Who:
Fran Caffee
VOF Group Chair/Member of IL Chapter ExCom/Member of OAGC
Where:
Aurora, IL
I live in the Fox Valley about 40 miles west of Chicago, along the middle section of the Fox River. There are 15 dams in 40 miles! We don't have a river -- we have a series of lakes.
As some of these dams are beginning to deteriorate, we are asking the State of Illinois to consider removal as an option. A few small ones on tributaries have been removed and two large ones in Batavia are slated for removal. At least one other is being modified to allow for fish passage as well as canoes and kayaks.
This section of the river near Aurora has been adopted by our local Valley of the Fox Group and we do riverbank cleanups on a regular schedule. We also have an active Water Sentinels team doing macro-nutrient monitoring, so any given Saturday morning you will find some of us along the river somewhere. Our monitoring program is 10 years old!
But we are impatient people and could not resist the opportunity to have a little fun. I have not yet removed a dam... but I do think about it.
