's just this point at which this huge dam broke and there's this gigantic deluge of water and this big washout and slow draining to the point where Chicago would eventually become land. In Chicago or just south, there's this little community called Blue Island named such because it was literally an island at one point. And all these kind of cities that have names like Palos Heights and Ridgeview and things like that used to be overlooking kind of this sort of formally submerged, but that dam breaks, all that water drains out. And what you left

Abigail: 13:20

To clarify, Phil, by dam, you mean geologic dam. Right? Like, it's not like this we're talking way before Right. Human Chicago establishment.

Phil: 13:28

It's a great point. It's an ice dam. It's, like, basically formed, oh, just because the interior of the big iceberg is melting, and it creates, like, this little bowl where there's a bunch of meltwater that's pooling up, and that is all breaking. That ice dam is breaking at once. So, yeah, we're talking about an enormous, enormous forces that are shaping the better part of the state here.

Phil: 13:53

That drainage leaves us with a very low lying area upon which Chicago sits. But this is also, like, critically important. Because this just happened, there's now a continental connection point between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. So this is enormous connection point. And because human societies throughout history have found in themselves on rivers, it really shouldn't be anybody's surprise that there's just tons of interest in settling along these rivers where you're talking about Native American communities or more recently colonialists.

Phil: 14:31

And this is it ends up just being such a unique point in the continent because you do have these unique factors that allow an relatively unimpeded traffic between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and the wider river ways. And so it just ends up being such an important part. But Chicago being so low lying and still having to drain really means that we've got a couple of interesting sort of relics. And on the western edge of Chicago is the Des Plaines River. So that runs from north into Wisconsin.

Phil: 15:07

Further west, there's the Fox River. But the displinings is really the thing that kind of connects us here. It heads down south, then southwestward. The Chicago River has generally in the past had two points. They've had north branch and a south branch, which in those days would connect into the main branch, which would then flow out into Lake Michigan.

Phil: 15:32

That south branch was the important connector point because you could come into the main branch off of the lake. You can go down the south branch, and there was this 3 mile long muddy lake and then Portage Creek that would then connect you to the Des Plaines. And so after making the entire voyage across Lake Michigan and traveling all the way down the South Branch, you only had to drag your canoe across 3 miles of a muddy lake covered in leeches and things like that to then get on a creek to then have access to the rest of the river system. So nice and convenient for a lot of people. You can imagine being a young Potawatomi lad trying to make that journey to, you know, get from one village to another, and it's really interesting, but that was what settled for convenience back in those days.

Abigail: 16:24

And there's a park there now, like, kind of, documenting that history. Like, Portage Park is a space that has, I think, like, a monument or of some kind, like, art there that showcases, like, this was a historic space in which, like, commerce occurred to to transport between the two systems.

Phil: 16:47

Yes. Yeah. And that's, you know, the state at which when it was under the when the Council of Three Fires are there, when it's the when it's a very Native American kinda controlled area, It's very communally based, and it's very gathering space based. And it's it's meant to be this point at which all these different cultures from across the Great Lakes and across the region come together to meet in trade and things like that. And in many ways, even after, you know, colonialism really occurs, it's still like that to a great degree.

Phil: 17:21

And now the the tenor in which the river systems were treated or what changed in the greatest sense where native communities would tend to, you know, treat the river the river with a little more reverence. I kind of, the some folks we had talked to before treated it. I called them, like, you know, taking care of your brother or something like that, feeling like it was a familial connection relationship with these river systems to a point where we get into 18 fifties United States and, rivers are much more about extraction of resources, and rivers are much more about being controlled and damned and channelized and things like this because the things that make rivers very vibrant places with lots of habitat and lots of different, you know, plant and animal species hanging around are the very things that make it difficult for shipping and navigation. So obviously, if you're trying to set up an industry, it does not help you to have to drag something across the 3 mile muddy lake. So, hey, let's get rid of the lake and let's straighten things out, and it gets to this point in Chicago where that original system, that, you know, South Branch to Lake to Portage Creek system eventually gets replaced by the I and M Canal, which is done, you know, maybe 1850s or something like that.

Phil: 18:48

You start to get that connection point and that ends up, changing the landscape a good bit. The West Fork of the South branch would still exist even as the Ship and Sanitary Canal, which was built to replace the Illinois and Michigan Canal, that gets built. So at one time, you have 3 different things running in parallel. At one time, you have the Illinois Michigan Canal, you have the Ship and Sanitary Canal, and you have the West Fork of the South branch all running alongside each other in the same direction. Each one making the last one obsolete from a kind of shipping and commerce standpoint.

Phil: 19:25

And eventually, the whole thing is made obsolete by the connection on the Calumet River down south. And so a different, wider, larger river with easier connectivity to the rest of the, Mississippi waterway is dug, and that's completed by, like, 1930. So we spent all this time digging 2 canals along the one branch for only to be made obsolete by a different canal a little bit to the south. And then for those things to be made obsolete by rail and highways and planes and things like that. So we talk about these enormous infrastructure and all these scars that we put on this landscape and all this kind of destruction of habitat and removing of the things that make rivers so vibrant.

Phil: 20:12

And we got maybe a 100 years of usage out of it. You know? So this is just a great example of the real shortsightedness on, you know, human part where we have all this in this engineering going into something that just is you know, it put us on the map and it was very important at the time, but it also set us on a path for that being the case for the next you know, we have to now spend all these time and resources to fix these issues rather than just just letting them be and kind of letting them be as they were. So it's this inherent tension, especially in cities, where the waterways, you want them to be what they should be, but the the the city is constricting them and it's confining them and it's forcing them into this box and it's making them such that they can't do the things that are be as part of the natural world as they should be. So, yeah, it's an interesting point, and these rivers have been so altered.

Phil: 21:12

And the thing that people generally know about, is the reversal of the river. And so apart for it being for shipping and commerce, also an important water source for Chicago for a while, too many people were getting cholera, which is a waterborne, pathogen. Basically, too many people are pooping in one area. You're poisoning your water source and spreading this, even further. So the first response of Chicago is to is to literally dig the Ship and Sanitary Canal named such because you're trying to kind of fix the You they dug it all out, and then they broke the dam on the south branch, that then caused the water to drop very rapidly such that the level of the river for that time in the main branch in the south branch was lower than the lake.

Phil: 22:03

And so they have the lock and dam system at Navy Pier in downtown Chicago. So by keeping the lake higher than the river is how they ended up reversing the river and sending all of the, detritus of human civilization downstream.

Abigail: 22:20

Wait. Hold on. So the the lake was higher than the river, or the river was higher than the lake?

Phil: 22:28

Yes. The river generally flowing downstream was higher than the lake, and so the north and south branch would meet at the main branch, which would then empty out into the lake just all based on gravity, which, again, very low and flat. So it's already quite sluggish and not moving a whole lot. But in this case, in order to reverse it, they dug backwards, knocked the dam down. All the water from the river rushed down there, lowering the level of the river beneath that of the lake, and so they could always keep it coming off of the lake from then on.

Abigail: 23:04

So for Lake Michigan to now be the kind of source of the Chicago River, essentially.

Phil: 23:10

Yeah. Yeah.

Amy: 23:11

I guess historical circumstances, you've talked about the transportation, the commerce, and then you've talked about public health. Were there any other circumstances going on at that same time for this decision to reverse the flow?

Phil: 23:30

Yeah. Well and so and the reversal didn't even really take care of what they were hoping to. So the other part of this is that in order the first thing and the the I guess it goes even further back from that. So Chicago, very low lying. They built it originally all out of wood, kind of in the center little plug of the city.

Phil: 23:55

And when you're that low and that the river system is so sluggish, it was like even using the river as a sewage system, which is what a lot of old very old cities did, there just wasn't enough gravity to move the water away quickly. So the first step that Chicago ever did is built it literally jack the entire downtown up on stilts.

Abigail: 24:19

Human solutions are sometimes so funny to me. Like, when you think about, like, when you're someone who is always thinking about, like, what's the nature inspired solution here, and then you kind of, like, I don't I'm not I'm not in the engineering realm as much sometimes, but I just, like, giggle sometimes when the answer is, like, let's just lift up an entire the city.

Phil: 24:38

Not only that. There are stories of moving these wooden houses, these wooden buildings that, like, all the downtown shops were on and, like, literally rolling them to the other side and rolling them out of the way to the point where they'd be, like, people would be in them using them as they're getting moved to the other side of the river only for them to get burnt down in the Great Chicago.

Amy: 25:04

Fire. Oh.

Abigail: 25:05

So Wait. So the the the fire is a good point. As far as, like, historical, like, just anchoring goes, where are we talking about as terms of, like, reversal of the Chicago River and then the fire? Like, which one was first and so that way everyone kinda has, like

Phil: 25:20

Oh, the fire is gonna have happened first. The first thing would have been jacking the city up on stilts. And then the

Abigail: 25:30

as one does

Phil: 25:31

As one does as one does. The fire would have happened. A lot of the fire debris actually got pushed into the lake and created a good amount of lake frontage, which is, I guess, making lemons, yeah, lemonade. So, yes, the great fire happens, and then the reversal of the river happens. In between the reversal in the river and the fire, they have dug them 2 miles out into Lake Michigan to build the water intake cribs.

Phil: 26:00

So their first solution was just have the water intake be far enough from the city such that the pollution from the river that was still emptying into the lake wouldn't reach the water intakes. So their first solution was we'll dig, you know, 100 feet underground, 2 miles out to build these massive water intakes, and that's, like, that's the first bid. And then the second bid

Abigail: 26:26

So that'll that'll our that'll be our our hopefully clean water source. Yeah. Right? But, you know, water doesn't care about political boundaries or if they say that. So

Phil: 26:36

The pollution was too mighty. So, you know, they the solution didn't even work and say, yes, then the reversal of the river and the combination of those two things, sets the city up for where it's going to be. And by the time , the 1930s is when the Calumet is fully hooked up and the Illinois waterway becomes the thing it is today. So by about the thirties, even into the fifties, the West Fork of the South Branch in the I and M Canal is still getting filled in in bits because they were obsolete and because they were just like stinky little sewers as well as the saw the east fork of the south branch of little bits that are filled in. So, you know, once you probably get to about 1960, the whole system is probably configured as you would see it today.

Abigail: 27:29

Okay. So you're saying it was mainly was the public health concern. Right? It was our we were doing what we shouldn't have done, drinking the water that we were not supposed to drink, or polluting our own waters. So we did it work?

Abigail: 27:46

Like, did are we I mean, I guess it's like what it looks like today, but were there other measures that had to be taken after? Like, were we seeing a successful now, at least for the city of Chicago, right, on water

Phil: 27:58

So it it worked it worked phenomenally from a public health from a Chicago's public health standpoint. All the stuff that got flushed down was just getting pushed downriver. And so some of the first and this is actually natural history survey and, you know, U of I. Some of the first surveys that are done out in the Illinois River our, Forbs.

Phil: 28:22

And at some point, I believe in, like, the 1910s or so, it may be around World War I ish, they're describing as 90% of the biomass that they're pulling out of that river as being carp or goldfish. So there just isn't stuff alive because in certain stretches, it is just the entirety of the continent's meatpacking industry being concentrated in this one area and all this incredible pollution being dumped in and it's like that. You know, that's what they're sending south. But for a long way southwards, you're getting all these kind of horrible effects. And then also throw on top of that the fact that you're converting a massive prairie state into an agricultural industrial powerhouse.

Phil: 29:09

So all of these areas that should be providing habitat and filtration of water and are now getting fertilizer and pesticides dumped on them. So it work in a very limited sense. And I think if you're looking at kind of the long scale or environmental, aspects of things, it obviously has not worked. And we're at this point now where we've gotta put a lot of work into fixing these things.

Abigail: 29:34

So tell me a little bit more though about those impacts downstate, like, what we were seeing less biodiversity of fish species, any other, what other impacts were we seeing due to the reversal of the river?

Phil: 29:48

Yeah. And it's not even necessarily the reversal of the river. You know? I think in general, the concept of, you had enough volume of water after about 7 river miles to consider a lot of things have, you know, the the point sources of pollution are not necessarily as prominent the further down river you go. So even though

Phil: 30:13

St. Louis was complaining about all this stuff getting sent down to them, it really was not Chicago stuff ending up in St. Louis necessarily. It's the entirety of the state going from one point to another and all of that stuff also during the end that would contribute to these issues. So, yeah, very locally in Chicago. I mean and it's truly just everything, but it things on a wider landscape scale too.

Phil: 30:40

You know, like, bald eagles now being around here, and we we can point to the specific chemical that was doing that. You know? There's there's also just an incredible you know, we think of freshwater mussels as being particularly sensitive to their environment. And in the Chicago region, throughout the most of the city now, you probably can only find one native mussel species, the giant floater, maybe some white heel splitters. But in general, all these things that you would expect, the macroinvertebrates, and we do sampling for these all the time.

Phil: 31:13

In areas where there's just so much organic material and all this kinda nasty, fluffy pollution laden stuff at the bottom, those environments favor worms and leeches and things like that that are breaking down organic material disproportionately. So it it's an effect from the bottom up. It's like every bit of it, not to mention the fact that, when you get big pulses of algae, just like when you end up with these dead zones at the mouths of all these rivers and oceans, it happens in rivers themselves and in lakes and things like that. Just the complete loss of oxygen in areas that even if you have pockets of robust ecosystem, if they're getting shocked with 0 oxygen events pretty regularly, You're just gonna see this, and this is truly what's happened in a lot of these places, just a toppling of ecosystems and survival of things that are extremists in a lot of different ways. And so, yeah, it's just it's something that you'd be able to feel no matter what part of these river systems you're going into more acutely or less acutely.

Phil: 32:18

But in Chicago, it's just there's no habitat and all this legacy pollution. It is pretty impressive that things have found their way, but even so, the water infrastructure resource resources that the city and the state federal government have put in to start cleaning up this section have had huge impacts. And we've seen the fish population rebound, and we've seen these diversity of different types of organisms and finding things that you wouldn't have expect to find necessarily. And so there's there's reason for optimism, but you can't, you know, you go back a 100 years and things look pretty pretty bleak. You know, it's it's hard to see a way out of that.

Phil: 33:03

And some of it has just been time. Some of it has been time and clean air and clean water act made a big difference in the seventies. And then, you get the underground reservoir project, which starts getting dug in the nineties, which is basically just all these they're digging a bunch of tunnels to connect the stormwater infrastructure to these big old limestone quarries that collectively are able to hold trillions of gallons of stormwater so that when storms do come through, our sewage system is not overwhelmed, and we don't have to dump raw sewage, untreated sewage into the river, which is, again, one of those pollutants where it's a huge shock to an ecosystem. And if you don't have a very healthy and robust ecosystem, things can get toppled and get out of hand pretty quickly. So just yeah.

Phil: 33:56

Another one of those pieces where we we've got a lot of legacy pollution, but there's still stuff that happens today. Salt, pulses of salt will end up. You know? This is just kinda typical of urban streams throughout the country, throughout the world, really, but very acute and with a very long history in Chicago.

Abigail: 34:14

As, you know, what a a lot of you said kinda like I was thinking about, like, what kinda connects them all. There's all these water is, like, the ultimate kind of connector of our landscapes. Right? Like, watersheds are even though it's not a in a river and a stream, the water is gonna make it do a river and stream eventually, and then you know so it can't just be boiled down to, like, one factor that causes an issue. There's a lot of other complicated systems and structures that exist that cause, you know, maybe sediment pollution and erosion or nutrient pollution, which is, a big thing that, you know, Extension works on as well.

Abigail: 34:48

And then, you know, pollutants, we haven't even done a lot of research on and understand even completely, are things that are all part of and then also on top of dealing with, like, old systems. Right? That now that we know more information, we know they're bad. Right? So Yeah.

Abigail: 35:04

Working within those those knowledge and and just, like, all the really complicating factors that deal that come with water in general, which is why we wanted to talk about it this whole season. Right? We were like, we can't just do 1 episode in water. We're gonna do 12. So

Amy: 35:18

Yeah. We when you were talking about earlier, Phil, too of, like, these solutions that they had back in the day, it just made me think of, like, the, well, I guess, I wouldn't say permanence, but, you know, when we're making decisions today or we're, creating programs or initiatives or whatever, like, we have to think longer than just that, like, you know, what's gonna happen tomorrow, the next 100 years, you know, just trying to take a lot of that into consideration. But are there you talked about a few, I think, but are there any current projects or initiatives that are going on? I mean, obviously, your program, you know, that are going on in in the Chicago River that you wanna highlight.

Phil: 36:03

Yeah. I mean, that's the Chicago River in particular, and is is our uniqueness as a city. You know, other places have other cities have it's all kind of the same challenges, but they each have such unique contexts. And the city in the way in which Chicago finds itself is very controlled. What's going to happen over the next 10 or 15 years is gonna be very controlled by how developments along the river are done.

Phil: 36:37

Our hope is that the Wild Mile and some of these other projects, we have floating islands up at River Park, more in the north branch where the North Shore Channel and the actual north branch meet. We've got floating islands down at Bubbly Creek on the South Branch in partnership with Shedd Aquarium and a couple other groups. We're hoping that these things are footholds of nature in areas that are gonna get redeveloped pretty rapidly. And if they're done in a wrong way, are just gonna lock us into another 100 years of gray infrastructure. If they're done the right way, you have these incredible opportunities.

Phil: 37:16

And I I think the biggest thing for us is, like, when we talk about the historical context of these things, really impressing upon people. Like, look. These these guys spent this much time and this much money to mess up the river. Why are we not even spending a fraction of that to kind of make it better?

Phil: 37:36

Really trying to convince these developers who are ultimately the ones that control what happens on their stretches of the river, trying to convince them that the better path forward is worth the investment. And I think there's a lot of great examples throughout the city from a lot of different groups who are doing things on a lot of different scales, and everything kind of unified a little bit by the city of Chicago's River Governance Task Force, which we're a part of, which a lot of other groups are a part of. There are positive things for sure. But the the fact that it is in private development hands just it just means that there's a great opportunity that we really could miss, and it'll be for the dumbest reason of all. We just didn't have a little bit of money at the time to kind of put it into things.

Phil: 38:27

So there are great examples. Like, I'm thinking specifically of, like, Big Marsh Park down in the on the Calumet River, and it is like it's attached to the Illinois International Port District. Like, there's a lot of shipping that goes on still throughout there, but there's this kind of side channel, this side area where it's just off of the river just enough, but it's a huge area for a lot of really unique habitat. They've done a lot of work to kinda remediate those areas. And that is, I think, a great example of the attempt at doing this the right way where you're not just making something for this industrial commercial purpose, but you're also giving credence to public access and using it as in seeing as more of a natural resource rather than a thing to exploit.

Phil: 39:19

In Chicago River in particular, you know, Bubbly Creek has been really a focal point for a lot of groups. There's a need for trail connectivity there, so there's a whole lot of neighborhoods on the on the southwest side of the city that are not gonna get their connection to the river frontage if there isn't this kind of wider, trail network developed. You know, all the affluent areas of the city that shed their industrial tenants and are getting replaced by condos and whatnot are gonna get this nice river walk that's connected all the way downtown, and there's a risk of the same communities they've been disinvested in for all this time or yet another thing that they don't get access to. So there's some there's some things down there that you really want to a lot of the neighborhood groups are rallied around. A lot of the environmental justice communities are rallied around.

Phil: 40:11

Thinking about the collateral channel further down, it's more on the Ship and Sanitary Canal. But in that process of building the different canals, this channel was dug to connect the Ship and Sanitary Canal to the west fork of the south branch because there was a guy who built a bridge too low such that people couldn't get across. And so now there's this weird random former connection point that now just dead ends because they fill them the

Abigail: 40:42

I'm sensing a theme, like trial and error on a massive scale.

Phil: 40:47

A lot less thought that went into this than you would think they would be. And then there's all these, like so there's great opportunities down there because these barge slips and these former connection points actually bypass all this continued industrial area where you still have industrial tenants and you still have a lot of, you know, you know, job creating industry. You get these little fingers that poke past those industrial zones and come right up to the neighborhoods. So there's opportunities there. And again, it's one of those things where if a new industrial tenant comes in and they wanna put barge access and that's gonna inherently block out people's access, That's something that we're hoping to push back against.

Phil: 41:29

And so, yeah, Wild Mile is just one example. The Park District has a lot of great sites that have been made, stronger over the years. The city owns a couple of lots here and there. People's Gas had 11 sites along the river where they would turn, basically fossil fuel into lamp oil. So they had big piles of coal sitting right on the river. coal or whatever. They would process it, and then they have this tar sewer that would dump right out into the river underneath that. So they have these leavened places where, they have to do this remediation work both on land and in the river. One place that is the exception is actually Bubbly Creek where the EPA said that there was so much new urban pollution that had come up and stacked up on top of their pollution that they weren't liable for it anymore because there was no way it was gonna escape all the new layers of pollution that had built up over time. So it's fun.

Abigail: 42:30

Oh, you made it your problem now. That's what they Yeah. I'm sensing a a theme among a lot of these projects, Phil, though, is, like, it's a lot of them are, like, community driven, community collaborative projects. Right? It's not just somebody coming in and saying, we need to clean this up.

Abigail: 42:49

We need to do something about this. Let's fix it. and I'm thinking of Big Marsh in particular, a site that's I've been to several times, and we've also taken Master Naturalists there that really is about incorporating the needs of the community, the needs of the site, the needs of the, the the environment there as well. And the like, so this kind of confluence of, like, human and environmental need working together while also recognizing and incorporating the history of that landscape as well. And I think that really creates a really successful equation for combo or whatever for for being able to actually do something about remediation of of the river and things like that.

Phil: 43:33

Yeah. We'll make it part of the process too. I mean, like Yeah. And all those pieces down in the if community were not involved in the process, then, you know, things would just oh, isn't that a nice little park there? If they're involved in the process, then they're gonna start, well, why can't why is it so hard for me to get over there?

Phil: 43:51

And that's true of Big Marsh, especially. It's this great resource, and you've gotta walk across train tracks and major roads and highways. And so even the people that are supposed to be benefiting from this can't get there without a car. It's the kind of thing that would engender more political pressure. You know, when you have a resource to go to that people wanna get to, there's more of a reason to keep pushing for it versus I mean, throughout the river, that's one of the biggest things that anybody could say.

Phil: 44:23

Why invest in the river? A lot of oh, it's a dirty, stinky, whatever body riddled place. Like, all the just silliness you hear in these different context from people. And it's like, no. Actually, we can show you how improved this is and how the the impact that resources and community effort has made on the improvement of the health of this river.

Phil: 44:46

We actually don't even have that much further to go. You know, we know what to do. This isn't a .. you can't make the argument that we went through all this trouble to reverse the river and dig all these channels, and all of a sudden, we can't do anything anymore. Mhmm. This is yeah.

Phil: 45:02

It's a community driven process, I think, because of all time, the communities have been the ones most left out from the river in the first place. So it makes sense that when we're kind of refocusing who should be in the driver's seat of these assets, it really should fall in these groups. And they've got a lot of their stuff to work on too. You know? They've they've got a lot of different, priorities in their neighborhoods and their constituencies, but, hopefully, projects like ours can main maintain focus and keep momentum in building these things so that we don't get locked out in these communities that are, been kept away or not kept away anymore.

Amy: 45:44

Mhmm. Yeah. That's really amazing. You guys, I mean, just hearing from you and talking to you today, Phil, it's it's just very inspiring and, you know, just to know that that people are paying attention to that and you're involving and you're being very strategic about involving community. So it's, yeah, it's really inspiring.

Amy: 46:05

So thank you. We we really appreciate you being here with us and sharing your knowledge on, this history of kind of our water resources, which really runs down towards me. Right? It runs down this downstate. So we we really appreciate you being here.

Amy: 46:26

Before we wrap up real quick, we want to, finish today's episode with an everyday observation, and this is where we highlight the normal everyday things we see in the environment, that actually happens to be really interesting. So, Abigail, I'll throw it to you first just to give out your everyday observation.

Abigail: 46:46

Yeah. So mine is, like, very typical of the time of year. I've been made aware that, my squirrel content is very popular, apparently. And so, which has brought me back to just paying attention to the squirrels again, and they just get so rotund this time of year. Yeah.

Abigail: 47:04

And I just love it. And actually, I saw one the other day on our sidewalk, and I thought it was like a a kitten, like a cat. And, like, that's how big the squirrels in my neighborhood are. And so, and they're gray squirrels. They should not be that big.

Abigail: 47:18

And so so, yeah, I'm just kind of noticing all the animals preparing for winter, particularly the very, very round squirrels in my neighborhood.

Amy: 47:27

Yeah. They and they are busy. They are busy. Yes. Phil, what about you?

Phil: 47:32

You gotta you gotta beef yourself up enough to be able to off the rats that are the size that they are on

Abigail: 47:39

Fair. Fair.

Phil: 47:42

I'm a birder. I'm a very casual bird person. I would not consider myself a birder, but I do I can tell the cues when we're with a birder, when they get super excited about something, I know that I should be excited about the thing too. So we were going around with 1 of our graduate researchers. They were looking for, beaver signs all along the river, which is a really fun day, setting up camera traps and things like that.

Phil: 48:15

And we spotted along the course of the river a great horned owl, which, the birder on the boat was extraordinarily excited about. And so I took that to mean that's a very good sign.

Phil: 48:30

And, yeah, it's just always interesting to spot an owl because you just sort of feel like you're catching them just getting out of the shower. they're like, don't look at me! What are you doing here? Stop it. Go away.

Phil: 48:44

And it was just, such a gorgeous big bird, and I've never seen one before. And apparently, it's a lifer for some of these birders to be able to see it. So, and there was just a I mean, truly a random Wednesday morning just boating down the river, and that's the kinda stuff you can find. And that's, you know, a couple years ago, we had seen a bald eagle get chased off by some crows in our turning basin just right north of us. And so all kinds of cool stuff.

Phil: 49:12

And I just go and I'm telling you, if you got a half hour to kill, go to any spot along the river with some binoculars, and you're gonna see some crazy stuff.

Amy: 49:21

Yeah. I love that. Well, I have been my everyday observation, I'm looking at I'm looking at my native garden, my native plant garden in my yard at this time of year, and I have indigo, baptisia. I have indigo in my yard and, you know, they have those seed pods that are black and big and bulky. Well and I noticed them and reminded me of another time we were out for an educational event in a prairie north of here, and I had an entomologist with us.

Amy: 49:54

And I kept open up opening up these seed pods of the indigo plant, and I'm like, these little bugs keep coming out. Oh, that's so crazy. Little bugs are coming out. And I was like, you know, putting them on my hand, and I then I went up to her and I was like, what? Like, I feel every single time I open one, there's these same bugs that come out.

Amy: 50:13

They're the same ones. And she's like, they're specific baptisia seed pod weevils. And I just didn't know. I didn't know that. I thought that was just crazy that they're so specialized to that one plant and only on its, you know, seed pod. and so I just thought that was, like, the coolest thing. It's they're not the greatest for the plant, obviously.

Abigail: 50:40

Everyone's got a place. it's ecology.

Amy: 50:43

Exactly. It is. Their food for other things, but then for the plant, they're, you know, not so great, and they can't get to all the seed pods. Right? But but I just thought that was really interesting. So maybe look out for those, you know, Baptisia seed pod weevils when you're out there.

Abigail: 51:01

I think it's wild how, like, common they are of all Baptisia though because, like, it's such a if it sounds like it's such a specialist of a species, so we'll have to do, like, a little more research on this this insect because I wanna know more, because it's not like baptisia is, like, a popular yard plant. Right. You know? Right.

Abigail: 51:24

So and maybe we'll have to call Erin in for this because she might know. But I think, like, I just I need to know more about this because I knew I also know about the baptisia weevils, but I was like, and I love weevils because I think they're really cool, looking insects, but I don't I need to know more about their ecology to, like, how do they get around? How do they get from, you know, indigo to indigo, things like that. Yeah. I just wanna know.

Abigail: 51:49

I wanna know. Some inquiring minds.

Amy: 51:51

Yes. Exactly. Like you said, Phil, like, nature is kinda happening everywhere, and we don't know how you know, it's down there on the river. It's, you know, wherever we are, it's just everywhere around us, and we don't understand it all. So I just think that's the coolest thing.

Phil: 52:09

Good dang hibiscus beetles too. We have the same thing happening with our hibiscus seed.

Abigail: 52:14

Yes. I got those too, and all I wanted to do was collect my seed. And I was like, something is munching on my seed.

Phil: 52:21

So when we have our volunteers go out, they collect a lot of the hibiscus seed. We have to be very careful to tell them, do not, if you see any holes, don't grab the pod because they'll bring them inside, and we add more than one infestation of these these guys hatch and end up on our walls and things in our office. Definitely check your seed.

Amy: 52:42

Not good. Not good. Well, cool. Well, thank you again, Phil, for being with us today on our everyday environment podcast. We really appreciate you.

Amy: 52:50

Go off and do the good work. Continue doing the good work that you're doing. So thanks again.

Phil: 52:55

Thank you. Come out to the river anytime. We'll show you around. Plenty of places to explore, Sigiri.

Amy: 53:02

Sounds great. Well, this has been another episode on the Everyday Environment podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with Kara Salazar. She is going to talk to us about compute community planning and sustainable development around water. So check back next week.

Abigail: 53:23

This podcast is a University of Illinois Extension production, hosted and edited by Abigail Garofalo, Erin Garrett, and Amy Lefringhouse.