Slide 1: Im Faye Sinnott, the new coordinator for the Flint - PDF document

Slide 1: I’m Faye Sinnott, the new coordinator for the Flint Creek/Spring Creek Watersheds Partnership, and I’m delighted to be here this evening. The Mission of the Spring Creek Watershed is to realize a long-term vision for a healthy watershed and engaged citizenry. The Partnership’s primary goal is to educate while building partnerships for projects to improve water quality, maintain water supply, and preserve ecosystems. It won’t happen without your help. Slide 2: We all live in a watershed, or area of land drained by a river or stream system. A watershed is a multi-faceted interaction among soils, surface and ground water, vegetation, climate, people and animals. In South Barrington – most homeowners have their own wells, drawing from the shallow aquifer systems, with the Arboretum and The Woods relying on twin wells tapping the deep sandstone aquifer. The concept of watershed plans developed out of the 1972 Clean Water Act and its amendments in 1977 and 1987. Watersheds seemed to be a logical grouping for municipalities – who can be in more than one watershed – non-profits, citizen groups, so that all can work together with the common goal to protect and improve conditions in a watershed. Ground water also plays an important part in supplying water to our streams, as does natural drainage of rainfall from our lands. We are a subwatershed of the Fox River Watershed. You can see that the Fox connects with the Illinois River, which ultimately joins the Mississippi. Slide 3: Even though we live next door to the Great Lakes, we cannot take good water supplies for granted. Perhaps you’ve heard about Joliet’s challenge of depleting their deep aquifers in the next 20 to 30 years. They are investigating alternatives, including the Kankakee or even the Fox Rivers, or possibly Lake Michigan. Or maybe you have read about Wauconda’s multi-year effort to source Lake Michigan drinking water when one of their shallow aquifer wells went dry in 2012 (Wauconda gets water from 8 wells, which are all expected to run dry in about 18 years. When they began to detect contaminants from a nearby superfund site, they started working on a plan to draw water from Lake Michigan. Waukesha, which used to be famous for its mineral water wells, began using 7 deep aquifer wells from the sandstone aquifers to support its growth and its foundry industries in addition to its three shallow wells. In 1987, Waukesha’s water became a problem…. It was contaminated by Radium, a naturally occurring metal common in groundwater pumped from sandstone aquifers. Now Waukesha too

will be pulling Lake Michigan water, but it is considered a water LOAN, as it must treat and return its wastewater via the Root River that drains to Lake Michigan. There are limits as to how much water can be drawn from the Great Lakes, as there are treaties with Canada, and agreements with the other Great Lake states. Most of the Barringtons draw from area shallow aquifers, along with the noted twin deep aquifer wells supplying the Arboretum and The Woods in South Barrington. We should all be mindful that good quality water resources are not unlimited. Slide 4: As most of you know, aquifers replenish slowly. Shallow aquifers recharge 1 faster than deep aquifers – which can take thousands of years. Here is a map that was created by BACOG, the Barrington Area Council of Governments, several years ago as they mapped our area (including both the Spring Creek and Flint Creek Watersheds) according to our soils and geography, identifying where the infiltration rate is high – possibly a matter of days in the Loamy Sand or Sandy Loam areas – the reddish areas; or very slow as in decades or longer - the purple areas where there is a lot of Clay Loam, Silty Clay or Clay, as well as in-between (Silt Loam or Loam). Soils also affect our surface waters…. Their erodibility resulting in sediment contamination, or their ability to absorb and retain water, that is, whether they are “hydric” or not. Logical question: How do we know if our aquifers are getting low? BACOG and the Watersheds Partnership are creating a network of monitoring wells and stream gages to better understand how our surface water and groundwater interrelate. That’s a story for another time, as it takes some years to build the stream gage network and to compile the data to see trends and relationships. We have stream gages locations in both watersheds, and South Barrington also has one of the continuous data monitoring wells. That’s part of the supply part of the equation. Naturally water use is a

component, and that’s an obvious place for c for coordination with area residents. Drawing down or n or contaminating the shallow aquifer in one location can affect not t not only your well water but the entire neighborhood’ ood’s. It's especially important to be mindful if one one lives in the rapid recharge areas. Rain in those area areas can reach the aquifers in hours or days, as can those human-introdu roduced contaminants such as motor oils, solvents, che chemicals and salts. Slide 5: We appear to be headed into a perio period of greater climate variability, with more intense nse rains, and longer dry spells. This variability can spell potential trou trouble for a place like Barrington, as we have lost man many of our natural sponges – wetland areas – that soak up flood waters ers, as well as space where water can collect without da ut damaging structures. River front properties are lovely, but develop elopments should be designed so there is a larger marg argin of safety, as well as the opportunity to let natural processe esses work through detention basins, multiuse open area s ea serving as flood plains, and so forth. Municipalities can develo velop comprehensive plans that creatively use low development st nt strategies to protect floodplains and wetlands, and permit it innovations such as porous pavements in parking lots, side sidewalks and some roads. Zoning regulations can allow for the str strategic use of native plantings in rain gardens, bioswales, st storm-water ditches and roadside buffers, lakeside and Creeksid kside buffers using appropriate deep-rooted native plants ants (the key is deep roots) – these are all strategies that use natura tural ecosystem services that are much more economic over the long long term for municipalities and tax paying residents. Slide 6: Residents are important playe layers in protecting the water quality of our streams and lakes kes. While the Cook County Forest Preserve is a major landowner, t er, there are also many private landowners whose property lie y lies along Spring Creek or area lakes. Protecting the stream netw network through buffers, especially with native planting prevents pollu pollutants from reaching the stream network in the first first place. Turf grasses have very shallow root systems; they do very very little to filter pollutants. Native buffers also slow d ow down the movement of water flowing into the stream network to help decrease erosion and sediment transport. Lakeshore buffers of native plantings operate similarly, filtering many pollutants from reaching the lake waters, as well as stabilizing shorelines, and affording protection from normal or win wind-driven wave action. There are other actions land landowners can take as well: o Manage fertilizer use. Avoid void over fertilizing lawns adjacent to streams or lakes, kes, and only use phosphorus when soil testing sting shows that it is necessary (Illinois soils are general rally pretty rich in phosphorus). Don’t fertilize ilize if rain is expected within a day or two.