Elgin Mayor Dave Kaptain couldn’t argue with the points made by Art Malm, who supports removing the nine dams along the Fox River. He knows taking them down will improve the river’s ecology, he said.
“(But) we are looking at this through two different lenses,” said Kaptain, who spoke at an informational forum about the possible removal of the Kimball Street dam.
He has to look at it from the perspective of what it would do to the city’s water supply, which comes from the river, he said.
“This discussion today is going to impact our community through the next century so this is important stuff,” Kaptain said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has recommended the Elgin dam be removed along with eight others along the waterway, but has left the final decision with the cities where the dams are located.
It’s become a hot button issue, as Elgin Township Supervisor Ken Bruderle learned at the Tuesday night meeting.
Elgin Township organized the gathering as an informational session, Bruderle said, but it was “hijacked” by a South Elgin group that wants to stop the dam removal from happenning, he said. The group flooded social media with posts urging people to attend.
Because there was a limit on the number who could attend, registration was required and many people had to be turned away at the door. Elgin police were on hand to provide security.
“It wasn’t supposed to be a debate,” Bruderle said. “It was something to help the public learn about this. It was pretty successful. The people who were there got a lot of knowledge.”
Malm, a South Elgin resident and member of A Free Fox River, said he lives along the waterway and is a retired civil engineer for the city of Elgin. He’s also part of the Fox River Study Group, a coalition of stakeholders working to improve the river.
The Kimball Street dam was built in 1837 to help provide power for the grist mills, Malm said.“(It) kick-started the valley’s economy, but it came with a price. Our Fox became a virtual sewer.”
In 1999, the river was deemed one of the most endangered waterways and it took an enormous amount of work to clean it up, he said. It still violates standards for algae and sludge, and the dam contributes to that, he said.
The Army Corps’ report last year recommending dam removal focused on returning the river to what it originally was, Malm said. “The Fox was made to be a river, not a series of shallow lakes. We’d like to see the Fox become a river again.”
Removing the barrier will make the water cleaner, restore fish and mussel populations, create a unique wildlife sanctuary and make it free of algae blooms, he said. The river has a “wealth of biological resources and our entire valley is home to many threatened animals, plants and endangered species as well as a variety of fish,” he said.
Researchers who use scoring tools to determine the overall ecological condition of a body of water have given the free-flowing sections of the Fox grades as high as B. Areas with a dam have a grade of F, he said.
Beyond that, the midge flies — the tiny insects that swarm around the river — will leave and dragonflies will flourish, Malm said.
Kaptain said he believed all of the points made were true but the one thing not addressed is how to resolve the city’s water problem if river levels drop too low because of the dam’s removal.
About 70% of Elgin’s water supply comes from the Fox — 13 million gallons a day. It’s been the city’s drinking water source since 1990 because the ground water supply wasn’t sufficient to meet the area’s needs, he said.
“If we didn’t do that, we would be like Joliet. They’re out of water,” Kaptain said.
Joliet will start purchasing water from Lake Michigan in 2030 because its wells can’t meet the city’s future needs. And they’re not alone. Many communities around northern Illinois have water supplies issues, the mayor said. “We’re running out of water virtually everywhere,” he said.
If the dam is removed, the river’s 300-foot width would be cut in half and water levels will drop by 10 feet in general and by about 7 feet near the Leo Nelson Riverside Water Treatment Plant on West River Road, Kaptain said.
“This could be a considerable change,” he said.
A free Fox River isn’t going to be free from a financial standpoint, he said. Elgin has already spent more than $100,000 on consultants looking at options available for the city’s water supply, he said, and moving the intake system could cost between $20 million and $25 million.
Army Corps officials have told Elgin they don’t have the funds to help pay for the intake station’s relocation, and there are other questions he wants them to answer about data that city officials believe to be outdated and inadequate, he said.
“This is very important for us. We take it very seriously,” Kaptain said. “We’re very cautious about how we move forward with this.”
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
