DuPage Rivers | Enhancing Water Quality

Enrich Your Soil with Fall Leaves and Leaf Mold

July 10, 2020

Leaves, like all organic materials, contain nutrients. The nutrients in leaves hurt our local rivers but help our lawns and gardens. This is because nutrients encourage plant growth. In streams, excess nutrients cause oxygen-depleting algae to grow, which hurts the fish and insects that live there. In your yard, these nutrients are beneficial since they fertilize plants you want to grow, like grass and garden vegetables. When it rains, stormwater draws the nutrients out of the leaves similar to a…

Early Life in the Water: Dragonflies, Mosquitos and Other Insects

June 1, 2020

Dupage Rivers

Life in the Watershed

Did You Know…Some Flying Insects Start Their Lives in Water? Many of the insects that live in our streams, lakes, ponds and wetlands are actually the immature stages of flying insects like dragonflies, damselflies, mayflies, midges and of course, mosquitos. These insects spend the first part of their life cycle in the water before becoming flying adults. The length of time this aquatic stage lasts is dependent on the insect. Some dragonflies take 4-5 years to complete this part of…

How Do Dams Affect Fish and Water Quality?

June 1, 2020

Dupage Rivers

Life in the Watershed

Although there are many factors impacting urban stream systems from pollution to stormwater runoff to structures in the floodplains, dams create a host of problems for stream systems everywhere. What Did the Fish Say When It Swam Into the Wall? First and foremost, dams fragment stream systems preventing fish from freely move upstream. Even a low-head dam can create a barrier to our midwestern fish, that unlike salmon are not built to jump any significant height. These barriers block access…

Managing Detention Basins for Healthy Communities

June 1, 2020

Dupage Rivers

Managing Stormwater

Detention basins provide protection from flooding by capturing rain water through a series of storm sewers, holding the water for a specifically designed amount of time and then slowly releasing the water into a nearby stream. When managed well, detention basins not only address water quantity issues, but also water quality issues. A naturalized detention basin – one with native plants around the edges instead of the traditional riprap or rocks, can help: Minimize erosion around the edges, therefore not…

Healthy Rivers and Streams Have More Than Just Clean Water

June 1, 2020

Dupage Rivers

Life in the Watershed, Uncategorized

How healthy is your local stream, lake or pond? Finding the answer requires looking at the three major components of water quality: chemical, physical and biological. Chemical is the one that most people think of when you talk about water quality – how much of a particular pollutant is in the water? But the biology, the critters that live there like fish, insects and mussels, and the physical habitat, like riffles and pools in streams or differing depths in a…