The final phase of a citizen-based campaign to clean up the Upper DuPage River watershed is under way.
Earlier this year, a watershed coalition team representing landowners, businesses, environmental groups and government agencies presented a wide-ranging plan to improve water quality in the river’s east and west branches and promote healthy waterway ecosystems. Now, citizens and government officials have begun to develop methods of implementing those goals, according to Brook McDonald, executive director of the Conservation Foundation, which is coordinating the project.
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A watershed implementation plan committee met for the first time last week to develop specific “action items” necessary for the cleanup, McDonald said. Committee members will determine what is to be done in regard to each item, how it will be accomplished, who will do it, when it will be completed and how much it will cost.
“This watershed plan marks the beginning of citizens taking charge of their rivers and streams,” observed Naperville resident John Wills, chairman of the implementation plan committee. “The citizens have spoken as to what they want their watershed to be. Now it is up to us to figure out how to achieve their goals.”
The Conservation Foundation is working with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources on the cleanup.
A watershed includes all the elements that drain into a body of water, such as a river, stream, lake or wetland; the east and west branches of the DuPage River drain about 75 percent of the county’s terrain before merging just south of Naperville.
The project, was initiated by the IEPA in 1996.