“In the end we will conserve only what we love. We love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."
-Baba Dioum, Senegalese ecologist, Speech 1968

Although water is all around us, we take it for granted that there will be plenty of good, clean water for us to drink, use for irrigation and oh yeah! for the fish and bugs in our rivers, lakes and wetlands. Our watersheds face a great deal of pressures from urban development and land uses that have increased the amount of impervious surfaces, interrupted the natural flow of water and increased the kinds and amounts of pollutants reaching our streams. But all is not lost and there are a great deal of opportunities on our horizons to fix problems of the past, take advantage of redevelopment to reduce our footprint on the land and make positive changes in our development and land management practices that can help us continue to improve our quality of life.

This website has been designed to be the new face of our DuPage River Watershed Plan. Our thought was to create a website that housed all of the components of a comprehensive watershed plan in an organized, easy-to-use fashion that allows users to find the most up to date information about our watershed. We felt that a printed document would be out of date by the time we put a stamp on it and dropped it in the mail box, besides the fact that printing is not only costly but uses resources we are advocating to protect.

So why is it important to work at the watershed level to understand water quality issues?  Watersheds contain multiple sources of pollution, both natural and man-made, that can vary across the watershed, as in the presence of different land uses or the presence of a point discharger such as a landfill of treatment plant. Pollutant loads and also vary over time such as the application of de-icing compounds during the winter or fertilizers in the spring.

Failure to consider watershed pollution on a watershed wide basis will mean a sub optimal solution will be identified.  This means either the desired level of pollution will not be attained or the solution will cost more than is necessary.  Using the watershed as the planning unit insures that all sources of pollution and potential solutions can be identified and evaluated. 

A major component of this plan is to help community staff cost effectly implement Best Management Practices across the landscape to reduce pollutant loads and improve water quality. Information on the website will also help them comply with NPDES Phase II Stormwater Permits.

As with any plan or website for that matter, this is a living “e-document” and will continue to evolve and grow as new projects come on line, studies get published, reports written and new ideas shared. Your input is one of our greatest assets, please contact info @ dupagerivers.org with comments, ideas, information about new projects and pictures from the watershed.